John Keane

In the second of an eight-part series, John Keane shows how the American empire deployed the idea of ’liberal democracy’ to bolster its own interests.

Historians teach us that durable empires always try to camouflage their own immodesty by convincing both their heartlands, and their clients and subjects abroad, that their power is a force for good.

Empires aim to get under the skin of the people whose lives they shape at a distance. The priority is to transform the empire into a whole way of life so that its power to shape the world at large – to tell stories that persuade others of its superiority and to nurture among the empire’s subjects a sense of ‘masochistic wallowing’ (Tsitsi Dangarembga’s phrase in her novel, Nervous Conditions) – comes to be seen and accepted as ‘natural’, and as the way things must forever remain.

In the buildup to their military victories in Europe and Asia in 1945, America’s leaders knew that legitimacy really matters in global affairs. Telling their story well was for them of exceptional strategic importance. In their embrace of a comprehensive story about America’s past, present and future, a persuasive summary of its global achievements and wealth and wellbeing, its leaders were in one sense doing nothing new.

Empires of old typically ruled through a rigid set of legitimating symbols portrayed as intrinsically consistent and globally universal. Portuguese and Spanish emperors were proselytes for monarchy and the church. ‘I believe in the British Empire’, boasted Joseph Chamberlain, secretary of state for the colonies, ‘and I believe in the British race. I believe that the British race is the greatest of governing races that the world has ever seen.’ The Ottoman Empire that confronted and outflanked Christian Europe in the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the lands bordering the Volga River for over five centuries (between 1400 and 1922) wielded power in the form of a gaza, a holy war conducted in the name of Islam against its non-Muslim doubters and enemies.

Seen in another way, the triumphant American empire was unusual. It was the latest of a small handful of empires whose rulers talked the language of democracy. The list is short: imperial Athens during the 5th and 4th centuries BCE; revolutionary France for two decades following the events of 1789, when troops marched into the Low Countries, northern Italy and all the way to the Russian lands in the name of the droits de l’homme et du citoyen; and imperial Britain, which extended ‘responsible self-government’ – bilingual, Catholic-dominated government with its own civil code in Québec; the secret ballot and local constitutions founded on adult male suffrage, female suffrage in the Australian colonies, for instance – to a handful of loyal, white-dominated colonies.

America’s leaders deployed plenty of pragmatic, business-like patter about peace and ‘free market’ development and prosperity, but it was the American way of life centred on ‘liberal democracy’ that was its gift to the whole world. To paraphrase Hugo Grotius: in the post-1945 period, American governments and more than a few of their citizens supposed that democracy was the comprehensive ‘natural law’ binding on all states and their peoples.

This overwhelmingly white-skinned rhetoric of democracy had deep taproots. The mid-1840s war on Mexico. The decision of Congress in 1867 to ‘reconstruct’ and bring ‘democracy’ to the South. The invasion and occupation of the Philippines in 1898. Wilsonian commitments to ‘make the world safe for democracy’ in Latin America and, after 1918, in central and eastern Europe. The military conquest and forcible democratisation of Japan and Germany after 1945. John F Kennedy’s promotion of the Alliance for Progress in Latin America and talk of Vietnam as ‘a laboratory of democracy’. Carter’s human rights campaigns. Reagan’s prediction of an international ‘democratic revolution’. Clinton’s declaration that America’s ‘overriding purpose must be to expand and strengthen the world’s community of market- based democracies’.

George W Bush’s talk of bringing ‘democracy’ to Iraq. American political historians’ appeal to pursue serious research on the historic importance of ’liberal democratic internationalism’ (Tony Smith). Francis Fukuyama, the ideologist-in-chief of liberal democracy, peddling talk of the ‘end of history’. Robert Dahl, America’s doyen political thinker, praising the merits of ‘polyarchy’. The ill-fated Biden administration launch of an ‘Alliance of Democracies’ designed to unite democratically elected governments against China, Russia and other ‘autocracies’.

It transpired that this was the last gasp of the rhetoric of liberal democracy, which throughout the post-1945 period had served the rulers of the United States well. ‘Liberal democracy’ endowed its empire with a benignly acephalous appearance. The country’s aggressive political economy, military interventions, secretive counterinsurgency operations and racialised treatment of distant clients came clothed in the fine language of liberal freedoms and democratic self-government. Talk of liberal democracy and a liberal democratic international order functioned as a powerful distraction, a means of mystification and bamboozlement. For reasons to be explained, the camouflaging talk has now been terminated. The gloves of American power are off. Democratic cheating has come to an end.

