The United States acquired the Phillipine Islands and Cuba from Spain at the end of the foolish Spanish-American War in 1898. The Americans immediately walked into a rebellion–native Filipino forces had been at war for independence from Spain, and simply switched to fighting Americans. Americans fought back, hard, and the result was the little-remembered Phillipine-American War, which ended for most practical purposes in 1902.
Occasionally you will read claims that the U.S. committed “genocide” during that war. This is pretty much recycled 20th Century Soviet propaganda that’s still held onto by a dwindling fringe. There was no concerted campaign to wipe out the native population as a whole, which is what would be required for genocide to be the proper term. Nevertheless U.S. forces did commit a number of horrible atrocities for which General Otis and others should probably have been jailed for life or hung. There were also atrocities committed by the rebel forces, although most of those were probably greatly exaggerated for propaganda purposes by the U.S. forces over there.
In any case, as a result of the war and a cholera outbreak (which may not have happened if there hadn’t been a war going on), about a million Filipinos are estimated to have died during that four year period. This possibly counts as democide as defined by political scientist Rudy Rummel (I should try asking him) but not formally as genocide. By 1902 all the violence had stopped (except in Moroland, where disorganized, scattered violence went on for about 10 more years). The island then accepted American rule, and later American governors were often popular. Eventually the islands rightly got their independence.
It is not clear what benefit, if any, the U.S. ever thought to gain there. We didn’t get much for it.
Anyway, the end of the Philippine-American War in 1902 also marked the end of America’s years of acting as an imperialist power. Nothing the U.S. has done militarily in the century since can reasonably be described as “imperialism” except by anti-American bigots (Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, and Noam Chomsky being some prime examples).
More to come.
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Sounds right to me. The only ‘examples’ the clowns can come up with now are ‘Imperialism at one or two removes’: “Economic Imperialism”, “Cultural Imperialism”. Keep along that path and you end up with “Chili over spaghetti Imperialism’ or ‘No catsup on hot dog Imperialism’.
My favorite term for what I guess is “cultural imperialism” is ”Coca Colanization”.
I think there are several other examples of genuine U. S. imperialism, also from the first decades of the 20th century: the invasions of Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
My main problem with what’s generally classified these days as U. S. imperialism is the incredibly patronizing assumptions that are required.
You don’t think coups, Iran, Chile, etc., are a form of imperialism?
What are they if not?
From dictionary.com
We did not rule Iran or Chile. We did rule the Phillipines.
Aggressive foreign policy != imperialism
Dave: From where I stand, our involvement in the “banana wars” and in places like Haiti, Honduras, Panama, and Nicaragua were not “imperialism.” They were interventionism, certainly, and some easier to justify than others. But there was no colonization, there was no attempt to terraform the cultures or set up U.S. governorships. No taxes or tribute extracted. Intervening in the affairs of other countries may be at times arrogant, but it’s also normal; today, the Mexican government is taking certain steps to support anti-Chavez forces in Venezuela: is that “Mexican Imperialism?”
Ali: First off, we did not stage coups in Iran or Chile. We gave some assistance to forces in those countries that were staging coups, and in both cases our involvement is often exaggerated. One may debate the merits of our having any involvement at all–and I can talk to you a long, long time about Chile, less about Iran–but to call it “imperialism” merely to involve yourself in revolutions or counter-revolutions in another country is stretching the definition of “imperialism” to the breaking point so far as I can see.
These are no different so far as I’m concerned than the covert assistance we gave to the Solidarity movement in Poland. Those countries stayed independent and sovereign, we extracted no taxes or tribute from them, set up no colonies, etc.
America is not an imperialist nation, and hasn’t been for a long, long time. That’s just anti-American rubbish so far as I’m concerned. It sets up a false dichotomy too often, too: well the Soviets did X, and the Americans did Y, therefore, it’s all imperialism. The CIA does X, the KGB does Y, therefore they’re both equal.
