Power Discrepancies and The American Empire.

For many years now, "First World Nations" have seen themselves as a sort of super governing body for the entire world. They constantly try to exert their intentions and ideologies onto other nations that may not be as technologically developed as they are. An obvious example of this would be the British Empire from about 500 years ago up until the mid-1900s. But even now in a period where we consider those types of issues to be behind us, at least in how politicians would have us believe, there is still much discrepancy between the power that certain "First World Nations" and many "Third World Nations" carry. This is discussed heavily in Stewart Hall's piece, "The West and the Rest", where Hall speaks of the rise of the concept of "The West" and how that eventually gave birth to "The Rest". Hall's writing speaks of how "The West", even as just a concept, shows how Eurocentric much of our language is when speaking about power. This is because the whole "West" thing came about in Europe, where the cultural and intellectual centers of Europe were in the West, places like France, Italy, and England. It's obvious to see how this came about, around the 1500s and 1600s, those three countries were starting to expand into empires. Britain especially had an empire on which "The Sun Never Sets", which is a powerful description of just how vast their influence reached. However, over the years, "The West" became more of a sign of a country's technological prowess rather than its actual political power and geographical location. Many people who don't know what they are really talking about often say things  like "Oh yeah bro Western art and literature is so much better" and then cite something from Eastern Europe, i.e. Russian. I am referring to weird people on Twitter but the point still stands. The main point here is that even though a country may be "Western", it may not be actually located in the West. But then again, being located in "The West" depends on where you are in the world and how you are contextualizing where that country is. Say you were in Japan, which is generally classified as a "Western" country these days due to its wealth and technological ability, then Vietnam, a "Third World Country" would be to the west of you and it throws the whole definition that people(generally white males) have created over the past several centuries. Moving on from what the definition of "The West' is, I'm going to talk about how that related to the title of this blog, "The American Empire". I know it sounds scary and may be an exaggeration, but America does not directly have colonies or a Monarch or anything that would be traditionally associated with an Empire. But when you look at many of the things that The United States does with its large military and what some of the companies that are based there do, it does seem to look a bit like a traditional empire. A good example of this is the documentary Wounds of Waziristan, which showcases the effects of The US's military power on "Third World Countries" by telling the story of several people in Waziristan who were affected by drone strikes by the US. The documentary features interviews with some of the family members of people who were killed as collateral damage in the drone strikes. These strikes take place in a part of Pakistan where there was a large Taliban presence in the past. The main takeaway of this documentary is how the US military describes how these attacks are carried out versus how the innocent civilians on the receiving end describe them. The US says they are "precise and targeted attacks" which are backed by information gained by contacts who may be living in the country or working inside the enemy's organization. They take this information and attack only the buildings or vehicles that the targets are inhabiting. Despite this, there are far too many occasions where civilians are killed in these attacks as well. The documentary is interspersed with clips of Barack Obama saying that the weight of these civilian deaths would be heavy on his soul forever but that they are an inevitable happening in wars. This immediately raises red flags for me as it seems to directly contradict what the official stance of the US military was saying about these drone strikes, that they are precise and are not prone to much error. These examples help put in perspective the power that "Western" countries get to exert over non "Western" countries. The US is of course not the only country doing these sorts of things but it is the most easily targetable since I live there and am most familiar with it. And the US gets the most media coverage for these sorts of big scandals more than other countries. And the overreach of US power is not only to other smaller countries but also to its own citizens. A famous case of this behavior being exposed is the case of Edward Snowden. Snowden was an NSA employee tasked with creating software designed to report on what US citizens were doing online. This was in the wake of the patriot act that was put in place after 9/11 and was supposedly a system to conduct surveillance on potential terrorists. This may sound like a fairly decent idea at extreme face value, but anyone with three and a half brain cells can see the path that it could take to mirror any number of dystopian cyberpunk stories. This sort of system that tries to predict or capture terrorism before it happens has been discussed in many stories over the years. A very popular one is the story Minority Report by Phillip K. Dick, where they see into the future to predict crimes, and it eventually fails. And guess what the system fails and the moral of the story is you can't predict people. Another is the show Psycho-Pass, which features a similar, future-predicting system of law enforcement and by the end of the show, it is shown to be a ploy to control people. The whole NSA surveillance scandal with Snowden was shown to be a similar scenario. The original intention of the Patriot Act was to intercept messages that contained information related to possible terrorist attacks and stop them before they happen. The NSA however was collecting information from AT&T and Verizion with no discretion on who they were actually monitoring. In short, the US government was using its massive wealth to spy on its own citizens with little to no downside. With the Snowden incident, where he leaked this information to the public, most trust in the government went away. Although many people did think this was necessary for national security. I mostly agree with Snowden's stance that it was too much, but I do think some surveillance is necessary for any level of national security. Wrapping this back around to the idea of the American Empire, it is clear to see how the power and influence of the US may be attributed to that of an empire. It has wide influence on other countries, it has intense scrutiny of its own people. While the US may not be an actual empire with land all over the world that they own in full sovereignty, it does have that land in that it controls it through fear and power. The drone strikes are just one facet of a majorly overbearing system of foreign policy and it should be reigned in if the US wishes to remain in the good eyes of people in other countries.