The post could be book length, but it won’t be. That’s because in order to examine the notion of the US being an imperialist power, I don’t need more than a couple of paragraphs.
Glenn Greenwald (objecting to Drezner’s characterization of him as a “pacifist”) says case closed:
For those who actually understand what the term means, there is no reasonable ground for objecting to the term “imperial” to describe America’s role in the world. Even our Foreign Policy Community elites have begun acknowledging that we are acting as an empire and are openly debating the best forms of imperial management. And the seemingly endless string of military interventions over the last several decades under a whole slew of “justifications” leaves no doubt that we see ourselves as world rulers who violate sovereignty and use military force at will, whenever—as Drezner himself said—we perceive that it promotes our interests to do so. That is what an empire does, by definition.
As I have said in the past, the notion that the United States is a peaceloving nation is belied by the facts. Since Viet Nam, we have intervened in Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iraq again, and numerous air raids carried out against Ghaddafi, Saddam, and Slobodan Milošević.
Trouble just seems to follow us around, I guess.
Actually, the use of military power does not necessarily make a nation “imperialistic.” Rather, the reasons for those interventions are what determines whether a nation is building or defending an “empire” or not. And in each intervention I listed, US motives for using military power could be defended as a response to chaos, tyranny, or despotism.
Face it, people. We are “it.” History, geography, and the efforts of our forefathers have all combined to make the United States a superpower. For most of our existence, we ignored our potential to dominate world affairs – even though we could have done so easily from the turn of the 20th century on. Even after World War II when our victorious armies in Europe and Asia could have remained in place and dominated those continents as they had never been before, we chose to bring the boys home and – unprecedented in world history – actually disarm.
From an army of 8 million men we contracted to just over a million by 1949. From an astonishing 80,000 planes at the end of the war, we barely had 5,000 by the end of the decade. The same with our 50,000 tanks that were reduced to 2,000. An 800 warship navy was cut to around 300.
Now, it would be a silly imperial power who would do such a thing. Of course, we had the bomb but it wasn’t clear at that time what kind of a military weapon the bomb might actually be. Until the Soviets got their very own nukes, Truman didn’t know quite what to do with the gadget. He used it as a threat but it is not clear if he would have followed through and made good on those threats. Nuclear doctrine did not mature until the early 1950’s. And when it did, reliance on conventional forces for almost all conflicts – save the Big One with Russia in Europe – was the accepted strategy of the US.
I give this little history lesson in order to make the point that even today when we are the only superpower with an $11 trillion economy producing nearly a quarter of all the goods and services on the planet and a pop culture that people can’t get enough of, by virtue of our size alone, we dominate the planet.
There are those who are uncomfortable with that fact. Perhaps you can give us all the benefit of your wisdom and tell us how we could stop “dominating” the planet without tearing our economy to shreds, destroying our culture, causing a worldwide economic catastrophe, and give free rein to every cutthroat, thug, maniac, and butcher who would then seek to take advantage of the fact that the only thing between them and their sick goals is the United Nations.
Oh, you can work around the edges of the problem. The US must work more within the international framework. Fine. Tell it to the people of Darfur where we have consistently tried to the get the United Nations to refer to what is happening there as “genocide” only to be rebuffed. We may yet be forced to intervene there considering the ongoing slaughter and because of every ineffectual and counterproductive thing the UN has done.
Perhaps you think we should radically disarm. Okay, for the sake of argument let’s cut our military by 90%. Just a few jets for air defense, a couple of divisions for homeland security, and perhaps a couple of ships to evacuate our citizens when the world inevitablly blows up. Happy? Good. And the next Tsunami that hits Indonesia or some other natural disaster that the world needs to tend to, we’ll fly a couple of UN bureaucrats out there to help with morale. Since that’s all the help victims of those disasters are going to get for a couple of weeks, let’s hope too many people don’t die because of it.
Nor should we worry about the little wars where the bigger neighbor will invade the smaller nation just because there’s no one there to stop them. The idea that UN sanctions would scare off any of these cutthroats is laughable.
What else? Get Hollywood to stop making crappy movies? Or maybe make it impossible for other countries to purchase our music, our movies, TV programs, and other manifestations of the most wildly popular cultural exchange in human history.
Now we’re where the Greenwalds of the world want us to be. No more of this runaway globalization, no more militarism. No more cultural dominance. Just the US taking its rightful place as subservient to the UN and other international bodies. Let the Europeans run the world. They’ve been doing it a long time and experience has to count for something.
