Reflections on Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ “Moments of Bifurcation”

By Phil Wilson

May 15, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Image of US warships in the Strait of Hormuz by Sgt. Alexis Flores, U.S. Navy / Wikimedia Commons, in public domain

Since 9/11/2001 – when a 19 person volunteer unit from the Middle East, armed with a few box-cutters, forced the US public to watch a lifelong repeating loop of slow motion demolition – we have been busily attempting to bomb much of humanity into permanent submission. Somewhere, deep in the reptilian brain of our collective muse, we vaguely understand that few passions on earth eclipse the global hatred of the US. People around the world see what most of us cannot – the arrogant materialism, the eavesdropping intrusions into far away political movements, the installation of puppet proxies at gunpoint, the hair trigger wars and the military bases that spring up up like invasive choke-weeds across every continent. US international crimes play a masterful game of hide and seek with our muted conscience. Any normal, morally intact human being, someone with both a brain and a soul, would have viewed the 9/11 attacks as a moment crying for a national inventory. But no normal person can ever become president of these United States. No less a proponent of vapid slobber than George W, Bush summed it up like this:

“America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.”

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That may have been the mother of all missed opportunities – George W. Bush, fated to be offered a historic chance to look deeply inward, jumped on the moment with one more insipid platitude. There were vastly brighter minds that saw 9/11 all too clearly – like Hunter S. Thompson who had this to say about 9/11 on 9/12:

“Nothing – even George Bush’s $350 billion “Star Wars” missile defense system – could have prevented Tuesday’s attack, and it cost next to nothing to pull it off. Fewer than 20 unarmed Suicide soldiers from some apparently primitive country somewhere on the other side of the world took out the World Trade Center and half the Pentagon with three quick and costless strikes on one day. The efficiency was terrifying.

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.

This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed — for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won’t hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force.

Good luck. He is in for a profoundly difficult job — armed as he is with no credible Military Intelligence, no witnesses and only the ghost of Bin Laden to blame for the tragedy.”

As the endless and ongoing US wars in the Middle East continue, we should appreciate that Hunter Thompson seemingly had a pair of eyes sending messages from decades into the future – “We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives,” Thompson prophesized with the casual air of a surgeon examining an X-rayed fracture.

In retrospect, it may be determined that our mysterious enemy – both then and now – is an internal construct of our own making. Colonialism creates its necessary demons – the inferior, immoral people (savages, in 15th century parlance) to be invented first and plundered later as a matter of principle. The colonial narrative (with its insatiable racism) also creates the very enemies that originate as fantasies – the victims of war and exploitation that, like the 9/11 attackers, channel their pain toward revenge.

If there is a fatal flaw in the US mindset – I am not merely talking about the politicians and corporatists, human shells that, by definition, have no capacity to think, but can only surge toward power and profit like a tree branch growing toward the sun – it is a flagrant inability to see our country for what it is. We not only fall short of being a “beacon of freedom and opportunity” we are the antithesis to human rights and equality – a nation continuously inspired to support dictators, to quash liberation movements and to murder civilians by the millions with a trillion dollar bombing industry.

Hunter Thompson proved that one did not need hindsight to comprehend 9/11 – that event revealed two truths that lend clarity to our disastrous war in Iran: the US is hated by the world’s poorest people, and no amount of vicious military destruction can save us from retribution. Box cutters, then, and cheap Iranian missiles, now, reach a lethal threshold when combined with the inevitable disgust that US colonialism inspires. And, as Hunter Thompson clearly saw on 11/12, the US military has been destined to play an unending game of whack-a-mole against the nations that despise America – almost the whole world but especially the poorest, most exploited, most plundered and most bombed – those whom Frantz Fanon called “The Wretched of the Earth.”

Now it is Iran’s turn to endure the venom of US malice, but Iran, unlike the victorious Vietnamese Army, unlike the 9/11 “terrorists,” has gained entrance into the complex economic structures of US markets. The Iranian stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz gives that regime the capability to significantly dismantle the financial mechanisms of US Imperialism. As Thompson observed on 9/12, people with nothing in the way of military technology can commit violent acts with “terrifying efficiency.” Now, in 2026, we again learn that even the most astronomical military budget pales before the resolve of the aggrieved victims of the colonial empire. Critically, the Iranian assault on US capitalism has become a virtuosic performance simultaneously played for both the US citizenry and the global audience. One drives to the pumps and reads $4.50 a gallon, with a new-found reverence for Iran.

The lesson is clearer now than it was a quarter of a century ago. The US has become increasing recognized as a rogue state, a serial violator of international law. The Trump/MAGA regime has applied the brutal, lawless assault, previously reserved for colonial subjects, to populations at home. Police violence has always been a feature of inner city intimidation, but now the threat of lethal violence permeates the nightmares of all who oppose the fascist state. The fate of Renée Good and Alex Pretti played out on nightly news. Those victimized in the imperial core, and the plundered targets of the US Empire have suddenly begun to exchange knowing glances across international boundaries.

Has 9/11 come home to roost? We have replaced the “goofy child-president” with a soulless, senile, somnolent husk, eager to scour the earth for bombing targets on a planet where hatred of America is as rare as salt in the ocean.

Was 9/11 a moment of bifurcation? The Portuguese sociologist, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, describes bifurcation as follows:

“In the scientific field, the term “bifurcation” was first used by Henri Poincaré, but in the second half of the 20th century, the concept and theory of bifurcation came to be associated with the chemist and Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine. Prigogine’s theory of bifurcation is based on the following ideas: the fundamental indeterminacy of reality and the consequent insistence on not considering chance, chaos, and disorder as pure negativity, outside the scientific realm; complex systems create forms of self-organization that produce unpredictable changes and transitions (dissipative structures); in situations out of equilibrium (entropy, second law of thermodynamics), disorder prevails over order, and systems can enter moments of bifurcation in which small changes can produce enormous and unpredictable consequences.”

I should mention briefly that bifurcation theory is a complex branch of mathematics, and that when social sciences borrow from the physical sciences, the intent is to apply the broad contours of that science as a form of descriptive metaphor. There are no precise equations to quantify social changes as there are to examine changes in laser dynamics.

de Sousa Santos illustrates his conceptual framework with the historical conditions in the early 15th century and the battle over the Strait of Ceuta (Gibraltar) – a conflict that seemed local and limited at the time, but that acted as a spring-loaded historical mechanism to power the forces of Western Capitalism, and to weaken the Islamic hold on world affairs. He compellingly links the long ago shift in power dynamics pivoting around the trade route choked at the Strait of Ceuta, and the current battle for Hormuz. In the 15th century the Portuguese capture of Ceuta became the lynchpin for a cascading series of events elevating Capitalism, modern science and Christianity as the essential scaffolding of ascending “Western Civilization.” In bifurcation theory, momentary chaos creates the conditions in which seemingly minor events have vast and lasting historical sequelae.

