With the collapse of Communist rule in Eastern Europe, and of Soviet domination of its former satellites, whatever Russian threat that may have existed is now over. The Brezhnev Doctrine, under which Russia used force to prop up Communist rule in the Asocialist bloc," has been replaced by the charmingly named "Sinatra Doctrine," where every country can go its own way. The Cold War is therefore finished, and every intelligent person, wherever he stands in the political spectrum, acknowledges this fact.

But if the Cold War died in the Communist collapse of 1989, what can the ruling conservative-liberal Establishment come up with to justify the policy of massive intervention by the U.S. everywhere on the globe? In short, what cloak can the Establishment now find to mask and vindicate the continuance of U.S. imperialism? With their perks and their power at stake, the Court apologists for imperialism have been quick to offer excuses and alternatives, even if they don't always hang together. Perhaps the feeling is that one of them may stick.

The argument for imperialism has always been two-edged, what the great Old Rightist Garet Garrett called (in his classic The People's Pottage) Aa complex of fear and vaunting." Fear means alleged threats to American interests and the American people. To replace the Soviet-international Communist threat, three candidates have been offered by various Establishment pundits.

One is "international narco-terrorism." As long as the drug hysteria holds up, this menace is useful in justifying any and all invasions of Third World countries, since there are usually drugs grown and traded somewhere in each of these nations. The phrase is useful, too, since it combines fear of dark, bearded Terrorists (remember the non-existent "Libyan hit men" of a decade ago, allegedly in the U.S. to get Reagan?), with the drug menace. It is doubtful, however, that narco-terrorism can justify all those super-expensive missiles and nuclear weaponry, since one hopes, at least, that the U.S. government is not contemplating H-bombing Colombia or Peru out of existence.

Second, a threat that loomed no more than one day after the wonderful demise of the Berlin War, is the pending reunification of East and West Germany. Since there is no ethnic or national "East Germany," the disappearance of a Communist East Germany would mean there is little reason for the two parts of Germany not to become one nation. And so, Establishment pundits trotted out the old slogans, as if the last half-century of German history had never existed.

Hitler! was brandished once more, with scarce any realization that Hitler only ruled Germany for twelve years, whereas a full forty-five years have passed since his demise. But not only Hitler. For article after article raised the spectre of Germany's having assaulted the rest of Europe twice in one century – thereby resurrecting the old nonsense that Germany was the sole guilty party in World War I.

It's as if all knowledge of the causes of World War I in this century have been wiped away and we were back to repeating the vicious, lying propaganda of the Entente nations (Britain, France, Russia). In fact, the German government was probably the least guilty of the warring governments in that monstrous catastrophe – a disaster that set the stage for the emergence of Bolshevism and Nazism and led directly to World War II.

Most bizarre of all, some articles have actually blamed Germany for the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 – one which observers at the time as well as later historians generally pinned on the expansionist ambitions of the French imperial tyrant, Napoleon III.

A third threat has been raised in the Wall Street Journal by that old fox, the godfather of the neocons, Irving Kristol. Kristol, in a rambling account of the post-Cold War world, leaps on the "Islamic fundamentalist" threat, and even suggests that the U.S. and the Soviet Union should discreetly cooperate in putting down this looming world period. Here we see a hint of a new conservative-liberal concept: a benign rule of the world by the United States, joined by the Soviet Union as a sort of condominium-junior partner, along with Western Europe and Japan. In short, an expanded Trilateral concept. Of course, pinpointing Islamic fundamentalism comes as no surprise from the neocons, to whom defense of the State of Israel is always the overriding goal.

But in addition to the negative there is the positive. The vaunting along with the fear. The positive carrot is the old Wilsonian dream of the U.S. as global imposer of "democracy." Since very few countries can pass the "democracy" test, or have ever done so, this poses an objective that suits the Establishment interventionists fine: for here is a goal that can never possibly be achieved.

A goal that can never be reached but can always be kept shimmering on the distant horizon is perfectly tooled for an endless policy of massive expenditure of money, arms, blood, and manpower in one foreign adventure after another: what the great Charles A. Beard brilliantly termed "perpetual war for perpetual peace." Of course, egalitarians will be cheered by the fact that from this point on, American women will undoubtedly have the privilege of dying in combat along with their male colleagues. For the armed forces will soon be an employer offering equal opportunity death to all races and genders.

The U.S. invasion of Panama was the first act of military intervention in the new post-Cold War world – the first act of war since 1945 where the United States has not used Communism or "Marxism-Leninism" as the effective all-purpose alibi. Coming so soon after the end of the Cold War, the invasion was confused and chaotic – a hallmark of Bushian policy in general. Bush's list of alleged reasons for the invasion were a grab-bag of haphazard and inconsistent arguments – none of which made much sense.

