The Nature of Terror
Terrorism is the use of violence, particularly against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. Many will add the world “lawful” to differentiate governments from nongovernmental actors. This is unacceptable. Either a moral philosophy is universalizable, or it is situational and tribal, therefore we may safely ignore it. Also, as followers of Jesus we can accept no stand that does not see every child of God as equally loved. Thus, any position that seeks to justify violence simply because of who perpetrates it is to be categorically rejected. Since we cannot ever, under a Christian or heathen standard of morality justify violence directed at anyone, particularly civilians, it does not matter if the perpetrator is nominally “lawful”.
The Nature of the Regime
The contention laid out is that the United States does indeed perpetrate massive amounts of terroristic violence in support of its political, and I would add, economic aims. It should not be controversial to understand that the US seeks political hegemony over vast swaths of the planet, if not all of it. The US has constructed a string of alliances with what can only be termed vassal states. Most notably this includes NATO. This would include the subservience shown by nations such as most of Latin America, and large parts of the Pacific Rim. These nations knuckle under to the most crucial of US political demands. Most important is their use as tools against the two other global powers, China, and Russia. They support the US in the United Nations, they accede to US diplomatic demands and meekly fall in line with core US interests. It can be fairly said that these nations do not have independent foreign policies. The threat is that these nations will be cut loose and forced to go alone, as well as suffer political and economic isolation if they cut against core US demands.
One might argue that these nations share values with the US and therefore it is not unusual or necessarily because of US power that they agree with the US. Yet, there is a sizable history of these nations trying to go their own way and being clearly forced to hew to the US line. The Suez Crisis of 1956 is one such attempt of these nations to craft their own foreign policy. They got slapped down for the effort. The US made it clear they would dump all of Britain’s sovereign bonds and destroy their economy in the process.
Then there was the Plaza Accords in 1985 when the US coerced West Germany, France, Britain and Japan to allow the US dollar to depreciate in order to stimulate US exports, even though this was at odds with the perceived interests of those nations. Or the “voluntary” auto export quotas the US forced Japan to agree to in the late 1980s. These are just the things the US forces its “friends” to do. Granted, these are not terroristic in the strict sense of the word. However, backing up these actions is the ever-present presence of US military power. Remember, the US got Europe to knuckle under I the first place by leveling most of Germany. It’s not as if the Europeans have never been on the receiving end of US ordinance. If that is the threat posed to “friends”, what is done to any nation that is an enemy of the US?
For those nations that find themselves in the crosshairs of US foreign policy it gets grim. There is a long list of nations that have tried to go against the US on matters of importance to the US regime and found themselves hung out to dry. The first thing the US will do is to put economic pressure on a nation. This might mean unfavorable trade status, or a lack of development aid (this might be a good thing as it is often wasteful). It may mean diplomatic isolation and cutting a nation off from its other allies. There is a rich history of US sanctions going back to the Embargo Act of 1807.
The sanctions can get gruesome as Iraq found out in the 1990s. The US imposed crippling sanctions upon them that cost them up to 500,000 lives. Or the sanctions leveled against Syria until just recently that saw the US steal all their oil and grain to starve the regime of revenue, and their people of calories. As is always the case, those who bear the heaviest brunt of these policies are those at the bottom of the economic pyramid. A 2024 Washington Post study concluded that the US imposed “three times as many sanctions as any other country or international body, targeting a third of all nations with some kind of financial penalty on people, properties or organizations” Additionally the Post uncovered the fact that 60% of low income countries were under some type of US sanction. This is nothing more than economic terror, resulting in death as surely as a bombing would.
If none of these sanctions does the trick to get the enemies of Uncle Sam to submit, there is always regime change. The US has been involved in at least 80-90 overt or covert regime change operations since the end of WWII. This does not even include the rich history of US regime change during the growth years of the nation in the 19th. and early 20th. centuries.
Some of the more notable ones that come to mind are Iran in 1953, Guatemala 1954, Vietnam, multiple times from 1963-1973. Then there is Chile 1973, and of course Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Ukraine 2014, and most recently Syria 2024. This cursory look at US foreign policy should prove beyond doubt that the US employs violence, that reasonable people call terror in pursuit of its political and economic aims. If it is not a regime change then there is the terror tactic of propping up odious regimes that are compliant toward US hegemony, which I will discuss below. Now let us turn to the scope of this terror state.
The U.S. Terror State-#1 in the World
The US always wants to be #1 in all that it does, so it should shock no one that this is true with regards to terror. Let’s look at the facts about the magnitude of US sponsored, and perpetrated terror.
Spending, Spending & More Spending
First, let’s look at US military spending. The United States spends more on its military than any other nation on Earth. It is at least 40% of total global military spending. I say at least because the official total does not include things that should be included. VA spending, the cost of past wars, State Department Spending, foreign aid, and the parts of the Department of Energy that oversees the US nuclear arms stockpile. All in, the total goes from $900 billion to closer to $1.3 trillion. This does not even count the $61 billion dollars the Ukraine nominally spends, the vast majority provided by the US.