If the conditions in early 15^th century Europe represent the concept of bifurcation now witnessed in contemporary global relations, there is an important difference – the power of decision making in late medieval Europe rested solely in the hands of Kings, the nobility and the wealthy merchant class. Some 50,000 Portuguese and mercenary soldiers attacked Cueta in 1415, and these masses were allowed to plunder the sacked city – the disciplined loyalty of the professional soldiers (supplemented by the ordinary conscripted citizenry) linked to Church influence and shared spoils. Ironically, the 2026 “sacking of Caracas” allowed no shared spoils – the conquered wealth will go entirely to Trump and his oil industry donors. However, the Trump regime can be dismantled by the masses, either through elections (which may be corrupted or suspended) or by massive civil resistance. King John 1 of Portugal ruled for 48 years and needed no mandate from the common people. If the 1415 beginning of the age of empire represents bifurcation as a metaphor for our current “moment,” if Cueta is seen as a metaphor for Hormuz, the center of agency now resides primarily within the working class. One similarity and one difference link the medieval Portuguese peasantry and the exploited classes in the contemporary US – both endure(d) hard times under the whims of ruling authorities, but the working class and poor victims of US fascism have the capability of destroying the brutal regime.

de Sousa Santos notes that moments of bifurcation have no clear outcome when viewed from the initial point where vulnerable systems give way to temporary chaos. Referencing Immanuel Wallerstein, he states that our current bifurcation could resolve into, “something more authoritarian and hierarchical or more democratic and egalitarian.”

If 9/11 was not quite a “moment of bifurcation” perhaps we can imagine it as a foreshock, a harbinger of our dislocated world in 2026. In 2001, the 9/11 attacks seemed to be an aberration, a challenge to US hegemony met by a tightening of the security state and a public display of US military rage. Post 9/11 there were minor stirrings in US politics, a rejection of Bush style Republicanism in favor of Obama – more a reaction to the crash of 2008 than a movement against US militarism and the growing security state. Even in 2008, popular support for the War in Afghanistan stood at 50% (down from 90% in 2001). The 9/11 attacks increased George W Bush’s popularity, and while Hunter Thompson’s visionary understanding that Bush would plunge the nation into a lifetime of mindless war would resonate with a small number of people on the left, there was no popular groundswell against US militarism. But clearly, 9/11 set the stage for US collapse, colonial overreach and unchecked militarism. One might reasonably predict that the War in Iran will become the final post 9/11 war, the final collapse of a process set in motion by the clueless “child-president,” George Bush.

While the 9/11 attacks exposed US vulnerability, the US military never has experienced the sort of public castration that Iran has just performed before the eyes of global scrutiny. After 9/11, the popular narrative attributed the attacks to nothing more than lax airport security – a problem solved by X-rayed baggage and stringent rules regarding carry-on luggage. Hatred of Islamic people increased to the point where most of the public was primed to cheerlead for a war against any Islamic country. Few public figures viewed 9/11 as being a moment for introspection, and few questioned why people from the Middle East had such hardened urgency to improvise violence against US targets. Now, the public sees the Iran War as a sort of last straw, an act of needless military aggression that will simultaneously crash the US economy and shatter the myth of an invincible war machine. In a sudden instant, even the former jingoists have had a reckoning. Neocon pundit, Robert Kagan recently wrote in The Atlantic:

“Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character. It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done.”

de Sousa Santos does not dwell on the connection between “bifurcation” and political movements, and one can mistakenly imagine that he sees history as an unpredictable succession of mechanistic events. However, he poetically alludes to the possibility that the US bungled adventure in Iran might inspire an unprecedented class revolt:

“A new political conflict between the politics of life and the politics of death, replacing the modern conflict between left and right? The revolution of the sub-humans and sub-proletarians of the cyber-automated world, led by repentant insiders who know better than anyone the vulnerabilities of a power that presents itself as invulnerable.”

This moment of bifurcation (as I understand it) makes pointed demands on activists to understand the historical opportunity. Although unstated in de Sousa Santos piece, the connection between US militarism gone awry and homegrown suffering has never been clearer. As Trump dismantles the safety net in favor of gargantuan armaments spending, as ill-conceived adventures backfire with exploding prices, as missile launches burn oil fields and send raging plumes of CO2 infested smoke into a dying biosphere, the moment of bifurcation cannot be overlooked or outsourced to chance. The Portuguese ruling elites may not have sacked the city of Ceuta with historical pretensions, but they seized an opportunity with organized intent.

The Portuguese victory at Ceuta unleashed centuries of terror – the beginning of the African Slave trade, the age of empire and the genocide of indigenous people in the “New World” – a protracted period of brutality and slaughter that may never be equaled. When we talk of our current “bifurcation” the narrative analogy might be an exact negative of the early 15th century, with class roles flipped upside down, and the former victims – like Iran – manifesting unprecedented power and agency.

Moments of bifurcation demand a human response. Events will not take care of themselves. The moment of bifurcation that de Sousa Santos described in 15^th century Portugal may be seen as a bookend to our chaotic moment. Imperialism arose from chaos and now collapses in chaos. The dominance of the West may have begun at the expense of Islamic cultures, but now it is Iran that threatens to bring the colonial era to a final resolution. We cannot, as de Sousa Santos tells us, know how this will play out. If small things can now create great consequences, we, the seemingly disempowered, politically disorganized residents of the Imperial Core, have a short window of opportunity.

Phil Wilson writes at Nobody’s Voice.Email

Phil Wilson

Phil Wilson is a retired mental health worker and union member. His writing has been published in ZNetwork.org, Current Affairs, Counterpunch, Resilience, Mother Pelican, Common Dreams, The Hampshire Gazette, The Common Ground Review, The Future Fire and other publications. Phil's writings are posted regularly at Nobody's Voice (https://philmeow.substack.com/).

The Historic Strike That Transformed the Danish West Indies

In 1916, a mass strike led by black labor organizer David Hamilton Jackson upturned power relations in the Danish West Indies. Its success owed partly to support from Denmark’s labor movement — a true labor internationalism as rare then as it is today.

By William Banks

May 3, 2026

Source: Jacobin

One of the most significant events in the US Virgin Islands’ history has largely escaped historians’ attention: the early 1916 mass strike of plantation workers organized and led by the Danish West Indian labor leader David Hamilton Jackson. / Danish Workers Library and Archives, 1915 / Public Domain

That Denmark was once a slave-trading and slaveholding empire remains relatively little known outside of the former Danish West Indies, known since 1917 as the US Virgin Islands. Nor have the Danes been eager to acknowledge a chapter of history rather at odds with national self-understanding.

Two initiatives of the National Archives — a 1999 reorganization and recataloging of the extensive archival material that had long sat undisturbed, and a large-scale digitization project of those records in anticipation of the 2017 centennial of the colony’s sale to the United States — have happily resulted in a wave of new research and, indeed, something of a national reckoning in the public sphere. While this process remains ongoing, a significant victory was achieved in 2018 with the erection in Copenhagen of a monument to Queen Mary, one of the three “Rebel Queens” who led a plantation workers’ revolt in 1878, remembered today as the Fireburn.

Despite this new interest, one of the most significant events in the colony’s history has largely escaped historians’ attention: the early 1916 mass strike of plantation workers organized and led by the Danish West Indian labor leader David Hamilton Jackson. The first successful strike action of non-white workers in Caribbean history, the magnitude of this achievement cannot be overstated. Over the course of just a couple of months, with no real experience of labor organizing, thousands of plantation workers on the sugar-producing island of Sankt Croix (the colonial name of Saint Croix) came together and, just in time for harvest season, laid down their cane knives to a man. And even more astonishingly, in the face of near absolute intransigence from the planters, the workers of the Sankt Croix Labor Union managed to outlast and outwit their opponents.

