| Your honor | USA | bad |
“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”
― George Orwell
At the time of writing this, war is starting to become a more important topic again, with the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 , increasing complications between China and Taiwan , as well as the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the following takeover from the Taliban .
In the western world, people usually take a side with the US or other western countries and see them as the "good guys", however people often fail to see the background of wars and completely ignore the fact that wars are not for the "Liberation of a country" , but for the profit of those, who win the war. Which, due to the NATO mainly consisting of Western countries and being the strongest Military force, is guaranteed to be them . With this Term paper I want to show that there are no "good guys" in a war, only "better guys" at best.
The reason I chose the United States for this is simple, they are the strongest force in the NATO , which results in them having the most influence in NATO decisions. If I want to show the reasons for wars, then America will be the best example since other NATO countries follow America in a lot of military decisions.
But it should also be noted that America is not the only country guilty of starting wars because of money, every war is in some way caused by money, no matter if the war was started by America, Russia, China or any other country. Every war is a crime on humanity and an example as to why Capitalism is a horrible economic structure.
Since the second World War, America has been involved in four War operations . The Korean war, Vietnam war, Operation Desert Storm, which is also known as the Gulf War , and the Global War on Terror .
In these four wars the US committed a bunch of war crimes, the most common one being massacres of unarmed civilians. The US made no efforts in cooperating with human rights organizations or the International Criminal Court, effectively commending any war crimes US soldiers committed .
The Vietnam War is most likely one of the most well-known wars America was involved with. The origins of this war date back to the end of the second world war in 1945, where Japan withdrew its soldiers from Vietnam, which then was split up into the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, under control of Ho Chi Minh, who strove to create a country following Chinese and Soviet Communism and the state of Vietnam under control of the French emperor Bao Dai, who wanted a Vietnam which had close cultural and economic ties to the West .
Both sides of Vietnam had signed a treaty in the year 1945 during the
Geneva Convention, which split Vietnam along the 17 degrees North
Latitude, also known as 17th Parallel and set Minh in control of the
North and Dai in control of the South.
This lasted until 1955, where Ngo Dinh Diem, a "strongly anti communist
politician" , became President of the
Southern part of Vietnam. Due to the cold war and the US hardening
policies against any Communist states, the currently acting US President
Eisenhower pledged "firm support to Diem and South Vietnam" .
With the formation of the National Liberation Front in 1960, which was meant to be a resistance against Diem at the request of a US report team, John F. Kennedy started increasing US Military Aid in South Vietnam based on the Domino Theory , which assumed that once a country falls to communism, many other countries would follow, like a chain of dominoes .
The situation escalated in 1965 when Lyndon B. Johnson sent US Combat Troops to Vietnam.
The Global War on Terror began after the Terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on the 11th September 2001, George W. Bush, who was the acting President at this time, announced that the US was creating a plan to locate and stop Terrorists all around the world . In connection to these announcements the US first started a war in 2001 with Afghanistan and then in 2003 in Iraq , these wars are part of the Global War on Terror, however the Global War on Terror also describes non-violent actions taken against the financing of Terrorist groups. The invasion of Iraq began on the 20th March 2003 with US air strikes, the invasion was justified with the Global War on Terror and Iraq’s ownership of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. . The first stage of the war ended a month after the first air strikes with the downfall of Saddam Hussein’s regime on the 1st May 2003 .
The war however continues with the hunt for Saddam Hussein, who was captured on the 14th December 2003 and executed 3 years later on the 30th December 2006 . During this time the battle in Iraq continues after Shiites won the 2005 election . Even though the war went on until 2011, the Bush Administration admitted on the 24th January 2004 that no biological, chemical or nuclear weapons were found in Iraq, as the former US weapons inspector David Kay told the congress: "we were almost all wrong" .
This then begs the question, if it was already known that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction in 2004, why did the US continue the war until 2011, what are the real reasons for the war?
As shown in the first paragraph, the US is not always fully honest about their reasons for invading a country or starting wars. So in this paragraph I am going to show the multiple reasons America, and other countries, go to war or start Invasions.
