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As the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991, the United States had another golden opportunity to roll back its empire.  Many in the conservative movement had argued that although imperialism was not a preferable policy ambition, the U.S. needed to be aggressive around the world because of the immense danger posed by communism.  With the threat of communism virtually extinguished and America once again entrenched as the lone world super power, the U.S. could have easily withdrawn much of its global presence and restored the principles of nonintervention that the country was founded on.  Instead, America used its victory as a launching point for a whole new series of imperialist adventures.

The 1990s saw a multitude of U.S. interventions in the Middle East that stoked the flames of anti-American sentiment in the region, leading to the tragedies of September 11, 2001.  First, America launched Operation Desert Storm to fight the Iraqis and impede their invasion of Kuwait in 1990-91. This was America’s first major military operation since the Vietnam War and a key turning point in U.S. public opinion, as the U.S. annihilated its opponent relatively quickly, making it popular among the general public.  “We’ve kicked Vietnam Syndrome once and for all,” proclaimed President George H.W. Bush after the victory over Saddam Hussein’s forces, referring to the public’s reluctance to go back to war following the devastation that was Vietnam.

While the war ended quickly, America’s presence in Iraq and throughout the region did not.  The U.S. maintained military bases in nearby Saudi Arabia, considered holy land to muslims. America also maintained and escalated a devastating sanctions regime against Iraq that lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children, justified as a tool to disarm Saddam Hussein.  These two factors, U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia and Iraqi Sanctions, along with America’s continued unconditional support for the Israeli occupation and mistreatment of the Palestinian people, were given by Osama bin Laden as three of the primary reasons why he attacked the U.S. on September 11th.

After 9/11, America immediately launched a war in Afghanistan, where bin Laden and 400 or so of his al-Qaeda members were hiding.  However, the war focused shockingly little on the actual capture of bin Laden, and instead morphed into a regime change operation focused on overthrowing the Taliban, who ruled the country at the time, and installing a new government.  Bin Laden escaped into Pakistan where he was not captured until 2011 and the U.S. to this day continues to fight a counter-insurgency war against the Taliban and its allies, while attempting to prop up a makeshift government, an effort that has produced no discernible benefits and has cost countless innocent lives and further destroyed the country.

While Afghanistan has been a tragic failure, the Iraq War was an even greater catastrophe.  The George W. Bush administration spent upwards of a year pushing propaganda about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and implying, if not outright claiming, that Saddam Hussein was in some way responsible for the 9/11 attacks.  The claims about Saddam’s weapons all turned out to be false, as were the outrageous implications that he supported al-Qaeda or even contributed to the 9/11 plot. The U.S. invaded in 2003, deposed Hussein, and fought an eight-year civil war before finally withdrawing in 2011. The result was the establishment of a Shi’ite government loyal to the U.S. government’s greatest adversary in the region, Iran, and the rise of Sunni extremism in the north and west of the country that later morphed into ISIS, an Islamic caliphate and the most vicious terrorist group in the world.  Iraq, which had never seen a single suicide bombing attack and had never been home to any al-Qaeda affiliated groups, became a hotbed for terrorism, radical Islam, and sectarian violence. The war caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths as well as an approximated 4500 U.S. service member deaths and has left the country in a state of chaos to this day.

With the Iraq War resulting in a major victory for Iran, the U.S. around 2007 tilted its policy in the region to begin favoring Sunni groups that could potentially counter Iran’s influence.  America, along with the major Sunni power in the region Saudi Arabia, began backing Sunni rebels in Lebanon, Iran, and eventually, in Syria. Starting in 2011 at the beginning of the Syrian civil war, the U.S. began covertly funding and training rebels in Syria to fight against the Iranian-backed Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad.  Although the Obama administration claimed to be supporting only “moderates”, the rebellion on the ground fighting the Syrian government was dominated by radical jihadist fighters, made up primarily of al-Qaeda forces who had come over from Iraq to fight. This Syrian al-Qaeda group split in 2013 into two, the al-Nusra front and ISIS, who marched back into Iraq and established their caliphate.  In addition to backing jihadi terrorists in Syria that perpetuated a disastrous war, the Obama administration, spearheaded by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, supported a regime change in Libya in 2011 that was also led by al-Qaeda affiliated rebels, to overthrow and kill Muammar Gaddafi.  This Libyan War turned that country, previously one of the wealthiest in Africa, into a catastrophe that now has open slave markets and is still immersed in civil war.  Obama also aided a Saudi war in Yemen that began in 2015 and has caused mass civilian casualties and arguably the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today, a war that President Trump has continued and escalated.

While the Cold War came to an end in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed, America’s relationship with Russia never fully recovered and has become more contentious over the years.  NATO, a military alliance designed to combat Soviet expansion during the Cold War, originally included only the United States, many western European countries, Greece and Turkey. With the Cold War concluded, NATO now appeared to be obsolete.  However, the alliance has continually expanded from its original boundary at the border of East and West Germany and now includes the Baltic states right on Russia’s border, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, meaning the Russians face an adversarial troop presence on their direct border.  Additionally, the U.S. has aggressively intervened in Russian-bordered Ukraine, staging coups in 2004 and 2014 to overthrow the same Russian-friendly president and backing neo-Nazi groups to take power. Domestically, Russia-phobia reached a mania with the election of Donald Trump and the ensuing accusations of Russian meddling and collusion with Trump, almost all of which remain unfounded.  Any attempt by Trump or anyone else to even hint at wanting to improve relations with Russia is met by the political class with utter contempt, disdain, and even accusations of treason.

The U.S. no longer has a Soviet Union to contend with.  America is the global superpower and it would be laughable to think any country could even conceive of threatening U.S. national defense or in any way challenging the U.S. militarily.  However, that has not prevented the American empire from continuing to grow and expand its scope and reach around the world. The U.S. is more involved militarily around the globe than ever before, fighting countless unconstitutional, undeclared wars in the Middle East, intervening covertly in foreign affairs and staging coups, and continuing to provoke and antagonize Russia in order to maintain dominance.