The events of 1915 and 1916 on Sankt Croix are of broader historical interest in their own right. But a further wrinkle in the story demands just as much attention: the struggle in the Danish West Indies was conducted with the active and productive collaboration of the labor movement back in Denmark, or at least segments of it. Examples of such coordination between colonial and metropolitan organized labor during the first age of globalization are, sadly enough, exceedingly rare, as the much-celebrated internationalism of the Second International more often than not ended at Europe’s borders. And as historian Jonathon Hyslop has demonstrated, relations in the most extensive of the empires of the Belle Epoque, that of the British, were thoroughly infected with the ideology of “white laborism.” For a brief moment, however, matters in the declining Danish Empire proceeded differently.

The Most Humane Colonial Power

What would come to be known as the Danish West Indies was established in the late seventeenth century and consisted primarily of three large islands: Sankt Thomas, Sankt Croix, and Sankt Jan. Chattel slavery was practiced from early on until emancipation in 1848, although Denmark’s status as a decidedly minor imperial power meant that the nature of the Danish West Indian slave economy differed substantially from its more powerful neighbors in two key respects.

First, because Denmark-Norway had neither the surplus population nor the expertise to settle the colony “properly,” the early settlement was drawn largely from neighboring colonies, principally those of Britain, France, and the Netherlands. This gave the colony a highly cosmopolitan character from the start, with Danish migrants never constituting more than a tiny fraction of the white population. And second, the kingdom’s marginality on the imperial stage meant that Denmark was never able to impose the kind of strict mercantilist policies that had turned its rival’s colonies into virtual mints. The colonial economy was thus unusually integrated with the larger regional economy, and the fortunes of Danish sugar production dependent on externalities; periods of boom and bust tended to track closely with events elsewhere in Europe and the Caribbean.

As Scandinavian exceptionalists are always happy to remind us, Denmark was the first to ban the transatlantic slave trade, in 1803, some four years before Britain. Yet slavery would continue on the islands for more than four decades, until a general uprising resulted in an emancipation decree in 1848. By that time, however, there were clear signs of the problem that afflicted so much of slave plantation agriculture across the New World. As many a Yankee soldier learned in the grand march across the Deep South, planters not only abused their “human capital” but also tended to evince similar disregard for the soil on which their slaves toiled. Thus, in addition to suffering the indignity of paying wages, planters had to confront the reality of steadily declining yields for the remainder of Danish rule.

The newly emancipated plantation workers saw little improvement in their material conditions, and in certain respects, conditions actually worsened. Danish officials succeeded in imposing a draconian system of debt peonage upon their only nominally free subjects; particularly odious was the Labor Code introduced in 1849, which compelled workers to sign annual contracts binding them to the very same plantations they had previously worked as slaves. Three decades of stagnation thus resulted in the previously mentioned uprising, the Fireburn of 1878, in which more than eight hundred acres of sugar-producing land on Sankt Croix were burned and its largest town, Frederiksted, was looted. Eventually put down with the assistance of the US, British, and French navies, the uprising put an end to the Labor Code, significantly increasing mobility within the colony — although, in the interest of maintaining a declining labor force, out-migration would remain strictly limited for years to come.

It is also during this period that the enduring myth of Scandinavian colonial exceptionalism took root. No longer a reliable source of income, continued Danish rule of the West Indies was increasingly justified with resort to the pretense of paternalism. As Lill-Ann Körber has argued, this has manifested in a persistent national self-perception of Denmark as “the most humane colonial power,” as a qualitatively distinct practitioner of “innocent colonialism.” And as Kirstin Thisted has recently demonstrated, this is even more so the case with Greenland, which became unprofitable after the commercialization of the kerosene lamp in the mid-nineteenth century.

The near-universal Danish belief that Denmark’s colonial subjects were intellectually and morally little more than children, incapable of self-government and thus in need of the benevolent guiding hand of their Danish rulers, would ironically come back to haunt them when the plantation workers of Sankt Croix began to assert themselves in 1915.

Enter David Hamilton Jackson

One of the handful of emancipated slaves who managed to escape the plantations was Peter Jackson, who settled in Christiansted in the 1860s and found work as a carpenter; his son Wilford, David Hamilton’s father, was appointed as a schoolteacher in 1882, thus ascending to the small black middle class on the island. On his mother’s side, David Hamilton was descended from free blacks of British Antigua, his grandfather having emigrated to Sankt Croix in 1841, also for a teaching position. Born in 1884, just a few years after the Fireburn, David Hamilton thus grew up in a bilingual family of teachers and true to form began work as a teaching assistant at the age of sixteen. Involved in various local reform movements from 1902 forward, Jackson was known to local authorities as a troublemaker, if not a particularly political one.

His rise to prominence began in December 1914 with the appearance of his first newspaper editorial, “Why is not a Negro-Press established in the Danish West Indies?” The subhead read, tellingly, “The Press, and not the Torch, shall make us free.” It is critical to stress here that Jackson could by no means be described as a militant or radical in this early phase of his development, even if his emergence caused considerable unease among the local white elite. And since the article was intended for publication in Denmark, it also demonstrates Jackson’s apparent early belief that the immiseration of the black masses of Sankt Croix was wholly due to local misrule, and that a direct appeal to the Danish state, or even the monarchy, might bring real change.

With the outbreak of World War I, material conditions on Sankt Croix immediately began to deteriorate, as prices for basic necessities, almost all of which were imported, began to skyrocket. That a similar rise in sugar prices, resulting in ballooning profits for the planters, was not accompanied by wage increases pushed the situation to a breaking point. The first few months of 1915 thus saw Jackson’s tone sharpen considerably, as he issued a series of increasingly devastating attacks on the local administration in the somewhat sympathetic white-owned West End News. Primary among his targets were governor general L. C. Helweg-Larsen, police captain N. C. M. Fuglede, and administrative director H. O. Schmiegelow, the latter responsible for enforcing the labor code reforms instituted after the Fireburn.

But it was not long before the West End News turned on Jackson, banning him from its pages. Deprived of a platform for airing the many legitimate grievances of the black population, Jackson launched a public lecture series on “The Right of Natives” in February. It was during these increasingly well-attended meetings that the idea of raising funds for a journey to the Danish capital was floated. After sufficient collections were taken in, Jackson announced his intention to travel to Copenhagen to present a set of demands for reform to Radikale Venstre Finance Minister Edvard Brandes, whose portfolio included colonial affairs.

Jackson Journeys Abroad

Jackson departed for Denmark on April 20, 1915. But first he made an important stop in New York, where he lectured on conditions in the colony before members of the sizable Danish West Indian expatriate community. Among the audience was his childhood friend Hubert Harrison, known to US historians as the “black Socrates” and the lead organizer of black workers for the Socialist Party of America. Another attendee was Caspar Holstein, soon to be king of the Harlem numbers racket as well as, despite his criminal associations, a generous funder of the Harlem Renaissance and a fierce advocate for his native land after its transfer to the United States in 1917. These initial connections with US African American activist circles would prove to be just as valuable as the links Jackson would soon forge with the labor movement in Denmark.