I simply don’t accept that line of reasoning. I think it’s anti-American bullshit–and yes, there really is such a thing as anti-Americanism, and no, it’s not always caused by American actions. Not that we’ve been perfect or done everything right, because we haven’t.
Dean, it is a complex subject, partly because the European “powers” evolved from classic imperialists into something different with the mandate structure set up post WWI. What we are doing in Iraq is similar to post-WWI “imperialism.” Now, “imperialism” is probably the wrong word, but what should we call what Britain and France did in the Middle East from 1918 until Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, and Iraq became independent? Perhaps nation-building. I think it all usually gets shoved in under the heading “imperialism” because France was still a regular imperialist in Algeria and Britain was in India.
And yes, we did plan(/help plan) the 1953 coup in Iran.
Daniel: We helped native Iraqis hold national elections in order to elect a temporary parliament that would draft an Iraqi Constitution, said elections being ratified as legitimate by all major international authorities after it was done. We then helped those legitimately-elected temporary parliamentarians hold an Iraqi national referendum to ratify or not-ratify the proposed Constitution that those legitimately-elected native Iraqis debated and wrote themselves. Said national referendum vote was also ratified by all recognized independent international bodies as legitimate. Then we helped them hold yet a third set of elections under that Iraqi-written and Iraqi-ratified Constitution to elect an independent Iraqi government, said elections also being ratified by all major international authorities.
The result was a Constitution and a regime that is far from perfect but is far more progressive and humanist than anything found anywhere else in the Arab world. And the Iraqis did it themselves. That government is now recognized not just by the U.S., but by the U.N. and also by all her neighboring states, even Iran.
And as it happens, that democratically-elected and internationally-ratified government has enacted policies and done things that the U.S. does not approve of. We’ve let them do those things, because we’ve consistently said that we’re going to support them even if we don’t always like everything they do. And we’ve stuck to that, too.
To describe that legitimate government now as a mark of “imperialism” by the US strikes me as stretching the definition of “imperialism” to the breaking point, and as being racist toward the Iraqis and incredibly prejudiced about Americans. And profoundly reactionary and anti-progressive and anti-humanist.
We’ve consistently tried to do everything right. We may not have always done everything right, but I’m appalled at the lack of support from the left, which talks a good game about human rights et. al., but apparently thinks pissing on the current temporary occupant of the White House is a greater priority.
And that’s where I stand.
I ask Ali again: why is it not racist to presume that the legitimately-elected Iraqi government is merely Washington’s puppet?
Daniel: I think the Wikipedia article you link seems to mostly get it right. As is often the case with a subject of intense interest, the wiki process mostly gets it right.
I’m a big believer in such open-source projects.
Now, just read the article again: did the US stage an Iranian coup? No it did not. It supported certain forces, and opposed certain forces. Rightly or wrongly. Probably wrongly, in retrospect.
That’s not imperialism. That’s interventionism. And no, I don’t think that’s weasel-wording. We looked at what was going on, and decided to take sides. And we decided that supporting anti-Soviet forces was the best choice amongst bad choices.
We may have been wrong. But to portray this all as nothing but the insidious imperialist Americans secretly directing world events is bullshit.
To me, “imperialism” would mean that in the end, an American flag flew over Tehran, and the American Governor General of Persia appointed by President Truman/Eisenhower would have been the result. That’s not what happened.
We may or may not have fucked up. But it’s anti-American bullshit to say that we decided all events that transpired.
It’s hard to get into this discussion without being picky.
The case of Haiti is quite distinct from any of the others mentioned above. The intervention by the Marines was instrumental in removing the government of Haiti i.e. it wouldn’t have happened without them and the Marines administered Haiti directly for a decade. I think that qualifies as imperialism.