The positive vaunting was, of course, prominent: what was called, idiotically, the "restoration of democracy" in Panama. When in blazes did Panama ever have a democracy? Certainly not under Noriega's beloved predecessor and mentor, the U.S.'s Panama Treaty partner, General Omar Torrijos. The alleged victory of the unappetizing Guillermo Endara in the abortive Panamanian election was totally unproven. The "democracy" the U.S. imposed was peculiar, to say the least: swearing in Endara and his "cabinet" in secrecy on a U.S. army base.

It was difficult for our rulers to lay on the Noriega "threat" very heavily. Since Noriega, whatever his other sins, is obviously no Marxist-Leninist, and since the Cold War is over anyway, it would have been tricky, even embarrassing, to try to paint Noriega and his tiny country as a grave threat to big, powerful United States. And so the Bush administration laid on the "drug" menace with a trowel, braving the common knowledge that Noriega himself was a longtime CIA creature and employee whose drug trafficking was at the very least condoned by the U.S. for many years.

The administration therefore kept stressing that Noriega was simply a "common criminal" who had been indicted in the U.S. (for actions outside the U.S. – so why not indict every other head of state as well – all of whom have undoubtedly committed crimes galore?) so that the invasion was simply a police action to apprehend an alleged fugitive. But what real police action – that is, police action over a territory over which the government has a virtual monopoly of force – involves total destruction of an entire working-class neighborhood, the murder of hundreds of Panamanian civilians as well as American soldiers, and the destruction of a half-billion dollars of civilian property?

The invasion also contained many bizarre elements of low comedy. There was the U.S. government's attempt to justify the invasion retroactively by displaying Noriega's plundered effects: porno in the desk drawer (well, gee, that sure justifies mass killing and destruction of property), the obligatory picture of Hitler in the closet (Aha! the Nazi threat again!), the fact that Noriega was stocking a lot of Soviet-made arms (a Commie as well as a Nazi, and "paranoid" too – the deluded fool was actually expecting an American invasion!), and that Noriega engaged in occult practices – even being so sinful and depraved as to wear red underwear! Well, that tears it! (conveniently overlooking Nancy Reagan's putting herself under astrological guidance and wearing a red dress – her best astrological color). Noriega's possession of a signed picture of the Pope was, of course, downplayed by the sickeningly obedient media. Is all the destruction of life and property worth the vengeance wreaked on Noriega for thumbing his nose at Bush – to say nothing of the many billions it will cost the U.S. taxpayer to build up the economy that we have destroyed?

In the meanwhile, the Soviet Union has been pursuing the Gorbachev-Sinatra Doctrine. The Soviets have consistently refused to intervene to prop up the Communist tyrannies in Eastern Europe, if anything, giving the rulers a nudge to quit before the people saw to it that they were forcibly removed.

When confronted with an insistent demand of the Lithuanian and other Baltic nations, not only for non-Communism but even for independence, Gorby has so far refused to send in troops to prevent what would be a breaking away from the Soviet Empire itself – an empire that is essentially the old Czarist Russian Empire plus the Baltic states acquired by a deal with Hitler in 1939. Instead, Gorby has unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the Lithuanians to stay in the U.S.S.R. So far, Gorbachev's stance contrasts admirably with the policy of the sainted Abraham Lincoln, who used massive force and mass murder to force the seceding Southern states to remain in the Union.

But how has the U.S. government reacted to Gorby's Sinatra doctrine? At first, with surprised acclaim. But after a while, a curious note began to seep into the American comment. When the Romanian revolution came, when Secretary of State Baker publicly as much as urged the Soviet Union to send troops into Romania to topple the monster Ceausescu and impose "democracy" – to which the Russians replied in some puzzlement that they couldn't do that, since they had just gotten through repudiating the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

How could they then turn around and repeat the performance? Furthermore, they had just finished denouncing the United States for its military aggression against Panama. The United States expressed befuddlement: why are the Russians sticking to this "narrow" principle of non-intervention? Once again, when the Lithuanian crisis arose, the U.S. let it be known that it would look with some sympathy on the U.S.S.R. sending troops into Lithuania – for after all, wouldn't this be an internal matter, and didn't Lincoln do the same?

And finally, when Gorby did send in troops to try to stop the fierce civil war between the Armenians and the Azeris in Azerbaijan, the Bush administration and the assorted Establishment pundits practically whooped with glee, perhaps a bit relieved that the mighty Soviet state was prepared to send in troops somewhere, at some time. Maybe the Establishment was getting nervous, thinking that perhaps the Soviet Union had gone all the way to libertarianism – thereby embarrassing the bullying foreign policy of the United States of America no end, and establishing a beacon-light for the world.

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