Arriving in Copenhagen on May 13, Jackson was warmly received by Finance Minister Brandes the very next day, where he presented the list of grievances that had been agreed upon back on Sankt Croix. Once again, the essential modesty of Jackson’s proposals must be emphasized. Instead of demanding genuine political representation for the black population, he asked for an extension of the franchise for elections to the colonial council, a largely advisory body with no real power. Instead of pushing for substantive land reform, he requested that squatters be granted two to four acres of unused land, to be paid for in full after three years. Brandes responded with vague promises, with one critical exception: he granted Jackson permission to establish a newspaper back on Sankt Croix, promising to lift restrictions on the colonial press instituted in 1799. This concession would in the long run, as Inge Evald Hansen has noted, more than make up for the rejection of virtually every other demand.The appearance of a well-educated and articulate black man in the Danish capital would quickly become an object of fascination in the press.

The appearance of a well-educated and articulate black man in the Danish capital would quickly become an object of fascination in the press, with coverage splitting roughly on predictable lines: the social democratic and radical papers generally favorable, those of the conservatives demeaning and racist. His notoriety growing, Jackson was eventually granted an audience with King Christian on June 7. Although little is known of what passed during the brief meeting, there were reports in the colonial press, recently uncovered by the historian Erik Goebel, claiming that the monarch had taken “a great interest in the welfare of the Islands” and that upon his departure the king had shaken Jackson’s hand, hailing him as “the prince of Ethiopia.” The degree to which Jackson was impressed by these gestures, and to which he actually believed in the promises of reform, remains uncertain. What is important is that his interactions with Danish officialdom appear to have occurred well within the bounds of propriety; monarch and minister alike appear to have seen in Jackson something more of the feudal supplicant.

Rather more significant, however, was what took place outside the halls of power. Jackson was greeted in the capital by three remarkable individuals: the social democratic parliamentarian Hans Nielsen, the Southern Jutland activist and fellow schoolteacher Theodor Adler Lund, and a genuine class traitor, Ingeborg Hiort-Lorenzen, daughter of one of Denmark’s most distinguished families. While Lund ensured favorable press coverage, Hiort-Lorenzen’s principal contributions occurred behind the scenes in the form of lobbying and financial support.

But by far the most important was Nielsen, a self-educated former ironworker turned journalist who had been elected to the Folketing in 1909. Nielsen was able to look past the color line, seeing in the miserable conditions described to him by his friend from the colonies something resembling those of his own peasant ancestors, before the grand movement for rural uplift had begun a century before. During Jackson’s two-month stay, Nielsen introduced him to the history of the Danish peasant movement as well as, critically, the strategy and tactics of the contemporary Danish labor movement. While the actual substance of these conversations remains unknown, Nielsen seems to have significantly radicalized Jackson, persuading him that the immense power and intractability of the colonial elite could be met with the power of organized labor.

Nielsen’s other contribution was to arrange party support for a series of open-air lectures, the first of which took place on June 2, marking the very first occasion in which a person of color addressed a Danish audience. As reported in the newspaper Social-Demokraten, no less than two thousand curious Danes attended as Jackson described conditions back home, concluding that if the Danes will not help to address the problems of the colony then they might as well “send a load of dynamite and blow it sky high.”

As important as his lectures were in raising awareness among the Danish public, they were even more critical to raising the initial capital for the newspaper Jackson would soon establish back on Sankt Croix, as ordinary Danes eagerly offered their financial support for the new enterprise. Jackson departed Copenhagen on July 22, again stopping over in New York to reconnect with his allies in the United States, who provided additional capital for the newspaper and helped secure a printing press.

Labor Militancy Flourishes In Sankt Croix

Jackson’s return to Sankt Croix on September 12 was greeted with an outpouring of support from virtually the entire black population. His procession across the island to Christiansted was joined by the great mass of plantation workers as well as two marching bands. Everywhere flew the Dannebrog, the festival concluding with renditions of the Loyalty March and the national song, with Jackson himself leading a hearty ninefold chant of “Long Live King Christian.”

What Jackson actually thought about this curious display of patriotism, cruelly mocked in the Danish press, remains unknown, and yet all of his actions from this point forward suggest that he had lost all hope in help arriving from the Danish state. Immediately the mass meetings were resumed, although now with a very different character. Whereas before Jackson had largely addressed an urban audience, it was now the great mass of plantation workers who turned up, and whereas before he had spoken of relatively modest reform demands, he now began to call for the establishment of a labor union and to raise the possibility of a strike. Behind the scenes, meanwhile, Jackson continued preparations for the newspaper, the Herald, in close collaboration with Social Demokraten back in Copenhagen, which sent an emergency payment in order to ensure delivery of the printing press, which had been impounded by the local authorities. The first official issue of the Herald would be published on November 1 — a date still celebrated in the US Virgin Islands today as Liberty Day, commemorating Jackson and the struggle for press freedom.Nielsen seems to have significantly radicalized Jackson, persuading him that the immense power and intractability of the colonial elite could be met with the power of organized labor. 

Now digitized and readily accessible, the central events of 1915 and 1916 are dramatized within the pages of the Herald. Equally significant, the paper provides a glimpse into the eclectic ideological mix animating the movement Jackson had set in motion. As evident from the paper’s slogan, “Liberty — Equality — Fraternity,” the editors understood themselves to be the inheritors of both the French Revolution and, even more so, the indigenous tradition of anti-colonial resistance manifested in the Haitian Revolution. At the same time, Booker T. Washington’s accommodationism clearly had an influence, as evidenced by the numerous memorials published after his death in November 1915. But more than anything, it was the theory and practice of the militant wing of the Danish social democratic movement that shaped the newspaper’s editorial outlook. This is most evident in the repeated insistence that the myriad of social problems afflicting the black community of Sankt Croix could only be ameliorated by addressing material conditions through collective bargaining.

These developments predictably resulted in a growing panic among the planters. Of particular offense was the mass rally held on the eve of Liberty Day, attended by some seven thousand black Crucians. By all credible accounts, the meeting was entirely peaceful, indeed even joyful — yet the white population, incapable of comprehending the degree of sophistication and organization already present in the movement, saw only the makings of another Fireburn. Already on November 2, the manager of the most notorious plantation on the island, La Grange, sent the following telegram to his boss back in Copenhagen: “Hamilton’s agitation getting dangerous. Strongly recommend ministry send warship two hundred men soon possible. Trouble certain. Consul cabled American warship meanwhile.”

The sender had bypassed official channels, and no reports of pending violence were forthcoming from any source; the ministers concluded that concerns were overblown. What did alarm them was the telegram’s final sentence — that the American consul had already been contacted about sending a warship. Denmark was in the midst of negotiating the sale of the colony to the United States, and an uninvited American military presence on the island threatened to undermine their bargaining position. Two hundred and thirty Danish marines aboard the cruiser Valkyrien accordingly set sail for the West Indies on November 10 — not to put down an uprising but to ensure the Americans didn’t get there first.