DanielH, the Wikipedia account doesn’t jibe with the first-hand accounts I’ve read by Iranian officers who actually participated in the coup. I’ve read the sources they cite, Kermit Roosevelt’s account, Eisenhower’s comments in his memoirs, parts of Mossadegh’s memoirs, a couple of other books on the subject, and some accounts by Iranian officers involved in the coup. My conclusion is that U. S. involvement consisted mostly in what we here in Chicago call “some spreading around money” and support for the Shah after the coup. The coup would have taken place with or without our involvement. I’d welcome information to the contrary.
My understanding of the situation in Chile is similar, i.e. the coup would have taken place with or without our involvement and, consequently, although both cases qualify as what Dean has characterized as “interventionism” I think that “imperialism” is a stretch.
It does bring up something, though. Is it imperialism if your intervention is to counter-balance the intervention of some other foreign power that is clearly imperialistic?
Dean, I did not call us imperialists. I said what we are doing is similar (which doesn’t mean “same) to what Europeans did with their post-WWI mandates. Do you disagree? The idea was to develop countries (economically and politically) to the point of being able to be independent. Why is the comparison so bad? Granted the transition from US administration to Iraqi control was much much quicker than the time this took with the mandates. I am not trying to smear the US, but just to try to place our actions in context.
Again, the Mexican government is right now as we speak taking action against Hugo Chavez. Including supporting people who are anti-Chavez.
Is that “Mexican Imperialism?”
If Pakistan right now took action to support or not-support the actions of the Bangladeshi government, would that be “Pakistani Imperialism?” Give me a fucking break.
Dean, I was not arguing that Iran was an example of imperialism. All I was arguing was that the US was involved the planning stages of the coup — i.e. it when beyond monetary and post-coup support of the Shah.
Not that I’m not tired of hearing the whining about it after all of these years, but I could see an argument for calling our involvement in the formation of Panama and the signing of that rather attractive treaty giving us control over the Canal Zone as imperialism–even if there’s no way in hell I would have rolled over on that matter the way that Carter did if I had been President.
That last was not written in response to you, Daniel. Give me a bit to cogitate.
Okay — interfering in another country’s politics is not imperialism. Imperialism involves “interfering in another country’s politics”, but also more. That said, I don’t believe non-imperialistic “interfering in another country’s politics” is, a priori, any better or worse, morally, than imperialism.
Have a good night everyone.
Daniel: Good night and sleep well. Now, to answer:
My own view of US foreign policy for the last half-century has basically come down to what I think of as the Spider-Man philosophy. And yes, you may laugh, but I really mean it. It was in those great early Spider-Man comics, and re-iterated in those great movies of recent vintage. And it comes down to this:
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
After World War II, America found itself in that position. To a certain extent it asked for it, and to a certain extent it didn’t. For example, the Americans asked the British to step down their ancient Empire, and the British mostly complied. After being ancient enemies, suddenly we’d become allies, and saved their bacon against Hitler’s war machine. They knew it, we knew it, and they mostly followed our lead. So it goes. If we’d been real rat-bastards about it we would have tried to depose the King, but we didn’t.
So where did that leave us? Oh, Christ, we won the shit lottery that we competed so fiercely to win. NOW what would we do?
So yes, to a great extent we inherited the legacy of what the French and the British and a few others had established in the Middle East. And we punted: we’ve got these Soviet bastards to deal with, so let’s preserve the status quo and keep things on an even keel and prevent the Soviets from taking over the region (which the Soviets were keen to do).
During the Cold War years, this mostly worked. Post Cold War, suddenly the chickens came home to roost in the blink of an eye (a decade or so, in historical terms). And suddenly Americans realized that they were supporting a status-quo not of their own making that was profoundly dysfunctional.
They chose to throw the dice and go for a radical re-ordering. Good or bad, they decided that a fundamental change was in order. And yes, they looked to Iraq as the starting point.
I really think that this is how history will record all these events. Not the cockamamie bullshit about how Emperor Cheney decided to extend American hegemony over the Arab world, or the stupid Shrub went along with it.