Additionally, the US spends roughly the same amount as the next 10 nations combined. 7 of those nations are allies/client states, and one is neutral (India). The only two that can be considered competitors are China and Russia, who combined spend less than half what the US does. The information can be seen here.
Arms Merchant to the World
Of course, military spending is only one way that the US flexes its terroristic muscle. What would a large military be without massive arms sales to go with it. US arms sales have been a growth industry for at least the last quarter century, as this graph shows. The US accounts for 40% of total arms sales globally. Naturally, all these sales can only help to increase global instability, as this essay details. That same essay has a chart that details where US arms are flowing to highlight the point that all these sales have a damaging, terroristic impact:
Table 1: Countries at War that Received $50 Million or More of U.S. Weapons between 2017 and 2021
| Country | Type of Conflict | Value of Arms Supplied (USD) |
| Afghanistan | Major War | $9.1 billion |
| Brazil | High Intensity | $221.9 million |
| Colombia | High Intensity | $232.8 million |
| Egypt | High Intensity | $3.7 billion |
| Israel | Low Intensity | $7.1 billion |
| Kenya | High Intensity | $168.3 million |
| Lebanon | High Intensity | $500.5 million |
| Mexico | Low Intensity | $90.5 million |
| Nigeria | Low Intensity | $503.9 million |
| Philippines | Low Intensity | $521.9 million |
| Saudi Arabia* | Major War | $34.5 billion |
| Thailand | Low Intensity | $753.7 million |
| Turkey | High Intensity | $724 million |
| UAE* | Major War | $9 billion |
| Ukraine** | High Intensity | $1.6 billion |
The US is Everywhere
Then there is the situation of the global reach of the US military. There is no nation on earth with the global military footprint of the good ole US of A. There are an estimated 750 military installations in at least 80 different nations. The total may be higher because the Pentagon does not publish all the data regarding this issue. These bases host up to 230K US military personnel. That does not include the totals of the US naval personnel that are stationed aboard in vessels sailing near foreign shores. It is not simply that there are a lot of US military personnel stationed abroad. Where they are stationed is instructive. They are positioned to encircle and threaten the chief rivals of the US, China and Russia. The map below is quite instructive:
You may wonder about the US claim that it needs all these bases to counter “rising” threats from China and Russia. The Chinese have 3 bases overseas, and the Russians 15, mostly in their near abroad in former Soviet Republics. So, the US claim is mere threat inflation, which is a foreign policy term for bullshit.
But They are Our Dictators
Then there is US support for odious regimes. The US has a rich history of backing dictators when it serves US imperial interests. Just off the top of my head: the Shah in Iran, Somoza in Nicaragua, Diem (and a few before him in Vietnam), Marcos in the Philippines, Pinochet in Chile, a series of caudillos throughout Central and South America. The House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan, the military junta in Egypt, the genocidal regime that is Israel. The US supplies these rights abusing regimes with diplomatic cover, foreign assistance, military sales, and even the technical know how of the latest torture techniques. The US is a full participant in the terror these nations visit upon their citizens. No one else in the world comes close to having such an excremental rights abusing record as the United States.
The Truly Grim Statistic
Now we come to the only statistic that really matters, the human cost of this global network of terror that is US imperial power. It may not be possible to count up the dead from all US imperialistic terror tactics since its founding, but the total appears as high as 12 million since WWII. Just since 9/11 the total is estimated at 4.5 to 4.7 million. These totals are direct and indirect (starvation, disease, etc.).
It is easy to see that there is no nation even close to spreading the amount of death and destruction that the US has in its history. This trend has continued, and in some ways accelerated since the end of the Cold War. That moment was supposed to bring a “peace dividend”. Instead, it brought an intensification of US imperial activity and the terrorism that comes with it.
Step 1: We Have a Problem
Alcoholics Anonymous has, as step 1 of their 12-step program, the demand that you admit you have a problem. There is no hope whatsoever for changing this egregiously violent US policy until the people of the US admit that there is a problem.
This means that people must look beyond the propagandistic nature of the US media. This is a system that is centered on US imperial interests. US educational institutions, either state run, or heavily dependent upon state supported tuition as well as government grants, churns out people who are deeply tied to the institutions that comprise the US international economic and security apparatus. They then in turn promulgate a worldview that justifies all this violence in the name of “spreading freedom”. Further as an industry that is regulated by the US government, it behooves these entities to get in line rather than face the predations of the US regulatory state.
Alternative media is out there. US and foreign sources can be found and will give you a better perspective on the world’s affairs than only watching the mainstream US media. One will find for instance that most of the world is appalled at US support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
It would also help if people in the US took a harder look at US history and started to evaluate it in objective moral terms. This is especially true for those of us that claim to follow Christ. Unless you universalize your worldview and apply basic human rights to all people, then you are a part of the problem, not the solution.
It is my fervent hope and prayer that we as Christians can lead the way as part of the solution. It starts with admitting that we have a problem and that we live in the world’s number 1 state sponsor of terrorism. It gives me no joy to state these facts, but unless we do so repeatedly, we will always be falling way too short of the glory of God. We have been forgiven and saved by the Prince of Peace. Let’s start to act like it.
Praise Be to God