But the real reason for the dispatch was kept under wraps, which permitted the colonial elite to continue circulating increasingly hysterical rumors of imminent violence, which were dutifully parroted in the right-wing press back in Denmark. There is good reason to doubt the sincerity of the planters’ claims; in all likelihood, they were less fearful of a bloodbath than of the prospect of the eminently reasonable and entirely just demands of the black population gaining a hearing. Jackson himself understood this sleight of hand all too well. Every provocation from the white press, every rumor of bloodthirsty natives lurking in the shadows, every call for martial law, was met with his sober reminder that no evidence of pending unrest was ever produced. If what you mean by sewing “the seed of discontent,” he noted in an editorial of December 16, is “our efforts to seek for more wages for the people” and “that it is their right to ask” for such, then we are guilty as charged.

The Sankt Croix Strike

Plantation manager Sørensen was correct to observe in his telegram that “trouble” was “certain,” but not of the nature he had foreseen. The Sankt Croix Labor Union, established in November, was growing rapidly and would soon reach four thousand members — some two-thirds of the total plantation labor force. The planters were aware of the mounting threat to the harvest, and efforts to recruit contract replacements in neighboring Barbados were underway. From January 15 onward, daily notices were published in the Herald indicating that the union would resist such efforts. But despite these preparations, the planters remained wholly unprepared for what was to come. They reassured themselves with the delusional belief that Jackson and his multitude of supporters, by virtue of their racial inferiority, were incapable of maintaining the organizational discipline necessary to interrupt the harvest.Whereas before he had spoken of relatively modest reform demands, he now began to call for the establishment of a labor union and to raise the possibility of a strike.

The strike began on January 21, the first day of harvest, and in a truly remarkable show of solidarity and organizational skill all work on the plantations had ceased by January 24. Flatly rejecting the union’s demands and refusing to negotiate, the planters immediately employed their most powerful weapon: from January 25 forward, under heavy police presence, the planters began turning workers and their families out of their company-provided homes. If the authorities had expected trouble, if indeed they had secretly hoped for a reason, they were sorely disappointed. Over the course of the week following some four thousand black Crucians, not only workers but women, children, and the elderly, quietly packed their bags and made for the towns.

In Frederiksted and Christiansted, they were welcomed by the urban workers as well as the small black middle class. Temporary shelter had been prearranged in private homes, in tents, and, thanks to the intervention of another sympathetic Dane, Superintendent of Schools Olaf Rübner-Petersen, in schoolhouses. Here they would remain, under the most difficult conditions and constant police harassment, for more than a month. The strike was dependent on international coordination, with critical strike relief provided by US African American organizations as well as, thanks to the intervention of Hans Nielsen, the Danish Trade Union Federation.

One would expect the planters to have the upper hand in the ensuing standoff, given that the union — although in regular contact with Nielsen, who served as an adviser — was the first of its kind in the colony and had no previous experience of strike actions. But the planters, who should have known better given the intensity of class struggle in their home country, would conduct themselves in a manner that can only be described as a comedy of errors.

In the contest for public sympathy, they were wholly outclassed. Back in December, long before the strike was even called, the editor of the right-wing newspaper Vort Land had published an inflammatory article calling on the authorities to do as South Africa had done during an earlier miners’ strike: deport the leaders and the rabble-rousers and be done with it. This evinces the typical Danish attitude toward their black subjects, that they were inherently incapable of any organized activity on their own and could only be stirred to action by demagoguery. In reality, as Jackson would regularly remind them in the Herald, the militancy of the rank and file significantly exceeded that of the leadership. The workers were dug in and prepared to suffer any measure of deprivation for the cause, right up to the brink of starvation.

And then there was the fact that the editor, Paul Jacobsen, had refused to use the Danish term of respect for black people; for this, he was pilloried in the social democratic and radical press. On the island itself, the mass migration of workers and their families to the towns, which swelled their small populations several times over, proved to be a public relations coup, as the white population was compelled to witness the suffering of the turned-out firsthand. Already on February 5, a letter from a sympathetic merchant, lauding the fortitude of the strikers while decrying the intransigence of the planters, appeared in the Herald. Many more would follow.From January 25 forward, under heavy police presence, the planters began turning workers and their families out of their company-provided homes.

Refusing direct negotiations, wary planters looked on as the cane fields remained uncut. In mid-February, they made one of their more egregious miscalculations, announcing their intention to burn the harvest. This was meant to send the message that they were prepared to forego what would have been the most profitable harvests in many decades; for once the weather had cooperated, and with war in Europe, prices had skyrocketed. But it was clearly a bluff, as no action was forthcoming, and just a week later, after a few small fires had broken out in the parched fields, the planters turned on a dime and blamed the strikers. The once sympathetic West End News, now a virtual propaganda arm of the planters’ association, immediately issued a hysterical call for the imposition of martial law.

Behind the scenes, the planters were finally ready to talk and arranged a meeting with Jackson through the Haitian vice consul. What actually took place at the meeting was fiercely contested in the local press, but Jackson would claim in a February 18 editorial that Karl Lachmann, the owner and operator of the Bethlehem Sugar Refinery, had effectively offered him and his associates a bribe to depart the island for good; barring that, according to Jackson, Lachmann insinuated they would all be killed. Once again, the planters had dramatically underestimated their adversaries; the strikers, already suffering the effects of hunger, had nothing left to lose and were more than prepared to suffer the consequences of a lost crop. Jackson was not only not the obstacle to a settlement but was in fact the planters’ only hope of saving the crop.

At the breaking point, a new round of informal meetings was arranged, with School Superintendent Rübner-Petersen mediating. At long last, facing financial ruin and an increasingly hostile public opinion, the planters capitulated on the January 26, recognizing the Sankt Croix Labor Union and agreeing to a 40 percent wage increase, a nine-hour day and five-day workweek with overtime pay for additional hours, and the return of the household gardening plots taken away after the Fireburn.

The union’s victory was near absolute, and the concessions won were life-altering for the masses of plantation workers. Just as significant was the historical precedent it set: power relations in the colony were fundamentally transformed. Gone forever was the traditional “we decide, you obey” attitude of Danish colonists toward their black subjects. The workers had been severely tested and had outclassed their opponents in every manner. Jackson, who around this time earned from his people the enduring sobriquet of the “Black Moses,” would put it this way: “The people were nothing; they asked to become something; they have shown themselves worthy and are now a power.”

True Labor Internationalism

The Sankt Croix strike of 1916 stands out as an example of what might have been had labor movements in the metropolitan core followed a more internationalist course. Generally, relations between socialist labor organizations in the major imperial powers and their colonial comrades during the belle epoque could hardly be described as warm. While the Second International, at its London Congress of 1896, had adopted a firm resolution condemning colonialism, the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War in 1899 revealed serious fractures, as reflected in the Eduard Bernstein–Belfort Bax debate. By the 1907 Stuttgart Congress, a full-on pro-imperial faction had emerged, one delegation even arguing for the legitimacy of something called “socialist colonial policy”; a proposal to overturn the 1896 resolution was only narrowly defeated

As previously noted, the disease of “white laborism” was generally the rule rather than the exception during the first age of globalization. In the vast British Empire, this is most clearly evident in relations between the British Labour Party and the Trinidadian Workingmen’s Association (TWA). The first labor union founded by non-European workers in the Caribbean, the TWA’s roots stretch all the way back to 1893, when it was established as a colonial arm of the British Workingmen’s Association. While the TWA did at least formally affiliate with Labour in 1906, examples of collaboration between metropole and colony were few and far between. More important, when matters came to a head in the mass Trinidadian rolling strikes of 1919, Labour was nowhere to be found, this despite the fact that workers in Britain itself were everywhere on the march. As one labor historian puts it, matters may have turned out differently if Felix Hercules, the great Trinidadian Pan-Africanist, had upon his return from London in 1919 brought “greetings from socialist workers and messages of support from militant trade unionists in Britain.”The workers were dug in and prepared to suffer any measure of deprivation for the cause, right up to the brink of starvation.

