American imperialism

This article is about a view of the historical expansionism and current international influence of the United States. For other uses, please see American Empire (disambiguation).

American Empire or American imperialism are politically charged terms sometimes used to describe the historical expansionism and the current political, economic, and cultural influence of the United States on a global scale. These terms are generally, though by no means always, used with a negative connotation. The debate over the concept of an American Empire usually involves three basic questions:

Is the United States currently an empire?
If the United States is an empire, when did it become one?
If the United States is an empire, is that good or bad?

Proponents of the idea that the United States is an empire point to the unrivaled superpower status of the United States since the end of the Cold War. Some believe that the westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century was the begining of an American empire, and that subsequent overseas expansion and foreign intervention (military and non-military) are part of a legacy of American imperialism.

Opponents of the terms generally believe that, while the United States flirted with the possibility of an American Empire at the time of the Spanish-American War, America has since rejected the role of empire, and to equate the superpower status of the United States with empire or imperialism is incorrect. Some believe that accusations of "American imperialism" are rooted in anti-Americanism, and take offense at the use of such terminology.

The world in 1958: The United States and its allies are marked in green, and the colonies of European powers allied with the United States are marked in blue.

The world in 1982: The United States and its allies are marked in green.

American exceptionalism

The question of American imperialism has been the subject of agonizing debate ever since the United States acquired formally external territory at the end of the nineteenth century during the Spanish-American war. Many historians argue that this agony is because of America’s exaggerated sense of innocence, produced by a kind of immaculate conception view of America's origins. In this popular American conception, when European settlers came to America they miraculously shed their old ways upon arrival in the New World, as one might discard old clothing, and fashioned new cultural garments based solely on experiences in a new and vastly different environment. At least, it is possible to infer this from the school texts, media, and patriotic speeches with which Americans have been reared. These popular sources do not stress the pre-Founding Fathers origins of America's system of government; they often omit or downplay the influence of John Calvin, as well as that of Thomas Hobbes and other English and Scottish philosophers, and neglect the fact even America's allegedly unique frontier egalitarianism has deep roots in seventeenth century English radical traditions.^[1]

A notable early observer of this phenomenon was Alexis de Tocqueville; a more recent one has been Stuart Creighton Miller. While the popularity within the United States of American exceptionalism is widely acknowledged, both its validity and its consequences are disputed. There are countless subtly different views on the role imperialism plays and has played in the foreign policy of the United States, but two broad poles may be identified, with most other views falling somewhere in between.

Imperialism as the heart of American foreign policy

Some say that America's belief in its exceptional innocence is false, and that its result is an irrational blindness to real American social flaws associated with the "Old World," such as militarism, imperialism, inequality, and the misuse of power. A common, though not universal, corollary to this view is the belief that America's sole-superpower status implies that it is now the most dangerous world imperialist. Proponents of the theory of American imperialism, for example Marxists, may trace its beginning not to the Spanish-American war, but to Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana Territory, or even to the pre-Revolutionary extermination of Native Americans. They assert, at their most extreme, that American history is primarily one of continuous expansion that has left behind a long string of nonwhite victims and continues to this day.

In support of this assertion, numerous foreign interventions are described as products of imperialism, including: violence against Native Americans and Mexico involved in the establishment of the Western states; the Spanish-American war and subsequent occupation of or support for dictatorships in the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico; intervention in the First World War and then in favor of the White Guard after the Russian Revolution; provocation of Japan prior to the Second World War and division of the world with the Soviet Union into zones of control after it, especially with regard to Greece; intervention in East Asian nations such as Korea, Cambodia, and (especially) Vietnam; numerous interventions in Latin America justified by the Monroe Doctrine, for example the 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende's government in Chile; interference in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990's; support for allegedly oppressive governments in the Middle East such as the Shah's Iran, Egypt after 1972, the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq prior to 1991 as well as the present occupation of that country. These actions, it is alleged, make up a pattern of aggression too consistent to be ignored and too bloody to be accepted, and require a theory of imperialism (Leninist or otherwise) to explain them.

