By Vivek Pattanayak in Bhubaneswar, November 16, 2024: When we hear the cacophony of words Make America Great Again (MAGA), one asks the question what is the meaning of the words “great” and also “again.”Although we heard this when the election campaign was going on between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump almost eight years ago this was also heard in the early eighties of the last century when Reagan was seeking presidency against the incumbent Carter.

Was America great from the beginning? When did it decline so that a need has arisen to make it “great again”?

If one goes back to 1776 when the nation of America was born it was a shattering event of history as the British Empire experienced for the first time a traumatic dismemberment of the empire when it lost almost half of a continent, a big part of its colony. America as a country emerged as a prosperous territorial national entity partly because the technologically advanced Europeans decimated the indigenous people in several battles and encounters over a prolonged period including mass killing of the buffalos depriving them from their source of food and spreadingof smallpox by circulating infected blankets among the Indigenous people.

Thereafter, they took charge of natural resources like untouched forests, huge virgin landmass, unexploited mineral resources and vast quantities of water generated through the perennial river system, lakes, and cornucopia of marine assets on the Atlantic and Pacific side. For this exploitation they were greatly aided and supported through back breaking slave labor coming from Africa.Those who have seen the movie “Roots” would recognize the pathos. Black men were simply captured as animals transported to America. All the prosperity of the new continent was enjoyed by white Europeans while the indigenous people consisting of Mohawk, Cree, Inuit etc. known as Red Indians wereignominiously relegated to the reservations.

Until the arrival of Abraham Lincoln, an angel, the Black slaves lived a subhuman life. Will anyone call America as “great”?

When the European nations participated in the First World War, the United States of America joined the United Kingdom, France and Italy and others to fight against Germany, Austria, and Turkey. This war lasted for many yearsand took heavy toll of lives as machine guns, tanks and airplanes were used for the firsttime as fighting engines to pursue the war effort as many young soldiers died in the trench warfare. The victorious side led by US imposed an unjust treaty containing provision for heavy reparationsand the arrangement which truncated the territories and dismembered the empires of the vanquished powers, thereby planting seeds of another world war in twenty years.

Only spectacular and historic development took place when Woodrow Wilson, a far-sighted President of the United States, took path-breaking steps by establishing the League of Nations, an international institution for global peace, first of its kind. The worst misfortune was when America did not join the League, as the US Senate did not ratify the Covenant of the League, to the greatest frustration of Widrow Wilson.

This event of history sadly demonstrated how “great” was America as many historians ascribe to the absence of the United States in the League to itsabject failure, and rise of Germany under Hitler, Italy under Mussolini, and Japan under Tojo which brought the Second World War. End of this long-drawn war spreading from Europe to Africa to Asia came with use of devastating atom bombs on two cities of Japan.Many hold the view use of such nuclear bombs onthe innocent civilian population was unnecessary, infact inhumanas Japan had practically been exhausted except for few Kamikaze attacks. Can this be termed as “great”?

Within ten years the United States was involved in another war in Korea under the umbrella of the United Nations ending with no conclusion towards peace. Even till today the peninsula remains a flashpoint of possible conflagration. Soon after this war, America was involved in yet another long-drawnhostility in Vietnam with incessant bombing on North Vietnam includinguse of napalm bomb killing innocent people. Such was the global outrage; a pacifist and philosopher Bertrand Russel established a war tribunal to try the American leaders. That war ended in anunmitigated ignoble disaster for the USA as it lost more soldiers than it had lost in the Second World War apart from dividing the country, young students agitating against cruel war across America. Could these wars make America “great”?

Needless to mention about its involvement in the Congolese civil wars including its role in the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Belgian Congo,now known as Zaire after its independence.

After the Islamic revolution in Iran when the US embassy remained under seize for four hundred forty four (444) days the prestige of the United States as a global power was at its nadir when they failed miserably to rescue the hostages in an Entebbe style rescue effort which Israel had successfully conducted against the militant Palestinians.That is the time, when we heard from Reagan seeking Presidency the words “Make America Great Again”.

First success of US led coalition was seen after decades in the Gulf War when Saddam Hussein was ejected from Kuwait after his lightening take over in 1991 when both the Soviet Union and China passively remained neutral.

With the demise of the Soviet Union and dissolution of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe, after many years the paeans of glory were heard in America. Its success in the Balkans with dissolution of Yugoslavia when USSR had disappeared from the map of the globe thanks to disastrous perestroika and glasnost of Gorbachev, made it the only superpower of the world.Sadly, its supremacy was short lived when 9/11 exposed its weakness reflecting that a non-state actor could create havoc in its own home territory.

The might of US military along with other NATO powers was dedicated against Taliban another lawless non-state actor for twenty years with expenditure of billions of dollars.The memory is afresh when the world saw most despicable and disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan reminiscent of the last says in Vietnam. Did it make America “great”?

India in last seventy five years has experienced how US consistently gave support to an undemocratic Pakistan ruled by military dictators for decades, with Patton Tanks and Sabre jets in every war it fought against secular and democratic India, the most unabashed being in 1971 during the Bangladesh War by deploying the Seventh fleet in the Bay of Bengal during the closing days of the undivided Pakistan. Did this make America “great”?