I put it to you; for all our faults, foibles, stumbles, good and bad motives thrown in for good measure, the world cannot do without us as we are now. You can have a president that grovels before the UN or the EU. But that won’t change the fact that when the EU’s chestnuts are in the fire, they won’t turn to the French to bail them out. Love us, hate us, spit at us – you can’t ignore us.
Are we an imperialist power? The only people who seem to care are those who wish to call us “imperialists.” For the rest of the world, the US is a fact of life, a force of nature. And, I might add, a welcome sight when the boogyman is knocking at the door or Mother nature goes on a bender.
Can we do it while acting more humbly? Must we be so “arrogant?” Next tyrant we overthrow, we should be sure to apologize before having our military rip his regime a new one. Maybe that will satisfy those who see anything relevant at all in this stupid argument.
2:47 pm
God forbid Americans ever become the monsters that the rest of the world thinks we are.
3:23 pm
Wow. Way to completely dodge the question you pose to yourself.
“Are we an imperialist power? The only people who seem to care are those who wish to call us “imperialists.†For the rest of the world, the US is a fact of life, a force of nature. And, I might add, a welcome sight when the boogyman is knocking at the door or Mother nature goes on a bender.”
So . . . we are? We aren’t? We are but thats a good thing? We aren’t but remain (or were) the sole global superpower?
If you wern’t going to answer the question, why did you bother with the post in the first place?
Additionally, I’m sure you realize the difference between Imperialism and being a Superpower. Nice job rolling the two together.
I await your response completely ignoring my comments and attacking me personally with baited breath.
3:56 pm
“f you wern’t (sic) going to answer the question, why did you bother with the post in the first place?”
Err he did answer the question. He answered it several times. Pointing out why our interventions are done, that we voluntarily vacate other territories, that the spread of our culture is based on the choices of the people IMPORTING said culture – those all point to America not being imperial.
“For those who actually understand what the term means, there is no reasonable ground for objecting to the term “imperial†to describe America’s role in the world.”
The funniest thing is Greenwald has the completely backwards. The “American Empire” folks have never had a leg to stand on. They have to move the goal posts so much to make us an empire I can’t believe they continue with a straight face. The people making the empire claim are the ones conflating superpower and empire, not Mr. Moran (who was specifically spelling out that we are not a superpower, and that that is different than an empire).
Reading comprehension – not your strong suit, eh?
4:24 pm
Maybe America wouldn’t be so derided as an “empire” if it stopped trying to force the free market on to the world. I mean seriously, we have the IMF and World Bank making free market reforms a pre-condition for gaining access to credit, Bremer and the CPA attempting to turn Iraq into a Milton Friedman-esque dreamland (without the consent of the Iraqi people I might add), arms sales and military aid to undemocratic regimes that engage in policies favorable to foreign investors, and a history of overthrowing socialist governments even if said governments were democratically elected and represented popular will.
That often comes off as fairly imperialist.
4:47 pm
Is the US an imperialist power? Of course it is, but only to those countries that can be of value to us in some way. If your country has a resource we need, we will find a way to take it from you. Either by literal force or economic force, it will be ours. If your country has the ability to buy our goods, you’ll see a McDonalds under every Coca-Cola billboard in town.
The kicker is, if you F*ck with our commerce in any way. If you disrupt it or impede it or protest it, we will find a way to destroy you. Whether it be militarily, or economically, or we replace your entire government entirely, we’ll do what we must to keep commerce alive.
EVERYTHING, and I do mean EVERYTHING takes a back seat to commerce. If you mess with our commerce, we will murder you. It’s that simple. The United States is NOT full of humanitarians. It’s full of business people and massive consumerism. It just so happens that properly regulated capitalism is a decent cure for poverty in those countries that we CHOOSE to let it flourish in.
11:04 pm
Actually we still havent ‘come home’ from WWII. And the Russians and Brits had a large role in that horrible war that claimed so many lives. You make it sound like Americans blew a bugle one morning and emerged victoriously the next day with one hand tied behind its back.
11:57 pm
Good post, Moran.
What seems to rile the world large and small is that we have the capability to act imperialistic at any time we choose, and in any domain we decide to use, whether military, economic, scientific, political, or even just tourism. We aren’t measured so much by intent as by capability, and that sparks massive envy, jealousy, and negativity.
To ourselves, we are just plain old America, anti-imperialistic, materialistic, and rather isolationist. To many others, we are the epitome of modern-day, capitalistic imperialism.