A Democracy at war

Viewed historically, the avowed post-1945 commitment by America’s leaders to a democratic rules-based order was unsurprising. It was certainly no coincidence. Historians of empire tell us that durable empires, especially when on the rise and at their peak, for the sake of their overall hegemony cede a measure of independence to the distant peoples and lands they rule over. China does this in its affirmations of non-intervention in the affairs of other states, as did the Ottomans in their millet system of courts of law run by different confessional communities, and as the British did by granting parliamentary rule to their loyal white colonies.

During the post-1945 period, the earliest and best-known example of the United States’ self-interested imperial self-restraint was the Marshall Plan (1948–1951). Described at the time by Secretary of State George Marshall as a contribution to ‘the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist’, it aimed to rebuild war-ravaged cities and regions through the modernisation of productivity, the renewal of transport systems, the reduction of tariff barriers, the repayment of state debts (as in Great Britain), and the expanded non-dollar purchase of American manufactured goods and raw materials thanks to the general economic integration of Europe in the form of the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation.

In the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, the spending program was designed to favour the interests of the United States by targeting and countering the expansion of the Soviet empire. But the Marshall Plan and its successors also played to public opinion at home. The historian William O’Neill has noted the powerful domestic role played by the language of democratic ideals in the American military campaigns in Europe and Asia. His thesis is compellingly unstraightforward: the United States won its victories in the Second World War not, as legend has it, because of superior numbers, organisational competence, and material strength. Reluctant even to enter the war, the American government preceded by costly half-measures even after committing to fight. Official resonance and bureaucratic bungling led to inferior and effective weapons, too few infantrymen, the squandering of GI’s lives in strategically useless attacks, and other tragic mistakes. The Sherman tank was a death trap and the torpedoes of American submarines routinely malfunctioned. Afraid to alarm voters, Congress failed to act on many issues, such as the decision to increase military spending before thewar, which could have brought the conflict to a faster end, with less bloodshed. O’Neill traces much of the official bungling to domestic politics and paradoxically to the democratic process itself, which limited Roosevelt’s flexibility in wartime. Yet, despite these obstacles, O’Neill points out that the blood and courage of the men and women who fought, and the strength and struggles of those who remained at home, compensated for an overly cautious and ambivalent democratic leadership. When the chips were down, the language of democracy really mattered. The rhetoric roused millions of Americans who had until then ignored or been ignorant of the world to defend ideals they considered to be both precious and of universal significance. The democratic spirit of the whole war effort was manifested, for instance, in the massive two-million-strong Times Square V-J Day rally (15 August 1945), streets filled with ticker tape, coast-to-coast orgies of kissing, drunkenness and rape, children singing ‘tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty’, and the amusing, officially commissioned short film on the merits of ‘democracy’ and the dangers of ‘despotism’ authored by the director of war communications research in the Office of War Information, Harold J Lasswell.

This article was drawn from Notes on Empire, America and the Decolonisation of Democracy - notes prepared for the TODA Global Challenges to Democracy meeting, Oxford, June 18 -20, 2026

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/06/decolonising-democracy-part-three/

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John Keane

In the third of an eight-part series, John Keane traces America’s shift from being defender-in-chief of democracy to MAGA’s denunciation of it.

In the years after 1945, at various points on our planet but especially within the white and wealthy democracies, America’s public reputation as a ‘liberal democracy’ rode high. The young rising empire had, since the 19th century, prided itself on its support for ‘democracy’, but after its Second World War victories it had a free hand in playing the role of defender-in-chief of democracy and stoic guardian of the entire ‘free world’.

American governments bragged about their capacity to promote new middle classes and functioning representative democracies. Local reactions were frequently sceptical or outright hostile – think of the famous gift from heaven, democracy (min shushugi) by parachute, image by the Japanese cartoonist Kato Etsuro, or the smouldering tensions between the Indian government and the United States. (An apocryphal but telling anecdote has John Foster Dulles demanding to know whether India was for or against the United States, to which prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru replied: ‘Yes’.)

In countries such as Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany and Australia, America stood for free and fair periodic elections, uncorrupted government, economic growth and shared prosperity, high quality roads, education, health care and other public services, and belief in the principle that citizens are entitled to choose their own government. In popular culture, there was the alluringly popular ‘democratic’ mixture of Hollywood, jazz, the all-shook-up Elvis Presley, Motown, Marilyn Monroe, Woody Allen, the rebel poetry of Bob Dylan, the melancholy magnetism of blue grass, gospel, soul and country music, the good-times fluff of the Beach Boys and the Monkeys.