Well-known proponents of some version of this view include leftists such as Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, Alexander Cockburn, Michael Mann, and Slavoj Zizek, as well as some libertarians such as Justin Raimondo, and even some paleo-conservatives such as Patrick Buchanan (more below).

Imperialism as nonexistent in American foreign policy

Others argue that America is genuinely unique, and its exercise of power is different from (and ethically superior to) that practiced by classic European imperialists. These patriots tend to deny that American imperialism has ever existed, let alone exists in the present day. For example, they claim that Americans altruistically went to war with Spain to liberate Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Filipinos from their tyrannical yoke. If they lingered on too long in the Philippines, it was to protect the Filipinos from European predators waiting in the wings for American withdrawal and to tutor them in American-style democracy. If the American presence was bloody initially, it was, in the end, short-lived and beneficial to the Filipinos, leaving behind better transportation, mosquito control, the work ethic, the seed of Protestantism, and the school house.^[2] This account of events is of course disputed.^[3]

Other wars and interventions were similarly, for those who deny that America has a history of imperialism, either defensive, humanitarian, or both - for example the Second World War, against Adolf Hitler's Germany. Self-described opponents of American imperialism are often called hypocrites, ignoring the greater crimes of states such as the Soviet Union because of an irrational prejudice against the United States, and/or appeasers, whose fear of exercising military power will only lead to larger and bloodier wars and genocides.

Most mainstream politicians and pundits are proponents of some form of this view, though it is defended most enthusiastically by neoconservatives such as William Bennett, Charles Krauthammer, Robert Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Zalmay Khalilzad. It is less popular, at least in its extreme form, among academic historians.^[4]

The benevolent empire

Some who hold an essentially identical view on American foreign policy are willing to call the United States an empire, but believe that it is a benevolent one; for example, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Michael Ignatieff, and Niall Ferguson (on the last, see below). These authors agree with those who deny a role for imperialism regarding the essential benevolence through history of American power, but differ on the proper semantics.

Imperialism as a past stage in American history

Between these two positions, other points of view admit American expansion overseas as imperialistic, but see this imperialism as temporary, if not exceptional.

An abberation

To some, it was a brief corruption of the American ideals, a beacon on the hill that would eventually light up a world in political darkness. At the end of the nineteenth century, this noble tradition became a more aggressive missionary impulse to carry the American way of life to others whether they liked it or not. But the corruption was short-lived, and by the Wilsonian era, America had rejected empire. In the words of historian Samuel Flagg Bemis, this short-lived imperialistic impulse was “a great aberration in American history”.^[5] Others may put the start and end of the period of American empire at different historical locations, but what they hold importantly in common is the view that the United States no longer exercises imperial power in any fashion.

This is another major mainstream view, especially popular in academia. It is held by some on the Right, such as Victor Davis Hanson and, arguably, Christopher Hitchens. It is also held by many liberal internationalists, such as Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye.

Temporary, but not an abberation

A further-left view may acknowledge most or all of the historical evils described by self-described anti-imperialists, and see them as a consequence of a past American imperialism, but nevertheless hold that the United States is no longer imperialist, at least not in the classic sense. This is because, it is usually argued, the world has passed the era of imperialism and entered a new era, in which oppressive, colonizing power is still exercized, much of it from within the United States, but in which its locus has moved from national military forces based on an economy of physical goods to networked biopower based on an informational, affective economy.

Many who hold such a view are described as postmodernists, though their political and philosophical views differ widely. These authors include Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (more below), as well as Jean Baudrillard.

The denial of exceptionalism

Some argue that the United States is exceptional neither in good nor in evil. These thinkers agree with leftists that a naive American exceptionalism misleads many into ignoring the United States' flaws, but argue that at the other end of the scale, overly self-critical Americans tend to exaggerate the nation’s flaws, failing to place them in historical or worldwide contexts, falling prey to an inverted American exceptionalism that sees only American problems. The United States is a nation-state much like any other, on this view.

