American Empire

For other uses, see American Empire (disambiguation)
The American Empire is a politically-charged, informal term used to describe the current political, economic and cultural influence of the United States on a global scale. It is generally, though by no means always, used with a negative connotation. Proponents of the term claim that it is an appropriate one, based on American history and an evident American expansionism ideology, as conveyed in the cultural ethos of "Manifest Destiny" —often called "American exceptionalism."

Expansion

The United States originated as a fissile spin off of the British Empire at the height of its energies. An expansionist tendency was thus present in the United States right from the beginning. At first, the focus was on expansion in North America and internal agricultural and industrial development. This changed following the Spanish American War, which was partially provoked by American politicians and businessmen, like William Randolph Hearst, interested in overt European-style imperialism. After the war, the defeated Kingdom of Spain agreed to cede most of her colonial possessions to the control of the United States.

Many of America's former colonies have since become independent countries, states of the American union, or self-governing commonwealths. However despite the fact that these countries are legally independent, the US has often intervened military or otherwise influenced their domestic affairs. Examples for military intervention are the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 or the invasion of Panama in 1989. An example for non-military forms of intervention in the former colonies are the numerous assassination attempts on Fidel Castro or the CIA-supported Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961.

The US also remains the main trading partner of both the Dominican Republic and the Philippines.

• American Samoa (1900-)
• Cuba (1899-1909) (now independent, save for Guantanamo Bay)
• Dominican Republic (1916-1922) (now independent)
• Guam (1898-)
• Liberia (1823-1968) (roughly under ACS control, between the Monroe Doctrine and the Civil Rights Act of 1968)
• Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (1944-1990) (now 3 independent states Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau and one commonwealth Northern Mariana Islands)
• Panama Canal Zone (1903-1979) (now part of Panama)
• Philippines (1898-1946) (now independent)
• Puerto Rico (1898-1952) (now a commonwealth)
• U.S. Virgin Islands (1917-)
• Okinawa (1945-1972) under US military control
  

  Contemporary use of the term

The term "American Empire" is today often mostly used as derogatory expression to personify America's military and cultural presence in nations around the world.

At the same time, many statesmen, scholars, and historians within the United States insist that America "is" an empire in the sense that the country holds tremendous power over the world, comparable to other great empires of history. Many thus argue that the United States should thus not shy away from using this power as a way of maintaining order, peace, and safety for both America and the world at large. This is ideology is exemplified by the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, which became influential in the 2003 decision to invade Iraq. As stated in PNAC's principles:

We need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles. [1]

Willaim Blum wrote in his book Killing Hope - US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II that "From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair."

Books

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 J. 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 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 should not be equated with the American Empire described in this article.

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.

See also