Harold James — The Snowden Time Bomb

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, world leaders repeated a soothing mantra. There could be no repeat of the Great Depression, not only because monetary policy was much better (it was), but also because international cooperation was better institutionalized. And yet one man, the American former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, has shown how far removed from reality that claim remains.

Project Syndicate
The Snowden Time Bomb
Harold James is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University and Professor of History at the European University Institute, Florence

I think that Professor James greatly understates the consequences of revelations by Manning, Assange, Snowden and other courageous and principled whistleblowers that have ripped whatever was left of the mask off the façade of the American Empire and its masquerading as a global partner. It is now clear that Washington is not interested in global partnership but in dictating the terms.

President Eisenhower cryptically warned of this unsavory development in his Farewell Address where he cautioned the nation about the rise of a military-industrial complex, which was actually a corporate state comprised of military, industrial, financial and governmental facets. Presently the US economy is built on a war machine predicated on endless war and US global hegemony, willing to use any means to achieve its objectives.

Until this war machine is unwound, as it should have been post-WWII, the myth of American exceptionalism will be confronted by Mao's observation that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Now the myth of American democracy has been debunked by the reality of American empire, as the national security state denies even the body of lawmakers access to its secrets, and the doctrine of the unitary executive looks suspiciously like incipient dictatorship.