Like Rome, the United States relied on expansion and plunder to achieve the well-being of its people, so it marched west across both banks of the Mississippi into the Midwest and from there to the West Coast (located on the eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean) and from there to the conquests in East Asia.
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Like Rome, the United States was founded on the idea of conquest, plunder, and distribution of the spoils
Lula da Silva’s victory in the Brazilian presidential election represented a threat to the hegemony of the United States over Latin America and a renewal of the existential threat posed by a free Latin America to the survival of the United States as an imperialist power dominating the world.
In July 1776, 13 colonies on the west coast of the Atlantic Ocean gained independence from the British Empire, declaring the United States of America. In the minds of the founding fathers of the United States, led by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, they were reviving the Roman Empire and that the United States was a reincarnation of the Roman Empire that dominated the the western part of the ancient world between the first centuries B.C. and fourth century AD. It was also in the minds of these founding fathers that they must avoid the fate of the Roman Empire, which collapsed in the early fifth century AD at the hands of Germanic invasions that came from the east from the Siberian steppes.
The legacy of the Roman Empire
The Roman Empire dominated the Mediterranean world, and with it the Western world, between the first centuries B.C. and fifth century AD. It had reached safe limits to the south, represented by the Sahara Desert in North Africa and the Aswan Mountains in Southern Egypt. In the Levant, the Euphrates River and the Syrian Desert formed its borders with the Sassanid Empire and the Arabian Peninsula. In Europe, the Atlantic Ocean forms its natural boundaries to the west and north, while the Rhine and Danube rivers are its borders with the Germanic tribes that settled in Eastern and Central Europe from the 2nd century BC. On the other side of the Rhine and Danube rivers, the Roman emperors would wage wars against the Germanic tribes for six centuries to plunder these tribes on the one hand and to prevent these tribes from crossing these two rivers and entering the Roman lands to share with Rome its wealth and power.
The Roman Empire at the time represented the region where wealth was concentrated in a global system based on the Rome-China dichotomy. Rome was the center of wealth and influence in Western Eurasia, while China was the center of wealth and influence in Eastern Eurasia. As for the Germanic tribes, they formed the districts which had been impoverished by the practice of ancient Rome’s policy of plunder, which formed the first pillar of the wealth and influence which they enjoyed for six centuries. The pressure of the Germanic tribes who lived east of the Rhine and north of the Danube on the Roman Empire is similar to the pressure exerted by “illegal” immigrants in our time to migrate from their countries ravaged by the colonial West to obtain a share from the wealth concentrated in the capitalist West. The Germanic tribes at this time were labeled barbarians primarily as a result of their poverty rather than their “backwardness”, knowing that many Germans had previously been kidnapped or recruited into the Roman army to be a tool against their countrymen , and many were able to occupy the highest positions in the Roman Empire. At the beginning of the fifth century, the Germanic peoples, represented by the Goths, Lombards, Vandals and others, managed to cross the Danube and passed through the western part of the Roman Empire, destroying Rome on their way.
Like Rome like USA!
All of this was in the minds of the founding fathers of the United States when they won independence from the British Empire and when they promulgated the Constitution of the United States of America. Like Rome, the United States relied on expansion and plunder to achieve the well-being of its people, so it marched west across both banks of the Mississippi into the Midwest and from there to the West Coast (located on the eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean) and from there to the conquests in East Asia. Along the way, he captured states that were part of Mexico, such as Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, and California. More than a century after the founding of the United States, the “imperial” state now occupied the entire area between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, except for a strip of land in the north that separated it from the Arctic Pole, which had become an icy desert dividing the United States to the north from Russia (the heart of Eurasia), while the Rio Grande to the south defines the southern limits.
There was a great similarity between the United States on the one hand and the Roman Empire on the other. Like Rome, the United States was founded on the idea of conquest, plunder, and distribution of the spoils. Like Rome, the United States wanted to create its own protected world in the face of the new barbarians represented by the poor peoples who had been robbed and impoverished by the United States. While the Atlantic Ocean defined the borders of the Roman Empire to the west and north, the same ocean defined the borders of the United States to the east, while the Pacific Ocean defined the borders of the United States to the west. While the Sahara played the role of defining the borders of the Roman Empire in the south, the icy desert of the Arctic played the role of defining the North American border (although Canada is an extension of the United States). Finally, just as the Rhine and Danube rivers formed the borders of the Roman Empire in the east, separating it from the Germanic peoples, the Rio Grande acted as a border between the United States on the one hand and the “Latin American barbarians” on the other.
Latin Americans…New Teutons?
Latin Americans were doomed to be exposed to the longest wars of American domination and exploitation. From the mid-nineteenth century, the greatest expansion of the United States was achieved at the expense of Mexico, all the way to the Rio Grande. The latter forms the border between the United States on one side and Latin America on the other. Just as Rome waged wars of expansion and plunder across the Rhine and Danube, so through the Rio Grande the United States waged wars of hegemony and plunder against Latin Americans. To deflect the charge that they had caused the impoverishment of the peoples of Latin America, the United States treated them as barbarians, as Rome had done to the Germanic peoples. Thus, in the eyes of Washington, Latin Americans became corrupt people, drug addicts and immoral, lazy and idle, with limited thinking and circumspection. Just as the Germans sought for centuries to cross the Rhine and Danube into the Roman Empire to obtain a share of the wealth they had plundered, so Latin Americans sought in many ways to emigrate and cross the Rio Grande to the promised paradise of the United States to claim a share from the wealth seized by them and other nations throughout the world.
Just as the Germans adopted a Christian doctrine different from that of Rome, that of Arianism, as an “ideology” defining the identity of the Germanic tribes, so the peoples of Latin America, in their revolt against American liberalism, resorted to socialism as the ideological determinant of political their identity in the ongoing struggle between them and the United States. In the context of achieving their independence from American hegemony, the peoples of Latin America resorted to their socialist revolutions, which recently began to spread like wildfire in Latin America. In Argentina we find the socialist Alberto Fernández and his deputy Cristina Kirchner, in Bolivia we find the socialist Luis Arce, successor to the revolutionary leader Evo Morales, in Colombia we find the socialist Gustavo Petro, and in Chile we find the socialist Gabriel Borich, in Venezuela we find the socialist Nicolás Maduro, and in Nicaragua we find the socialist Daniel Ortega. In Cuba we find the socialist Miguel Díaz-Canel, successor to the revolutionary leaders Fidel Castro and Raul Castro, and in Mexico we find the socialist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and recently the socialist Lula da Silva won in Brazil to benefit Latin American countries ruled by socialists who are hostile to American imperialism.
Conclusion
American leaders have long been aware of the “existential threat” that Latin America poses to them. Just as Rome, which was separated from the Germanic tribes only by the rivers Rhine and Danube, which were easy to cross, the United States is separated from Latin America only by the Rio Grande. Just as Rome practiced plunder against the Germanic tribes, which led those tribes to take revenge on the power that had long persecuted them, so the United States is aware that the awakening of the peoples of Latin America will prevent them from continuing their policy of plundering the goods of the peoples of Latin America who may seek to punish the power that has oppressed them for so long. This has led major American geopolitical thinkers such as Alfred Thayer Mahan, Nicholas Speakman, Robert Kaplan and George Friedman to warn of the existential danger to the United States from the south across the Rio Grande, and it has led former US President Donald Trump to consider building a wall along the border with Mexico to avoid the fate of fallen Rome at the hands of the Germans 16 centuries ago.