So be it.
7:54 am
#5
Hey, small-minded and emotionally unstable one, you’d better have separated yourself from the benefits bestowed by the commerce you despise, else “extreme hypocrite” should be added to your long list of character defects.
God help us all (i.e. the world) if the so-called “progressives” ever do manage to subvert our economic/military strength and turn us into the passive, compliant and dependent country their bleeding hearts long for. (Astoundingly, those who would make us weaker see themselves as the real patriots.)
Thankfully Americans on the whole are more objective, intelligent, perceptive and balanced than the simpleton who presumes to speak for “the people.”
9:47 am
Rick:
The only thing that disapoints me in this posting of yours is that you have to answer a hack like “Sock Puppet” Greenwald. Greenwald and the rest of the “Liberal Narrative” left believes a weak America empowers the rest of the world, a poor America enriches the rest of the world, and a compliant America makes for a good neighbor.
Well, they have never lived in the neighborhoods I grew up in. If you are weak, you will be taken advantage of, if you are poor you have no say when you are stepped on, and if you are compliant then sheep will step all over you.
For what it is worth, if that makes us an empire – good! But someone who claims we are an empire has no real understanding of the world or of history.
10:40 am
Personally, I think America is an imperialist power, but not in the way that Greenwald and other critics suggest. We are not imperialistic in the classic 19th and early 20th century way of colonizing and dominating the “wogs” of the world. Rather, America’s “new imperialism” is much softer and is more interested in maintaining global trade and the current international system than colonizing and forcibly extracting resources a la the Romans, Brits, French, etc. This soft imperialism benefits the world much more than the traditional hard imperialism of a century ago.
AJB complains about the US “forcing” the free market on the world through the IMF and World Bank. They do so because lending money to governments without basic free market principles like transparency and accountability is throwing away money. History has proven that. What is so unreasonable about asking for reform before we give you money? My mortgage company demands more of me than the IMF and World Bank demand of most nations. The next superpower, China, understands this which is why they are reforming their economy and using the global system to their own advantage. American imperialism will have a primary role in creating this next superpower – ironic, isn’t it?
11:36 am
If one ignores the historical paradigm of imperialist countries (Rome, England, Japan, Germany) and redefines the term to mean ‘big, powerful and influential’, then we fit the bill. And, of course, the label ushers in a plethora of negative subtexts- arrogant, bully, dominant, militaristic. As suggested by manning (#7), we have the capability to be an imperialistic nation. But by historical measures, we’re imperialistic underachievers.
5:15 pm
@ Shaun:
“Pointing out why our interventions are done, that we voluntarily vacate other territories, that the spread of our culture is based on the choices of the people IMPORTING said culture – those all point to America not being imperial.”
lets take these one at a time . . .
1)why our interventions are done
“And in each intervention I listed, US motives for using military power COULD [emphasis added] be defended as a response to chaos, tyranny, or despotism.”—Could means that there is a possible explanation that isn’t imperialistic, but also acknowledges an explanation exists that IS imperialistic. We could have invaded Iraq to free the huddled masses, we could have invaded Iraq because we felt threatened . . . or we could have invaded because we wanted to reshape the Mideast into mini-America.
2)we voluntarily vacate other territiories
Yes, we pulled out of Europe after World War II. Yes, thats not classically imperialistic behavior. But notice how he began that section of the post:
“For most of our existence, we ignored our potential to dominate world affairs – even though we could have done so easily from the turn of the 20th century on”
Past tense implies that the US ignoring its potential to dominazte world affairs has stopped. I could say that for the past few hundred years, Great Britian cpaitalized on their potential to dominate world affairs. That made them Imperialist. Do you conclude from that GB is still Imperialist? Things change, and the fact that we wern’t militarily imperialistic in the late 1940s has nothing to do with whether we are imperialistic now.
3)people choose to import our culture
Interesting. The fact that we produce so many goods does not necessarily mean that other societies CHOOSE to import our culture. We import more from China than we export—are we as America choosing to absorb Chineese society, or is it simply that they make the cheapest goods so we can get what we want from them and save a few bucks? Some countries certainly do want to absorb our culture—some do not. Its how we react to those that reject us that shapes the definiton of Imperialist.
The point I was making was that the post is two-faced: we aren’t imperialistic because we can’t help rule the planet and any attempt to stop doing so would be disastrous for us and the globe. Essentially, we’re not imperialistic because we don’t want to run the world, its just that sort of onerous burden that is thrust upon our unwilling shoulders.
