Three books to understand the American way of world dominion

The pursuit of world dominion has been at the core of American identity for a long time.

But how long?

The United States emerged as a superpower after World War II. Today, the U.S. has around 750 military bases across approximately 80 foreign countries and territories.

Many think the Cold War is when Washington began engaging in proxy wars, regime changes, and covert operations. But the groundwork had begun as early as 1823.

At a time when many Latin American nations had just gained independence from European colonial powers like Spain and Portugal, U.S. President James Monroe came out with a foreign policy statement that basically said: “Hey, European countries, don’t come over here trying to colonise or interfere in the North, South, or Central Americas. If you do, the U.S. will see it as a threat to our peace and safety.”

The Monroe Doctrine was a way to declare, “This is our neighbourhood now”.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the US used the same Doctrine as a justification for interfering in the governance of Latin American countries.

For example, the U.S. backed Panama’s independence from Colombia in 1903 just so it could build and control the Panama Canal, a key trade route.

This pattern was not limited to its own continent.

After chasing Spain out of the Philippines, the U.S. annexed the Asian island nation, sparking a brutal war to suppress the independence movement. Post WWII, the U.S. stationed troops across Europe in the name of countering the Soviet Union.

How does one nation consistently pursue and often succeed in its global agenda?

These books will tell you about the systems that make it possible.

Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins

John Perkins was once an insider. He worked as chief economist at Chas. T. Main Inc. — a major international consulting firm in the 1970s.

His job was to convince developing nations to accept massive loans for infrastructure projects.

The catch — these projects benefited American corporations.

The bigger catch — these countries could never repay the loans.

The author later had a moral reckoning and decided to expose the system.

‘Confessions of an Economic Hitman’ is a fast-paced non-fiction thriller because the author is not an outsider theorising. The book is like a memoir meeting journalistic investigation. It unpacks how global economic manipulation works behind closed doors.

It is about balance sheets, project proposals, and contracts cloaked in diplomacy.

The job of an EHM (economic hitmen) is to convince or coerce foreign leaders into signing deals that saddle their countries with debt to ensure long-term dependence on American interests.

Perkins gives real-life examples of countries like Ecuador, Indonesia, and Panama. The hitmen opened the economies of these nations to American corporations via the process of inflating economic forecasts and trapping them in debt.

When leaders resist, these projects become pipelines for CIA-backed coups.

Perkins doesn’t write like an economist but a man trying to unload a burden of guilt. He is jaw-droppingly blunt and shows you the framework of how America uses economics as a stealth weapon for global control.

Bitter Fruit by Schlesinger & Kinzer

‘Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala’ is a blend of journalistic exposé and historical analysis.

The book is about the US-engineered 1954 coup in Guatemala that overthrew its democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, to protect corporate interests.

The corporation in question is the United Fruit Company (UFC), now known as Chiquita.

It was a powerful U.S. corporation that owned massive banana plantations across Central America, including over 550,000 acres in Guatemala. It controlled railroads, ports, and communications infrastructure. Basically, it operated like a state within a state.

In 1950, Árbenz was chosen by the people to lead the country. His major goal was to reclaim Guatemala’s sovereignty from foreign control and uplift poor rural communities.

Two years later, he introduced a land reform law to redistribute unused farmland from landowners to landless farmers. UFC was one of those landowners.

Árbenz offered compensation for the land to the owners. But there was a kicker.

The compensation was based on what UFC declared as the land’s value for tax purposes. This was far below the real market value. UFC could not fight the price without admitting that they lied about the value of the land to pay lower taxes. They would be confessing to tax fraud.

However, UFC lost its mind over the precedent of a country standing up to the interests of an American corporation.

So the big fruit company mobilised its friends in Washington. The public relations campaign that followed painted Árbenz as a communist threat. The U.S. government approved the CIA’s Operation PBSUCCESS to topple Árbenz.

In 1954, Árbenz resigned.

The U.S. installed a military dictatorship friendly to its interests.

Since then, this small country has descended into civil war.

‘Bitter Fruit’ is not just about Guatemala. It is about how a Central American nation became a testing ground for a playbook America later used across the globe.

Unholy Trinity by Richard Peet

Written by an academic who is a credible voice in economic geography, ‘Unholy Trinity’ is an economic critique blending historical analysis with academic theory.

‘Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank, and WTO’ examines the impact these international financial entities had on global economic policies.

Richard Peet argues that these institutions strayed far from their original missions.

They were originally created after World War II to help rebuild war-torn economies, prevent another global depression, and promote international trade.

The mission was to help countries grow, keep things fair, and support economic stability for every country.

Over time, they began to push one economic model — neoliberalism.

It said that the government should stay out of the economy as much as possible; public services should be sold to private companies; trade and investment should be fully open to global markets; and everything should be shaped by competition and profit.

This is a model that largely benefits rich nations and multinational corporations.

In a global competition, they have more power and resources to win. Poorer nations end up giving up control in order to get loans and trade deals. They are forced to cut spending on education and healthcare, or even jobs.

Countries like Zambia, Ghana, and Bolivia had to adopt Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) in exchange for loans from the IMF and World Bank. They had to compromise subsidies on food and fuel. They even had to privatise public utilities like electricity, water, and telecom.

In fact, in 2025, the IMF is asking Sri Lanka and Pakistan to take these exact steps if they want loans.

In 1997, during the Asian Financial Crisis, when countries like Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea faced currency crashes and financial panic, the IMF stepped in with bailouts but pushed them to sell off national industries to foreign investors.

As a result, foreign corporations scooped up local companies at bargain prices.

This also led to mass layoffs and protests in the region.

Peet is saying the IMF, World Bank, and WTO are no longer working for the good of regular people in developing and underdeveloped nations.

Their shift to serving the interests of the rich made inequality worse and made the economy more unstable.