Jan. 21, 2010, will go down as a dark day in the history of U.S. democracy, and its decline. On that day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban corporations from political spending on elections-a decision that profoundly affects government policy, both domestic and international.
The United States was founded as an “infant empire,” in the words of George Washington. The conquest of the national territory was a grand imperial venture. From the earliest days, control over the hemisphere was a critical goal.
Latin America has retained its primacy in U.S. global planning. If the United States cannot control Latin America, it cannot expect “to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world,” observed President Richard M. Nixon’s National Security Council in 1971, when Washington was considering the overthrow of Salvador Allende’s government in Chile.
Since 9/11, the Indian and U.S. Navies and Special Forces have conducted a number of joint exercises in the Indian Ocean and in the hills of India's Northeast. U.S. State Department official Christian Rocca said (in 2002), "Military-to-military cooperation is now producing tangible progress towards [the] objective [of] strategic, diplomatic and political cooperation as well as sound economic ties." The Indo-U.S. Bilateral Nuclear Cooperation Agreement (2007) is the capstone of this new strategic alliance, driven by geopolitical and military concerns.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019