Is America An Empire?

[Annie]

There's a relatively new book out on this, I thought it an interesting premise. Here's an excerpt from a review by a history site:

http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/10321.html

...Ferguson thinks that’s just what the world needs. He explains that the nation-state, with its emphasis on ethnic self-determination, is a relatively recent development whereas, empire has been commonplace throughout human history. Not only have most human beings lived under the sway of empire, but the latter has often advanced human society. Given the threat to civilization posed by rogue states armed with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, and the wreckage of states which failed during the half century since the demise of Europe’s imperial power, Ferguson argues that the establishment of a “liberal empire,” not unlike that of Britain in the nineteenth century, would benefit mankind. Such an empire he says would produce substantial “public goods,” many of which are in critically short supply in various parts of the “third world.” These range from the establishment and honest administration of law and order to the provision of capital and the construction of infrastructure. Such goods, which were once produced by the British Empire, are of greater value to the “new-caught, sullen peoples” than to the citizens of the imperial state itself, but nevertheless, all stand to benefit when order is imposed on the tribal chaos so prevalent throughout much of the world. The sort of economic development that has bypassed much of the “third world” in the decades since de-colonization, can only take place within the context of an orderly society governed by the rule of law. The United Nations is clearly not capable of providing such order. Accordingly, Ferguson believes that the United States is the only state capable of serving this historic function, but he fears that Americans will shirk their responsibility.

The United States today is an empire. Of this neither Ferguson nor most European and other foreign observers have any doubt. Indeed, many angrily denounce American imperialism. The very words imperialism and empire have become epithets, weapons hurled in an ideological battle that continues fifteen years after the war was won. Yet most Americans deny that they have any imperial ambitions or that their power makes the United States an empire. In short, Americans do not even recognize that they have an empire. The United States says Ferguson, is “an empire in denial.” This is not new. Even as Americans were vigorously expanding across a broad expanse of the North American continent and proclaiming that it was their “Manifest Destiny” to do so, they announced that they were bringing not dominion but liberty to a thinly inhabited land which God had prepared for them. In 1898 when they went to war against Spain, it was not in order to seize territory—the Teller Amendment specifically renounced any intention to annex Cuba—but to liberate the Cuban people from the clutches of the brutal Spaniards. It had been a war against Spanish imperialism. It had been an anti-imperial war. Yet the great irony was that the war presented imperial opportunities which Americans seized under the leadership of a reluctant William McKinley and an enthusiastic Theodore Roosevelt. It is this imperial denial that Ferguson believes Americans must reject once and for all before they can take up the burden Kipling commended to them a century ago...