One hundred dead Indians is equal to one dead American. It is almost the rupee-dollar exchange rate, reflecting the relative worth of the Third World. Pretty much the same dynamic plays out in West Asia. Likely worse, as American lives lost are disproportionately few. Yet this is an American war. The world at large picks up the bill in human and material cost. Should the world then demand reparations from the US?
In the 1958 political novel The Ugly American—which my father brandished as an exposé of American capitalist-imperialism—Homer Atkins is an engineer-protagonist. In the imaginary Southeast Asian country of Sarkhan, Atkins remains skeptical of his overbearing nation: “You ever hear of a food shortage being solved by people building a military highway designed to carry tanks and trucks?” Atkins eases the lives of the colonised by inventing bicycle-powered water pumps even as fellow expatriates embrace a self-blinding exceptionalism.
Today, that American ugliness has deteriorated like a fatal contagion into a mental deformity symbolised by a rich, obese and seemingly senile leadership. Though the fable of America promises a land of freedom facilitating the pursuit of happiness, it rests upon John Winthrop’s 1630 Puritan formulation of a ‘city atop of a hill’. This neo-Biblical phrase claimed America was divinely ordained to be superior to the rest of the world.
Yet the ‘land of the free’ was built substantially on slave labour, and Winthrop himself held native slaves. America was founded on double-talk: freedom for us whites, slavery for the coloured. The variant of that doctrine today is: domestic freedom and prosperity at the direct expense of the rest of the world.
The war against Iran is one such consequence. As in Iraq decades ago, there are no weapons of mass destruction. As then, so now, America continues to destroy not just the designated enemy, but entire peoples, while the world at large pays the price. When the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran, Washington lit the fuse without asking international permission. Months later, the conflict has ceased to be merely a West Asian military confrontation and has become an economic disaster for the planet.
You and I are paying for a war we had nothing to do with, courtesy of the ‘city atop a hill’. An Indian motorist does not need to understand the Pentagon’s deterrence theories; he funds the war every time he buys fuel. India is especially vulnerable because it imports over 90 percent of its crude. In short, the unexceptional Indian or Pakistani—ah, how similar these two countries are in their congenital afflictions, ‘mon semblable, mon frère’, as the poet said—is paying for the war whenever purchasing basic goods.
Americans remain so blind they cannot see their own self-interest. In Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy (2005), Stephen Walt argues that while Washington regards foreign policy as defensive and necessary to safeguard its interests, other countries judge those actions by their destructive effects on their own security.
A State possessing overwhelming power inevitably provokes resistance, rendering unilateral dominance self-defeating. The more Washington seeks to shape the international system according to its idea of exceptionalism, the more other States look for ways to limit American freedom of action. Look at what’s happening with Canada and its new trade policies that turn away from dependence on America.
The Iranian conflict provides concrete evidence for that argument. The world is learning yet again that its domestic wellbeing can be shattered by decisions made thousands of miles away in Washington. The rational response is not necessarily to confront America militarily, but to become far less vulnerable to it by accumulating reserves, diversifying suppliers, maintaining relationships with sanctioned producers, developing alternative transport and energy architectures, and petitioning bodies like the UN to hold instigators liable for collateral damages.
Walt concludes that American policies, instead of reinforcing international ties, are producing deep isolation. Washington risks winning the military contest while persuading the rest of the world to insulate itself from American power. The truth laughing out of the rubble in Gaza is that the US still believes its exorbitant actions serve everyone’s good, unable to perceive itself through the billion accusing eyes outside its golden gates.
The question of financial compensation deserves serious consideration, as international law already recognises reparations as remedies for serious violations. The present case is morally simpler than historical claims where descendants of enslaved or colonised peoples seek restitution for injuries transmitted across generations. The victims of an energy shock today do not need to establish a genealogical connection to an injustice; they simply have to pay an inflated price for fuel tomorrow morning.
The phrase ‘rules-based order’ becomes meaningful only if the rules apply to the powerful as well as the weak. If rival States must compensate for cross-border damages, American actions cannot exist outside that same moral universe. If Washington demands accountability from others, it must submit its own actions to an honest accounting. In a similar vein, the role of Israel and Iran in the ongoing war must be judged and they too must pay proportionately.
The paradox of American hegemony is that its greatest strength has become its greatest political weakness. America can destroy an adversary’s military capacity while simultaneously compelling the rest of the world to build economic systems designed to bypass American decisions entirely. The lesson is not that America must be aggressively opposed, but that dependence on the US carries an intolerable strategic risk. That is how a superpower loses influence without losing a battle. If the city is still on top of the hill, the hill has begun crumbling.
C P Surendran | Author whose latest volume of poetry is Window with a Train Attached
(Views are personal)
(cpsurendran@gmail.com)