While the precise reasons for this curious historical anomaly remain subject to debate, what happened on Sankt Croix is clearly of a qualitatively different order. Coordination with the Danish labor movement and the US African American movement at every stage of the struggle was critical to the union’s eventual triumph. Whatever credit is due the Danish side belongs almost entirely to the singular figure of Hans Nielsen, who in the pages of the Herald was likened to abolitionist luminaries Thomas Fowell Buxton and Wendell Phillips. While sympathy for the strikers among the Danish working class was broadly distributed, no solidarity strikes or mass demonstrations of support took place in the streets of Copenhagen. Nielsen and a handful of allies acted largely behind the scenes, drumming up support in the press, quietly lobbying public officials, extending financial support to the relief fund, and providing strategic advice.

But this only magnifies the immensity of the achievement of the black masses of Sankt Croix; in the end, it was the courage and the discipline and the steadfastness of the rank and file, together with the masterful leadership of David Hamilton Jackson, that won the day. If ever we are to confront planetary capital, if ever we are to realize the long-dormant dream of a truly international labor internationalism, we will need figures like these two extraordinary men, whose friendship stands out as a model of interracial class solidarity.

This article was originally published by Jacobin; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.\\Email

William Banks

William Banks is a writer, editor, and translator. His latest book, The Great Debate: Nietzsche, Culture and the Scandinavian Welfare Society, is out now from the University of Wisconsin Press.

 

Western Hemisphere: A History of the United States Written by War

Latin America, USA  •  April 12, 2026  •  Éric Toussaint

As the United States and Israel launched, starting on February 28, 2026, a new large-scale military aggression against Iran and Lebanon, while continuing the genocide in Gaza against the Palestinian people and the annexation of the West Bank, it is important to analyze, from a historical perspective, the policy of the United States in the Americas.

The official history of the United States is often presented as the exemplary story of a nation forged by the struggle for freedom and the gradual expansion of democratic rights. However, a critical eye reveals another, less celebrated continuity: war as a fundamental instrument of American power. From colonial campaigns against Native American nations to slavery and racial segregation, through military interventions and coups d’état in Latin America and the Caribbean, the territorial, economic and political expansion of the United States has been deeply linked to organised violence. This article traces this historical trajectory to show that these are not isolated episodes or accidental deviations but a structural logic that has accompanied the formation and influence of the United States from its origins to the present day.

The Crushing of Native American Peoples

The dominant narrative of US history is presented as that of a nation born out of a struggle for freedom, which gradually expanded democratic rights. This interpretation is deeply misleading. The history of the United States is, above all, one of armed conquest by European powers and their colonists, which began well before 1776 at the expense of Native American peoples.

From the 17th century onwards, in the territory that would become the United States, European colonists waged a protracted colonial war against Native American nations. This war was neither peripheral nor defensive: its objectives were the appropriation of land, the destruction of indigenous societies, and the imposition of a colonial order based on racial hierarchies. Massacres of civilians, the destruction of villages, forced displacement, slavery, and treaties imposed by force were the habitual instruments of this conquest.

After independence in 1776, the United States did not break with this logic but transformed it. Colonial violence became state policy, carried out in the name of the Republic. The wars against Native American populations in the 19th century as part of Indian Removal,1 policy of confinement on reservations, and the extermination of entire peoples, prolonged and amplified earlier colonial practices.

Once the internal conquest was largely complete, this approach was extended beyond the country’s borders during the 19th century. The Western Hemisphere, stretching from Greenland and Canada in the north to Chile and Argentina in the south, emerged as a new space for expansion, interference, and domination. The history of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean is characterised by wars, occupations, coups d’état, economic sanctions, and direct or indirect military interventions.

This expansion originates from capitalism’s inherent tendency to develop by broadening its markets and extending its control over the populations it can exploit and the resources it wants to extract. Since the end of the 19th century, characterised by the rise of large monopolistic capitalist companies with increasingly international and global ambitions, this tendency has manifested itself in frequent interventions in formally independent countries, as well as in a new period of colonisation (such as the division of the African continent among the European powers at the Berlin Conference in 1885).

It goes without saying that the capitalist system, from its origins to its consolidation, includes not only the displacement of Native American communities, the enslavement of African peoples, and imperialist interventions- but also the exploitation of the working class in the United States. We mention it here, but it is a dimension of the process that we will not examine in this article.

The Enslavement of People of African Descent and Racial-Segregation Policies

To complete the picture of structural violence that has marked the history of the United States, it is essential to include the enslavement of Africans and their descendants, which began in the colonial era and was institutionalised after independence.

From the 17th century onwards, and especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, millions of Africans were forcibly deported to North America as part of the transatlantic slave trade.

As slaves, they were considered movable property, deprived of freedom, civil rights, and any legal recognition as persons. Their forced labour was one of the economic foundations of the colonies and then the young United States, particularly on the tobacco, cotton, rice, and sugar cane plantations of the South. The conditions of their exploitation were extremely harsh: exhausting days of labour, physical violence, family separations, and a total lack of legal protection against abuse. Slavery was based on a hierarchical racial system that linked skin colour to social status and which justified oppression through pseudo-scientific and religious theories.

Of course, there was a significant anti-slavery movement, composed of different tendencies, from the most moderate and institutional to the most radical and insurrectionary, represented by figures such as John Brown. Together with the resistance of the slaves, the anti-slavery movement continually raised the issue of slavery as a central and unavoidable theme in US politics.

The American Civil War (1861-1865) was mainly between the slave-owning states of the South and the states of the North. It led to the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865, which officially abolished slavery. However, this abolition did not end discrimination and violence. During the period known as Reconstruction (1865-1877), legal progress was made, notably with the 14th and 15th Amendments, which guaranteed citizenship and voting rights to Black men. Similarly, during the occupation of the former slave-owning South by federal troops, measures were taken to protect freedmen from abuse by moneylenders and former masters, their right to vote was protected, Black officials were elected, and universities were established to accommodate the formerly enslaved Black population. The classic work by African-American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, traces the history of this period. But these gains were quickly undermined when the capitalist class in the North abandoned these radical policies and accommodated the rise of white supremacist groups in the South, leading to the consolidation of power by the former white ruling classes in the South and the enactment of the so-called “Jim Crow” laws, which enforced racial segregation and discrimination, at the end of the 19th century.

These segregationist laws established strict racial segregation in schools, transport, public places and housing. They were upheld in 1896 by the Supreme Court’s “separate but equal” ruling. In reality, services and infrastructure for African Americans were systematically inferior. Added to this was political exclusion through literacy tests and poll taxes, as well as a climate of terror marked by lynchings and racial violence.

