The Alliance of Throne and Altar
Channel: misesmedia
Date: 2022-11-21

“War is a racket,” Smedley Butler wrote in 1935. “It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

Smedley Butler spent thirty-three years in the marines, attaining the rank of major general. By the time of his death, he was the most decorated marine in history. 

Yet Butler became one of America’s most vocal anti-imperialists. He spent much of his career in Latin America, where his experiences left him convinced that war served the interests of corporations, while soldiers and taxpayers shouldered the costs. 

To understand US intervention in Latin America, we first have to look at how America’s foreign policy shifted after the Spanish-American War. 

Faced with the decision of what to do with Cuba, the US granted Cuba limited autonomy on the condition America would be able to “intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence.” In 1904, President Teddy Roosevelt extended this policy to all Latin American countries. In other words, under the guise of protecting Latin America’s independence, the US government claimed the right to military intervention in the region. 

Roosevelt announced his policy in 1904, retroactively justifying military actions already underway. A year earlier, the military had ordered Smedley Butler to Honduras to quell civil unrest. This began his participation in the Latin American conflicts known as the banana wars.

In 1899, American businessman Minor Keith established the United Fruit Company, which survives today as Chiquita. Keith wanted to expand his banana export business, as bananas had proven immensely popular in the US after their introduction in 1870.

In exchange for land, United Fruit partnered with Central American governments to build infrastructure, but the company quickly faced competition from other American exporters, such as Cuyamel and Standard Fruit. The companies backed rival politicians, exacerbating domestic unrest in the countries they operated in, which became known as banana republics.

This is the context behind Butler’s statement that he “helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.” Witnessing the military protect corporate interests, Butler blamed capitalism, but he was actually railing against corporatism. 

Under capitalism, both profits and losses are privatized, but corporatism socializes losses. Butler acknowledged that taxpayers and soldiers bore the costs of the wars that corporations profited from. 

This public-private partnership is similar to the medieval alliance of throne and altar, in which the pope anointed monarchs, legitimizing their rule, and monarchs protected the Catholic Church’s religious monopoly. Today, many politicians similarly support corporate privileges in exchange for political support, which can include military intervention that benefits multinational companies. 

But wars also depend on popular support, and in World War I, President Woodrow Wilson would create the first federal agency to create and distribute wartime propaganda.

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Want to learn more?

For more animated content, check out Economics for Beginners at https://BeginEconomics.org.

Check out the latest Mises Wire articles on foreign policy and war: https://mises.org/topics/war-and-foreign-policy

Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard is a great mini-book on the true nature of the state: https://mises.org/anatomy

The Betrayal of the American Right by Murray Rothbard focuses on the history of the modern conservative movement, and the role it played in aggressively escalating America's foreign policy in the 20th century: https://mises.org/betrayal

Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy by Murray Rothbard is a fiery monograph that employs "power elite" analysis to understand the relationship between money, power, and war: https://mises.org/library/wall-street-banks-and-american-foreign-policy-0

A Century of War: Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt by John V. Denson is an extensive look at how the twentieth century became the bloodiest in all history: https://mises.org/library/century-war-lincoln-wilson-and-roosevelt-0

A Foreign Policy of Freedom by Ron Paul offers a positive view for an American foreign policy would look like if it stayed true to its founding principles: https://mises.org/library/foreign-policy-freedom