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Trump’s Economic Era

first objective of U.S. foreign and military policy is to
prevent the emergence of a new rival.

President Ronald Reagan stood against world
leaders, but he was not a neoconservative. He
threatened the Soviet Union when it tried to put atomic
weapons in Cuba, and he intervened militarily in
Grenada, Lebanon, and Libya, but his operations were
temporary. He did not have a goal to dominate countries
over the long term. When the Neocons became too
forceful, Reagan drove them off. As the President of the
United States, Donald Trump also believes in a strong
America, but, like Reagan, he is not a neoconservative.

Most people believe that the United States has a
history of spreading democracy and good faith around
the world. However, this may not always be true.
Stephen Kinzer, in his book Overthrow (2006),
chronicles America’s hegemony over countries starting
with Hawaii and ending with Iraq. Most Americans do
not realize that Hawaii was an independent country
before the United States overthrew its monarchy in
1893.
Kinzer chronicles fourteen countries in which the
U.S. toppled sovereign nations and often replaced the
democratically elected heads of state with a dictator
who agreed to do their bidding. The Brothers, another
book by Kinzer, is about John Foster Dulles and Allen
Dulles. During the cold war of the 1950s, the brothers
were most responsible for America’s hegemony
described in Overthrow.

Mohammed Mossadegh, who was Iran’s first
democratically elected Prime Minister in 1951. He was
educated in America, loved everything American, and
tried to westernize Iran. In 1952, his picture was on the

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