Big Oil is a term that describes the biggest Oil Companies under public ownership, these include BP plc, Royal Dutch Shell plc, Exxon Mobile Corporation, Chevron Corporation, ENI SpA and Total SA . Due to these companies being Government controlled, the Government will set regulations or even start Wars, just to benefit their Oil Companies.
The Wars which are started for the acquirement of Oil are usually called "resource wars" , these however are not the only wars started due to oil. There is the petro-aggression, which is not a war directly started because of oil, but due to the domestic isolation which oil can cause, making a country more likely to try out potentially controversial foreign policies . Another type is the financing of other groups with profits made from oil, like Iran financing the Hezbollah through oil profits and wars started over oil market domination, as seen in the US war with Iraq over Kuwait .
However, the existence of oil wars are a very controversial, there are people who claim that oil has no cause in wars, while others claim that oil is a very important factor in wars. Often these discussions are made on the example of the wars in Kuwait, to which the US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated that it’s "nonsense to suggest that the US invasion of Iraq involved oil in any way" . Even among political Scientists oil, or even energy in general, is rarely mentioned, the few scientists who do focus on the involvement of oil in wars also disagree about the importance of oil, one group argues that resource wars play a major role in wars, while the other group rejects this claim due to the lack of systematic evidence . The main issue with these discussions is that people often fail to check the influence of oil in the country before the war started, as oil may not be the direct cause of the war, but start a chain reaction of other events which eventually lead to a war. It is also noteworthy that oil is a very important resource and simply cannot be ignored when analyzing international security. This can also be seen in the aforementioned discussions about the involvement of oil in the Iraq wars, as scientists argue about involvement of oil in the war, rather than the preconditions caused by oil .
A major example of resource wars is the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the following US Military operation Desert Shield, in which Iraq successfully annexed Kuwait and gained control of 20 percent of oil reserves . This is more proof that oil is not always the cause of a war, but rather a precondition of war.
Although the goals of Oil Resource Wars are not always only the ownership of more oil, but also the gain of more Control over the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, also known as OPEC, which would allow a country to have more control over the worldwide oil price, and as a result of this power also cut countries out of oil trade.
Wars about Oil Market Domination are similar to Resource Wars, however they differ in one main point, the wars aren’t for personal gain of oil, but rather to make sure that the opposing force has less oil Power . The US fears that countries with a big oil power could artificially raise the Oil price, which OPEC would have to follow with, allowing the country to enrich itself on oil profits.
Oil Market Domination wars are often a cause of Resource wars, a good example is the US operation Desert Shield, which itself started due to a fear of Oil Market Domination from Iraq, but was caused by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which, as already mentioned, was a Resource War.
Communism as a cause of war is an interesting topic, the US did not start any wars against communism ever since the cold war, yet Communism and Socialism are still an important topic in modern foreign policies and even internal policies, with the rise of Communism and Socialism among Millenials and Gen-Z , it becomes a more broadly discussed topic in politics, with the majority of politicians not being very happy, as they are a prime target of Communist and Anarchist movements.
As a reaction to this, the US tries to silence any Communist politicians or countries, be it through direct wars, secret CIA operations or the influence of media to spread false information . Secret CIA operations include assassinations of Communist leaders, like the Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, who survived over 600 murder attempts from the CIA and ended up dying naturally at the age of 90 in Havana on the 25th November 2016 .
The war against communism however is not always violent. During the cold war and the Red Scare, the US also made a huge effort to keep people away from Communistic believes through state propaganda. This propaganda was usually spread through movies, literature, music, television and art. It would usually mock the soviet union and communism through misinformation. The US Government however did not display it as propaganda and insisted that everything shown was factually correct. An example of this propaganda can be seen in the attachments.
Most wars which involve gaining power in other countries are not military wars, but economic wars. The US in this case often sets embargoes on countries that do not follow them in their decisions, like with Cuba, Venezuela or a lot of countries in the Middle East .
The US embargo against Cuba started with the Cuban Revolution in which Fidel Castro took over the Cuban Government, even though the currently acting US President Dwight D. Eisenhower officially recognized the new Cuban Government as legitimate, relations rapidly started to deteriorate after Fidel Castro began nationalizing more companies and started the agrarian reforms, in which the Government broke up large landholding and redistributed them to the people who work on that land and the state. With each state take-over of privately owned land the US embargo rose in strength, up to the point where any trade with Cuba was prohibited for US Companies. This embargo also got extended to the point where the US threatened any non-US based company with sanctions if they were doing trade with Cuba . The US opposition to the Cuban government under Fidel Castro even went as far as the CIA attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro over 600 times .
