The U.S. today has come a long way from the young nation of the 18th century. The U.S. achievements and advances in the field of military and scientific technology have very few rivals today. In 1980s with reforms within Gorbachev’s USSR, relations improved between Russia and the U.S. and several agreements were made for mutual disarmament. Today the U.S.S.R no longer exists. The threat of communism in western Europe has disappeared. And the U.S. enjoys sole hegemony over World affairs.

The two significant events of the 1990s were the final break up of the Soviet Union and the Gulf War. While the Soviet union has broken up into small states, the Gulf Crisis between US and Iraq fester even today. In 1991, the US bombed Iraq after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Mr. George Bush, the then President of the US, declared a one-sided war which ended in the victory of the US. As Noam Chomsky aptly puts it in his book: Deterring Democracy - "Gulf War" - misnamed, because there never was a war, at least, if the concept involves two sides in Combat. That didn’t happen in the Gulf." According to the author, it wasn’t war but slaughter. As one US Army official revealed later: "The ground attack began with plows mounted on tanks and earthmovers to bulldoze live Iraqi soldiers into trenches in the desert ..." This was a secret revealed by US Army officials later. But the air raids on Iraqi civilians, killing many innocent people, is not a secret at all. Anyone who has read about the Gulf Crisis would be aware that a US economic embargo on Iraq still continues, causing a severe scarcity of essential items, like food and medicine.

Through the victory on Iraq, the US had declared to the world her military might. Besides her military prowess, today the US has become a major center for higher learning. She boasts of the best Universities where students from all over the world converge to gain degrees. This is because of the importance given to research. The US has also gained spectacular achievements in the field of Aeronautics. NASA has sent several spaceships to study the structure of planets like Mars, and more recently, Jupiter.

Today, with the U.S. media barons’ control over telecommunications, a Pan-Americanization of culture, tastes, music etc. can be seen throughout the world. Everything from the clothes one wears to the soap operas one watches on TV and the Pop idols one worships, it is all "Born in the U.S.A" as the Pop star Bruce Springstein put it.

While the U.S. today enjoys sole hegemony over the world, there are a few things one needs to ponder upon. The U.S. military might has sometimes been reduced to blatant invasions and bullying by U.S. troops in Latin America. This is something the U.S. will have to take responsibility for. To quote Noam Chomsky again from his classic work - ’Deterring Democracy’: "A decade ago there were glimmerings of hope for constructive change. In Guatemala, peasants and workers were organizing to challenge one of the most primitive oligarchies on the face of the earth. In El Salvador, church-based self-help groups, Unions, peasant associations and other popular organizations were offering a way for general population to escape grinding poverty and regression and to begin to take some control of their lives and fate. In Nicaragua, the tyranny that had served as the base for U.S. power in the region for decades was overthrown in 1979, leaving the country in ruins, the economy devastated. But the National Guard (the army) was driven out and new popular forces were mobilized...But the Reagan administration and its liberal Democrat and media accomplices can take credit for having reduced these hopes to ashes. This a rare accomplishment for which history will assign them their proper place, if there is even an honest accounting."

The public protests at home against the blatant US aggression has always arisen time and again. And it is this public opinion in the Universities and other institutions which rallied to help the victims of these Pentagon sponsored aggression. This writer would like to salute such men and women of America who have really shaped the destiny of their country right from her birth.