This system of legal segregation persisted until the 1950s and 1960s. The civil rights movement, spearheaded by various prominent figures and organisations, led to significant reforms: the 1954 ruling declaring school segregation unconstitutional, followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination and safeguarded the right to vote. Despite these legal advances, the inequalities inherited from slavery and segregation continue to have lasting effects on the economic, social, and territorial levels.

Thus, the history of the United States is marked not only by dispossession and violence against Native American peoples but also by slavery and segregation of African Americans – two distinct systems of oppression, both of which had a formative influence on the country’s development.

The Monroe Doctrine

In 1823, the United States government adopted the Monroe Doctrine, named after Republican President James Monroe. This doctrine condemned any European intervention in the affairs of “the Americas.” However, in practice, it masked an increasingly aggressive policy of territorial expansion by the United States, detrimental to the newly independent Latin American states. This expansion began with the annexation of significant portions of Mexico during the 1840s, including Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. American troops occupied Mexico City in September 1847 and also seized the strategic port of Veracruz in the same year.

Following the conquest of much of Mexico, the Mexican population and their descendants in the annexed territories joined the other segments of the American population who experienced various forms of displacement, exclusion, and denial of rights in the American social and political system.

In 1898, the United States declared war on Spain and, through various means, seized four of its colonies: Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam.

Notably, in 1902, in a departure from the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, Washington failed to defend Venezuela when it faced armed aggression by Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and the Netherlands in order to force it to pay its debts. Subsequently, the United States intervened diplomatically to ensure that Caracas resumed payment of the debt. Washington’s attitude sparked considerable controversy among various Latin American governments, and in particular, with the Argentine foreign minister, Luis M. Drago, who stated:

“The principle I would like to see recognised is that public debt cannot give rise to armed intervention, let alone the physical occupation of the territory of American nations by a European power.”

This later became known as the Drago Doctrine. The debates between governments led to an international conference in The Hague, which resulted, among other things, in the adoption of the Drago-Porter Convention (named after Horace Porter, an American military officer and diplomat) in 1907. This convention stipulated that arbitration should be the first means of resolving conflicts: any State party to the convention had to agree to submit to arbitration proceedings and participate in them in good faith, failing which the State claiming repayment of its debt would regain the right to use armed force to achieve its objectives. Washington repeatedly violated this convention.

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt supported and encouraged the secession from Colombia and independence of Panama. His goal was to be able to build and operate the Panama Canal under Washington’s control.

In 1904, the same president announced that the United States considered itself the policeman of America. He stated what is known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine:

“Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.”

In 1915, the United States invaded Haiti under the pretext of recovering debts and occupied the country until 1934. Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano wrote:

“The United States occupied Haiti for twenty years and, in this black country that had been the scene of the first successful slave revolt, they introduced racial segregation and forced labour, killing 1,500 workers in one of their repressive operations (according to a 1922 US Senate investigation) and, when the local government refused to turn the National Bank into a branch of the National City Bank of New York, they suspended the payment of allowances that were usually paid to the president and his ministers to force them to reconsider.”2

Other US military interventions took place during the same period: the dispatch of occupation troops to Nicaragua in 1909 and between 1912 and 1933; the occupation of the port of Veracruz in Mexico in 1914 during the revolution; the occupation of the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924; the expedition to northern Mexico against the revolution and, in particular, against Pancho Villa’s troops. This list is not exhaustive.

It should be remembered that, in several cases, US interventions have been the prelude to the establishment of long-lasting and bloody dictatorships after the withdrawal of American troops. This was the case in the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua: the dictatorships of Somoza and Trujillo were led by figures who had risen through the ranks as officers in military corps created and trained by the American occupation.

The United States and the Debt Issue

This brief summary of US intervention and policy in America in the 19th and early 20th centuries helps to understand Washington’s real motivations for rejecting the debts claimed from Cuba in 1898. After defeating the Spanish imperial army off the coast of Santiago de Cuba in June 1898, the United States refused to take on the debts that the creditors of the Spanish colony were claiming from Cuba. Washington declared this odious debt null and void, citing its use to maintain colonial rule against the Cubans’ aspirations for independence. Washington used this argument in a perfectly opportunistic manner, as the United States wanted to dominate the island de facto without having to assume payment of the debt.

They did the same after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Regarding the cancellation of Costa Rica’s debt to a major British bank after the First World War, the United States again defended Costa Rica opportunistically, aiming to weaken the influence of Britain – still the world’s leading imperialist power at that time – in the Western Hemisphere. It was in the United States’ best interest to appear as the protector of Costa Rica under the Monroe Doctrine, which was the U.S. policy that opposes European colonialism in the Americas.

The Testimony of Major General Smedley D. Butler

In 1935, Major General Smedley D. Butler – who took part in many US expeditions in the Americas – writing during his retirement, described Washington’s policies as follows:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.”3

It should be noted that by the time he wrote this, Butler had become a fervent critic of the US military interventions and policies in which he had previously participated.

Direct US military interventions in the Western Hemisphere from the end of World War II to 2026

Since 1945, the United States has carried out a series of military interventions in the Western Hemisphere, alternating between clandestine operations, proxy wars and conventional invasions. I will only discuss the most well-known direct armed interventions here.

The first major post-war operation took place in Guatemala in 1954. The Eisenhower administration orchestrated, through the CIA, the overthrow of President Jacobo Árbenz (Operation PBSUCCESS). This effort did not involve a massive landing of American troops: the generals’ coup against the constitutional president benefited from the intervention of several hundred fighters trained and armed by the CIA, supported by psychological warfare and logistical support. The aim was to prevent the continuation of agrarian reform and the nationalisation of American companies in the agro-industrial sector.

In 1961, attention turned to Cuba. The Bay of Pigs operation, designed to overthrow the revolutionary government, mobilised some 1,400 Cuban exiles (Brigade 2506), trained and equipped by Washington. Although the United States entirely planned and supported the operation, no regular American division officially fought on the ground. The failure was swift and costly in political terms. The Cuban people mobilised to defend the revolutionary process.

The qualitative leap occurred in 1965 in the Dominican Republic. Juan Bosch, a progressive intellectual, was the first democratically elected president after the fall of the dictator Trujillo. Seven months after his inauguration, he was overthrown by a military coup supported by the conservative elite, who accused him of being “too left-wing” or pro-Communist. Faced with resistance to the coup, Washington launched Operation Power Pack. Some 22,000 American soldiers were deployed (more than 40,000 would serve on the island during the operation). American losses amounted to several dozen. On the Dominican side, generally accepted estimates put the death toll at between 2,000 and 4,000, including both civilians and combatants.

In the 1980s, a more indirect strategy was implemented in Nicaragua. The Reagan administration did not carry out a conventional invasion but instead supported, financed, and trained the “Contras” against the Sandinista government. This campaign was a proxy war: without a massive deployment of American troops but with advisers, clandestine supervision, and significant structured logistical support. Not to mention the laying of underwater mines in Nicaragua’s main ports (Corinto, Puerto Sandino, and El Bluff) between late 1983 and early 1984. The CIA directly supervised the operation. Following a complaint filed by Nicaragua, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a famous ruling severely condemning the United States for the unlawful use of force. The court found that the mining of ports and attacks on oil installations constituted a violation of the obligation not to use force against another state. As the proceedings progressed, the United States withdrew its recognition of the ICJ’s compulsory jurisdiction. Washington then used its veto power in the UN Security Council to block enforcement of the ruling (which required payment of compensation estimated at several billion dollars). Nevertheless, this ICJ ruling remains the fundamental reference in international law for the prohibition of the use of force and the principle of non-intervention.