Imperialism as a term without content

This position may be compatible with the view that the United States was, for whatever reason and whatever time, a temporary empire. However, a commonly-held corollary to the denial of American exceptionalism is that the notion of imperialism is essentially meaningless, or at least not useful in analyzing world history and mechanics. Historian Archibald Paton Thorton wrote that "imperialism is more often the name of the emotion that reacts to a series of events than a definition of the events themselves. Where colonization finds analysts and analogies, imperialism must contend with crusaders for and against."^[6] Stuart Creighton Miller is another proponent of this view, as are John Ikenberry and many other neorealists, since it is a logical consequence of their view that the primary motivation of nearly all states, namely self-interest, is roughly the same.^[7]

Recent literature

There has been much literature in recent years about the current state of what some consider to be the "American Empire."

In American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (2002), Andrew Bacevich argues that the end of the Cold War did not mark the end of an era in American history, because (he says) American foreign policy did not fundamentally change after the Cold War. Bacevich argues, like historians Charles Beard and William Appleman Williams before him, that American foreign policy has long been driven by the desire to expand access to foreign markets in order to benefit the domestic economy. Bacevich believes that the moralistic reasons given for American foreign intervention mask the true economic reasons, and he warns that American economic imperialism (in the guise of globalization) may not be in the best interests of the United States.

In the book Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, the USA is seen as central for the development and constitution of a new global regime of international power and sovereignty, termed empire by Hardt and Negri. The book builds on neomarxist, postcolonial, postmodern ideas and globalization theories. Because the empire of Hardt and Negri is decentralized and global, not the rule of one sovereign state over another, it may be differentiated from the American Empire described in this article.

Even though many critics and analysis of "American Imperialism" tend to be on the left side of the political spectrum, there are right-wing critics as well. Prominent American paleo-conservative activist Patrick Buchanan discusses American foreign policy in his book A Republic, Not an Empire and argues that the modern United States has betrayed its founding principles by engaging in excessive "meddling" around the world. Buchanan in turn argues that acts of terrorism against the United States, such as the September 11, 2001 attacks are the direct result of America's ill-fated attempts to intervene in places where she should never have been involved in the first place. Buchanan's arguments have been interpreted as the latest form of American isolationism, long a critical counter-voice in American foreign policy discussions.

In his books Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003) and Colossus: The Price of America's Empire (2004), historian Niall Ferguson has drawn parallels between the British Empire and the imperial role of the United States in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. However, he describes the United States political and social structures as more like those of the Roman Empire than of the British. In contrast to Hardt and Negri, Ferguson views empire as a neutral description, with both positive and negative aspects.

Notes

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^ See Lodge Committee, Jacob H. Smith, J. Franklin Bell, for more detailed accounts, see the imperialist newspaper accounts wikisource: Lodge Committee testimony from the New York Times, wikiquote: Philippine-American War Quotes
^ Miller, p. 136, 163 "Will Show No Mercy Real Warfare Ahead For Filipino Rebels Kitchener Plan Adopted The Administration Weary of Protracted Hostilities." Boston Herald, November 19, 1900.
^ See Gangale, Thomas, "Thoughts on Realism, Liberalism, and Progressivism," International Relations 310. [8]

External links and further reading

"Imperialism: Superpower dominance, malignant and benign", an article by Christopher Hitchens, in which he warns that the U.S.—whether or not you call it an empire—should be careful to use its power wisely.
"America's New Empire for Liberty", article from conservative writer and historian Paul Johnson, in which he argues that the U.S. has always been an empire—and a good one at that.
"America and Empire: Manifest Destiny Warmed Up?", an article from The Economist which argues that the U.S. is going through an imperial phase, but like previous phases, this will be temporary, since (they argue) empire is incompatible with traditional U.S. policies and beliefs.
"The American Empire Project", a series of books from left-wing writers such as Noam Chomsky, critical of what they call the "American Empire".
Mark Zepezauer, Boomerang! : How Our Covert Wars Have Created Enemies Across the Middle East and Brought Terror to America, (2002) ISBN 1567512224
John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, (2004) ISBN 1576753018