Israel is a very controversial topic in international politics, which also makes it a prime reason for wars. The controversy stems from the fact that Israel lies on land stolen from the Palestinian population . During the second world war, Palestine was controlled by the British, due to the holocaust in Europe a lot of Jewish people immigrated into Palestine, under supervision by the British. They formed their own villages, also called kibbutzim, and were not interested in forming any Jewish State. After the British retreated from Palestine, Zionist groups started attacking Palestinians with the goal of starting a Jewish State. The UN tried to settle these attacks with the 1947 Partition Plan, which would split Palestine into two parts and assign one half to the Zionists. Palestine openly expressed their dissatisfaction this plan as it would illegally steal part of their country, while the Zionists seemingly agreed with it . After the Partition Plan was completed and Palestine was split into Palestine and Israel, Zionists started attacking the Palestinian land and claimed it for themselves, causing Palestinians to flee into other Arabic countries like Jordan or Lebanon . Even though Palestine is an occupied territory, Israel continues to send their population into these territories and apply Israeli law, which directly violates the fourth Geneva Convention. Despite this, countries still acknowledged the new Israeli territory as a legitimate part of Israel .
With Israel being a country with western ties in the middle east, the US had an interest in forming good ties with Israel in order to have a proxy in the middle east. This has been the case with the Iran-Israeli Proxy conflict, in which Iran threatened to dissolve Israel and give the land back to the Palestinian people. And now is a proxy war involving Syria, Lebanon, Russia, the United States, the United kingdom and Saudi Arabia .
In the end, what to take from this Term Paper is up to the Reader, however I hope that this Term Paper cleared up that there are no good reasons for War. Even if countries tell us that their War is for the "removal of Nazis" or for the "liberation" of a country, it is never the truth. Every War always boils down to the gain of power or money, although nowadays these things are the same.
The war for Oil results in a shift of power in OPEC, which allows the most powerful country to influence the international Oil price. Due to this easy way of gaining a monopoly, any state can abuse their position in OPEC very easily.
The war against Communism has the goal of defeating an idea that goes against everything the US stands for. Communism tries to abolish the entire concept of a class based society, which would result in the Government any rich people would loose their power. It is clear why the US government tries everything they can to avoid any Communist movement in any country, since they seemingly still believe in the Domino Theory, and fear that any communist country that gains a lot of power could cause other countries to move towards communism.
And finally, the attempts of gaining power in countries. This is not always very easy, as seen with the example of Cuba, getting power over countries can also mean completely blocking any cooperation with specific states, in this case setting an embargo on Cuba and threatening non US companies to sanction them if they decide to trade with Cuba. This gives the US control over every company that is interested in having the US as a partner, which usually every company wants. Based on this example it becomes clear that wars with the objective of directly gaining power in countries does not always mean getting power over the country in which the war is happening, but to gain power over other countries through this war.
The core information of this was nothing new to me, however the extend of what the US does to justify their wars and war crimes was very shocking and only increased my critical attitude towards US politics. This Term Paper showed me, that countries are able to ignore war crimes through and lie to the population in order to make them seem better to retract a statement, which also is the reason why I want to retract a statement I made in the beginning of this Term Paper, I said that there are only "better guys" in wars, not "good" guys, after writing this Paper it has become clear to me that even "better guys" do not exist in wars. Everyone who participates in any war is a horrible person and it does not matter what their political opinion is. They all commit genocide towards groups of people and point at the others saying that they are the ones violating human rights, while leading a genocide against transgender people in their own country and secretly murdering children in a state based on stolen land. I have also noticed that Imperialism is not dead, as many assume. Imperialism never ended, except that now the government knows how to hide their Imperialism and sell it to the population as a "Liberation", "removal of Nazis" or "fighting terrorist groups". Due to this system of gaining power through money and gaining money through power it is only a matter of time until every country turns into some sort of fascist, imperialist state.
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