Mabye reading comprehension isn’t your strong suit either?
5:40 pm
So, what’s your point?...
There seems to have been a bit of a foreign policy kerfuffle involving and Daniel Drezner, some of which was related by Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse, about whether American foreign policy is “imperialist.” (You can go through the posts yourself …
6:07 pm
#7
Andy Said:
They do so because lending money to governments without basic free market principles like transparency and accountability is throwing away money.
What’s ironic is that a lot of the regimes the IMF/WB have supported over the years have been very unaccountable and opaque, but they professed to have “free market principles” and were thus supported. Do some research on Yeltsin-era Russia or Mexico in the 80s and 90s. There was a lot of corruption going on with the rapid privatization process but the IMF/WB kept the loans flowing anyway.
Besides, since when were transparency and accountability strictly values promoted by the free market? Government intervention plays a large role in making sure corporations are open and honest in their financial disclosures. Corruption is something that is found equally in both capitalist and socialist societies. A better correlation would be found in how democratic a nation is and how much corruption it has. Authoritarian nations in general have more corruption.
Anyways, you could argue that nations choose to take out IMF/WB loans and therefore are not “forced” to accept the free market. Fair enough. But there’s still the issue of the US propping up free market dictators, overthrowing socialist governments, and implementing economic reform in Iraq before any democratic elections were held. Put together with the fact these economic policies often benefit US businesses, it’s not very hard to see why the US is considered an imperialistic nation.
9:46 pm
Submitted for Your Approval…
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…
2:58 pm
[...] Right Wing Nut House, “Is the United States an Imperialist Power and Does It Matter?†[...]
11:43 pm
The Council Has Spoken!...
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Is the United States an Imperialis…
7:26 am
[...] The Watcher’s Council has announced its picks for the most outstanding posts of the preceding week. The winning Council post was Right Wing Nut House’s post, “Is the United States an Imperialist Power and Does It Matter?â€. Second place honors went to Done With Mirrors’s “St. Nietszche” Callimachus’s post notes that religion in the late 19th century had some odd standard bearers. I think it’s worth mentioning that there were other significant figures in religious thought during the same period that Callimachus treats in his post who had rather different views than Nietszche or Wagner. Pope Leo XIII leaps to mind, a real giant. [...]
8:39 am
[...] Is the United States an Imperialist Power and Does It Matter? Right Wing Nut House [...]
3:02 pm
Watcher’s Council results…
And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Is the United States an Imperialist Power and Does It Matter? by Right Wing Nut House, and How The New Republic Got Suckered by Pajamas Media…....
5:56 am
Watcher On the Rind…
Last Council vote gave us a winning week; this time, it’s a weak win: We didn’t do so well with our own nomination in the Council vote… but our nominee and first choice for the Nouncil vote won hands down…....
2:23 pm
The Coalition of the Willing…
As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher’s Council hold a vote every week on what we consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around… though I don’t actually vote unless there happens…...
8:09 pm
[...] PUNDIT VINCE AUT MORIRE VODKAPUNDIT WALLO WORLD WIDE AWAKES WIZBANG WUZZADEM ZERO POINT BLOG THE COUNCIL HAS SPOKEN BIAS? WHAT MEDIA BIAS? A MILLION SPAMBOTS DEAD, DEAD, DEAD VICK SACKED BY PROSECUTOR’S BLITZREFORMS…SORT OF “DEAR CONSTITUENT…” OVER THE RAINBOW EVACUATION AND DEFEAT THE COUNCIL HAS SPOKEN THE ARK IS ABOUT TO SET SAIL IRAQ IS NOT LIKE VIET NAM EXCEPT WHEN IT IS A SMOKER’S LAMENTOF ALL TIME CONSERVATIVES TO BUSH: “KEEP YOUR GRUBBY PAWS OUT OF OUR PRIVATE SPACES!” THE COUNCIL HAS SPOKEN “24″ (95) ABLE DANGER (10) Bird Flu (5) Blogging (146) Books (9) CARNIVAL OF THE Admin Login Register Valid XHTML XFN Design by: Hosted by: Powered by: 8/30/2007 THE COUNCIL HAS SPOKEN CATEGORY: WATCHER’SCOUNCIL [...]
6:12 pm
so, i have a U.S. History project do on the 28th on this month, and its if i think the united states is an imperialist state and i don’t understand it..can someone help me please…my email is pimpinchick50191@hotmail.com..email me please