Even when things were not going well, America seemed reformable, capable of doing better and for the time being worthy of global support. The spirit of American-backed progress lingered long. During the first Obama administration, with the help of intellectuals such as Stanford University’s prominent democracy scholar, Larry Diamond, the first warnings about ‘democratic recession’ were tempered with a call for the United States and its democratic allies to secure ‘the spirit of democracy’ and a ‘renewed democratic boom’ that was in favour of ‘good governance’ defined as ‘the rule of law, security, protection of individual rights and shared economic prosperity’.

Talk of a new ‘democratic boom’ has stopped. The times they are now changing for America, and not for the better. We are yet to see how much damage the belligerent Trump administration does to America’s global reputation in the coming years. The world is already awash with bad news about the United States: its double standards, big-money politics, gun violence, loud-mouthed leadership, second-rate infrastructure and general social decadence. On the popular culture front, there’s of course Superbowl rap king Kendrick Lamar and the private-jet, cash-grabbing, fan-based ‘my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism like some kind of Congressman’ pop star businesswoman Taylor Swift. And it’s true that in some democratic countries, Israel, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines included, a majority of citizens still say they hold a ‘favourable opinion’ of the United States.

That’s also true in India, where roughly two-thirds of people praise what they call American ingenuity, hard work, higher education and respect for India (all the while simultaneously expressing positive views of Russia and hostility to China). Elsewhere, however, research shows that in countries once supportive of the United States its reputation is slipping, as in Poland, where (by early 2026) a majority of citizens no longer consider America a reliable ally, or, as throughout Africa, where approval of China now generally outranks support for the United States. Then there are countries including China, Turkey, Tunisia, Greece, Malaysia, Australia and France, where public opinions about the United States are split, or potentially hostile. The US/Israel war on Iran will surely strengthen the research finding that shows that in countries such as Iran, Egypt, Indonesia and Afghanistan and, more generally, in the wider Arab and Muslim regions, millions of people say they loathe American imperial power and its ways of life. They think of it as a freak show. Mere mention of the United States and its ‘democracy’ tempts people to curse and spit.

Viewed historically, through the prism of empire and democracy, these research findings are significant because they suggest that in well-established democracies the light of democracy and freedom on America’s hill is fast fading and not easily renewable. It’s all very well for intellectuals to call for more ‘patriotism’ and for setting ‘a good example of what America means for the generations to come’ by demonising Russia and demanding citizens serve their ‘own country’ (Timothy Snyder). The reality on the home front, whatever they say, is that America’s current crop of political leaders and diplomats evidently care little or nothing for democracy. Their silence about ‘liberal democracy’ is spooky. Some MAGA enthusiasts welcome its abandonment. They speak openly of democracy’s obsolescence. Their alternative mantra is fired straight from the hip: in the name of its fabled ‘people’, America will remake the world led by a government that snubs constitutional and civil society restraints on its power.

Curtis Yarvin, a leading MAGA ideologue and ‘dark enlightenment’ and ‘techno-feudalism’ champion, says it bluntly: ‘The leader must use the mass movement to win the democracy game, then demand and take absolute power.’ Multi-billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, Peter Thiel, openly denounces democracy as a threat to ‘freedom’ and insists that the coming of the universal franchise, including women’s suffrage, has made it difficult for ‘capitalism’ to function because democracy has empowered an ‘unthinking demos’ of idiots easily fooled and captured by populist politicians demanding higher taxation and corporate regulation that have the effect of choking innovative techno-experiments with cryptocurrency, AI-powered agriculture, seasteading (floating autonomous cities), anti-aging remedies, fungus-based pet food and plans to resurrect woolly mammoths. Other tough-minded, hardcore MAGA supporters dream of weakening or outright abolishing power-sharing democracy. They say democracy is no longer the only game in town because brute power and winning are all that matter. Despotism is their thing. Constitutional niceties make no sense. Hero worship and demagoguery matter. (For more see: Demagogues and Despots: Democracies on the brink)

Its rules are plain. Flood the zone. Strengthen executive power. Cross red lines. Defy existing laws and legal precedents. Bewilder citizens by issuing non-stop executive orders. Abolish guardrails and watchdogs. Arbitrarily dismiss inspectors general, judges and other guardians of public integrity. Reduce the power of legislatures to appropriate tax money and determine its spending. Trample on workers’ rights. End birthright citizenship. Freeze research, educational, social support and foreign aid programs. Silence dissenters. Expect unquestioning loyalty from civil servants. Denounce journalists and experts who expose misconduct, corruption, and malfeasance as ‘far left’ purveyors of fake news and partisans of the ‘deep state’.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/06/decolonising-democracy-part-three/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….