Behind US Foreign Policy Scenes

Behind the Scenes of U.S. foreign intervention by Jake Sexton

I was looking at sites that talk about 'American Imperialism', trying to find something that was actually for it. This appeared on the first page of the Google results, and looked interesting. Early on I realized it was an anti-Imperialist screed, but I approached it with an open mind. That is, until I read these two paragraphs:Communism was the ultimate cover story. The Soviet Union was never an actual threat to the United States. The Cold War was essentially a front to fool the American people into accepting our global military campaigns.

Popular apologists claim that those nutty guys over at the CIA, well, they just goofed. Bullshit. The CIA did overestimate the capacities of the Soviet Union, but not by a hell of a lot. Even the most conservative estimates put the U.S. military budget at twice that of the USSR's and U.S. economic power at four times that of the Soviet Union. The policy of anti-Communism was a very handy tool to cover the tracks of immoral acts and it let American citizens pretend that they weren't accomplices in the butchery.

The main problem is that he seems to contradict himself.

"The CIA did overestimate the capacities of the Soviet Union, but not by a hell of a lot"?

So wait, if they didn't overestimate their capacities by a hell of a lot, wouldn't that mean that the threat perception was fairly close, meaning that maybe the threat was real? (Like how the Soviets kept short-range missiles with nuclear warheads, even after the Cuban missile crisis was long over? Or that the Soviets presumbably, according to a defector, had an agent with a 'suitcase bomb' ready to detonate in Washington if need be?) Anyway, much to dislike about the article (plus, I very vaguely remember George H. W. Bush actually saying that oil was a rationale for going in, despite what the article says). Here's a humourous take on American Imperialism, comparing it to the paragon of Empires, Rome.