In El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the CIA and American military experts systematically intervened during this period to support repressive anti-communist regimes.

In 1983, the United States invaded Grenada (Operation Urgent Fury). Some 7,000 American soldiers landed to overthrow a severely weakened left-wing government after one of its factions deposed and executed Maurice Bishop and other leaders of the New Jewel Movement, which was a political organization in Grenada advocating for socialist policies. The Grenadian government had only an army of about 1,000 combatants. The operation was brief and marked the return of direct and open military intervention.

In December 1989, the intervention in Panama was the most massive since the one in the Dominican Republic. Operation Just Cause mobilised some 27,000 American troops to overthrow General Manuel Noriega and, above all, secure control of the Panama Canal. American casualties numbered in the dozens. The number of Panamanian casualties remains controversial: estimates vary between 500 and 3,000 deaths, including both military and civilian personnel, with fighting concentrated in the urban districts of Panama City, particularly El Chorrillo.

In 1994, Washington intervened in Haiti (Operation Uphold Democracy). Nearly 25,000 American soldiers were deployed.

As for the military aggression against Venezuela on 3 January 2026, approximately 150 aircraft took part in the offensive. Among them were F-35A stealth fighters (from the former Roosevelt Roads naval base in Puerto Rico) deployed to destroy S-300 anti-aircraft batteries and radars, as well as a dozen transport and attack helicopters from the 160th SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment). The raid was carried out by elite Delta Force units, transported by helicopter directly to the Miraflores presidential complex and Fort Tiuna. It is estimated that several hundred commandos took part in the direct assault, while thousands of marines remained on alert on the ships. In addition to the presidential complex, the attacks destroyed research centres, medical supply warehouses in La Guaira, and communication antennas in order to paralyse the Venezuelan command. At sea, the amphibious assault group of USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7) served as the logistical centre for the operation. It was supported by a fleet of destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford. President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured at their residence, immediately transferred by force to New York via the Guantánamo military base, and detained in a Brooklyn prison pending a trial scheduled to begin in 2027. The US intervention resulted in the deaths of more than 80 Venezuelan and Cuban fighters who were attempting to protect the presidential couple.

In this list, which is not exhaustive, I have only included attacks in which a significant number of American military personnel, or mercenaries trained and directed by them, were used. A large number of coups d’état carried out in the Western Hemisphere at the request and/or with the support of the United States should be added, including the following:

• Colombia (1953): coup d’état by Gustavo Rojas Pinilla.
• Brazil (1964): military coup against João Goulart with logistical support from Operation Brother Sam.
• Bolivia (1964): overthrow of Víctor Paz Estenssoro by General René Barrientos.
• Bolivia (1971): coup d’état by General Hugo Banzer against Juan José Torres.
• Chile (1973): overthrow (and death) of Salvador Allende by General Augusto Pinochet (with CIA support and economic pressure).
• Uruguay (1973): “civil-military coup d’état”.
• Argentina (1976): overthrow of Isabel Perón by a military junta led by Jorge Rafael Videla.
• Venezuela (2002): attempted coup against Hugo Chávez (with immediate diplomatic support from the United States, but the coup failed in less than two days).
• Haiti (2004): forced departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide (accusations of abduction by US forces during an insurrection).
• Honduras (2009): overthrow of Manuel Zelaya (controversial diplomatic recognition of the interim government).
• Bolivia (2019): forced resignation of Evo Morales

• Venezuela (2019): Washington recognizes Juan Guaidó as president and Trump calls on the Venezuelan military to overthrow President Maduro

The list is also far from exhaustive.

Since 1945, US interventions in the Western Hemisphere have encompassed a range of actions, from clandestine operations to proxy wars and conventional invasions. These deployments have varied significantly, from a few hundred men in Guatemala to over 27,000 soldiers in Panama. The human consequences of these interventions have been profound for the nations involved, particularly in the Dominican Republic and Panama.

Conclusion: Imperial Continuity, from land conquest to hemispheric domination

A historical examination of the wars waged on the territory of the United States and in the Western Hemisphere reveals a fundamental continuity. Violence is not an anomaly in American history: it is its matrix. From the destruction of Native American nations to ongoing interference in Latin America and the Caribbean, the same logic has been repeated over the centuries.

Indigenous peoples were the first victims of this trajectory: dispossessed of their lands, decimated by war, relegated to reserves, deprived of their sovereignty. This internal war, waged in the name of progress and civilisation, provided the ideological and military framework for subsequent interventions. The closure of the “frontier” did not end expansion: it merely displaced it.

Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the United States has projected this logic throughout the Western Hemisphere under successive pretexts: the fight against communism, the defence of democracy, the war on terrorism. The methods have evolved, but the objectives have remained the same: to control territories, resources and political decisions of peoples.

Recognising this continuity is not an ideological exercise but a political and historical necessity. It allows us to understand that the interventions taking place today are not breaks with the past but the continuation of a long process. As long as this history remains hidden or minimised, the violence it engenders can continue to be presented as necessary or legitimate.

This article, on the contrary, endeavours to put names on facts, to give a voice back to the dominated peoples, and to recall an obvious truth that is too often obscured: American power was built and is still maintained through war and other forms of violence. •

This article first published on the CADTM website.

Endnotes

1. Indian Removal refers to the policy of forcibly displacing Native American peoples implemented by the United States government in the 19th century. It was officially implemented with the Indian Removal Act, enacted in 1830 under President Andrew Jackson. This law authorised the federal government to negotiate – often under duress – the exchange of lands occupied by Native American nations east of the Mississippi River for territories further west, in what would become Oklahoma. In practice, this policy resulted in massive and violent expulsions, which left thousands dead, particularly during the “Trail of Tears,” which affected the Cherokee in particular. In the sentence “The wars against Native American populations in the 19th century as part of Indian Removal…,” the expression therefore refers to all the conflicts, political pressures and forced displacements through which the United States expanded its territory westward at the expense of indigenous nations.
2. Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, London, Serpent’s Tail, 2009, ISBN-10: ‎184668742X.
3. Published in Common Sense, November 1935. See Leo Huberman, Man’s Worldly Goods. The Story of the Wealth of Nations, New York, 1936. This translation of the quotation comes from Eduardo Galeano, op. cit. It should be noted that a US military base in Okinawa is named after military leader Smedley D. Butler. His testimony inevitably recalls that of John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and Other Unmaskings of Global Power. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2004. ISBN 978-1576753019. Spanish version: Confesiones de un gángster económico: la cara oculta del imperialismo americano. Barcelona: Books4Pocket, 2009. ISBN 978-84-92801-05-3. French edition: Les confessions d’un assassin financier: révélations sur la manipulation des économies du monde par les États-Unis. Outremont (Quebec): Al Terre, 2005. ISBN 978-2896260010.

Éric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist. He is the President of Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM) Belgium.