Human motives are impossible to observe in any empirical way. We can view behavior and listen to utterances, but we cannot directly observe the actual intent that is attributed to such things. No one has ever seen a motive as such. Intent can only be inferred or imputed. While people profess all sorts of intentions, they also are capable of outrageous deception, including self-deception. How then can we determine, or dare presume, what might be their actual motives?
The problem becomes crucial when dealing with political leaders, many of whom make it difficult to divine the intentions behind their actions. Some of us maintain that the overriding purpose of global interventionism is to promote the interests of transnational corporations and make the world safe for global free-market capitalism and imperialism. As noted earlier, imperialism is what empires do. It is the process whereby the rulers of one country use economic and military power to expropriate the land, labor, markets, and natural resources of less powerful countries on behalf of wealthy interests at home and abroad.
Washington policymakers are the last to admit that they engage in such a process. They claim that their interventions abroad are propelled by an intent to defend our national security or other unspecified “US interests,” or the intent is to fight terrorism, protect human rights, oppose tyranny, prevent genocide, bring democracy to other peoples, maintain peace and stability in various regions, and protect weaker nations from aggressors.
Are we to accept these noble claims at face value? If not, how can we demonstrate that they are often false and that the motive we critics ascribe is the real agenda? How can we determine intent if intent is not readily susceptible to direct observation and policymakers can make claim to almost any noble motivation? How can we determine that interventionism is engendered by imperialist concerns rather than, say, humanitarian and democratic ones?
First of all, we can look for patterns of intervention. Are there any consistencies in US overseas intercessions? If so, what kinds of governments and political movements do US leaders support? What kinds do they oppose and wish to subject to régime change? And what political-economic goals do they pursue when intervening? Rather than characterizing US policy as befuddled and contradictory, we observe that it is remarkably consistent in services rendered on behalf of transnational economic domination. Other policy considerations do come into play during times of intervention, but there is no reason to treat them as mutually exclusive of global business interests, and no reason to ignore the latter.