Make of it what you will.
I don’t think we are an imperial nation.
I think some of our actions smack of colonial behavior. We are probably economic colonialists. Although if you map out the location of our air force and naval bases in the world, they are in almost all the same places as the British Empire’s colonies.
definition of colonialism versus imperialism at wiki:
The Philippines were taken because at the time the US wanted a large naval base more directly in the Asian theater. Trade with Japan was beginning to bear fruit and certain trades with China were as well. And piracy was and is very common in that area. (My brother flew a fair number of anti-piracy patrols while the Connie was on tour through there back in 1997.)
(theater in this case being meant as a sphere of influence, not combat.)
Robert Kagan actually makes a compelling argument that we are imperialist. His book explains that imperialism is simply a strategy of a great power to preserve the status quo.
Kagan believes that historically imperialism is defensive in nature. This is different semantically from common use of the term (such as the one just cited in Wikipedia) which implies strategy driven by an insatiable need to expand and conquer.
Btw, Kagan’s explanation of the “strategic corporal” in his book is brilliant.
Worst of all is ‘margarine Imperialism’.
Damn straight, Dean.
It’s the Democide we should be concerned with; Democide and the timeless horrors of Tyranny.
What is all this nonsense about “Imperialism” while ignoring the myopic Victorian-era and the desperate Hegelian paternalism that drove it? Toss it on the heap of history with Phrenology, Marxism, Social Justice and the rest of that provincial and collectivist crap.
Where there is no sanctity of the individual — no primacy of the individual vis a vis the State — what difference does the rest of it make?
This is really a debate about Liberty — about Jefferson; about where our boundaries end and their’s begin and vice versa, and the quality of free will and the balancing of the interests among free men, and what to do about those who are not.
I commend our President for standing up. How else to stem the overflow of sewage from the last century into this one? History shows it’s fetid avarice spread by the very European thuggery our founders fled the century prior… a European era idolized by many in our academic institutions today who still mimic the “provincial sophistication and sensibilities” of an era worshiped as if such self-assured divinity was indeed a postmodern fait accompli.
Probably arriving too late for any good, but:
When one wishes to talk about modern imperialism vis-a-vis the historical model, the dual concepts of hard v. soft power need to be considered.
If we think projecting hard power, e.g. employing invading armies, importation of large populations and imposition of either taxation or exclusive trade policies, the US clearly is not an imperialist power.
However, the US has indeed engaged in soft power, advertising, exportation of culture, products and business environments and in that way, sociologists will argue successfully that the US is a soft imperialist power. This isn’t necessarily a negative judgment. It is merely an observation.
What seems to be missing from current US foreign policy is that soft power, while prone to its own problems, projects US influence much more effectively than hard power.
Sociologists will talk about cultural imperialism in a more scientific aspect than activists will. For a segment of society, any cultural influence, whether through imposition or less obvious measures, presents some sort of violence to the culture being imposed upon. This is the base of much of the criticism of globalisation.
Sorry to be so verbose. However, talking about US imperialism is a more complex subject than “yes we are…no we’re not.”
I have often heard rumors that General Otis was hung.
daniel, first of all, sociologists are (generally speaking) idiots. The great majority of of social scientists have been so infected with various -isms that is is nearly impossible to find anyone who can discuss modern issues analytically. In this case, their collective obession with identity poltics renders their judgments suspect, especially when you encounter theses on “race- ” or “gender imperialism.”
The United States has the most powerful economy in the world. That economy will have an impact on how the modern global society functions. Calling that impact imperialism is on the same level as saying rich people in America are imperialist because they can afford bigger houses, and have a greater direct effect on the economy than do poor people.
Dean, I have to agree with Dave Schuler about the Carribean. Our interventions there before 1932 generally involved protecting the interests of large American corporations, or at least the money owed them by the local governments. Basically Uncle Sam acted as a loan collection agent for private companies. On the other hand, it’s a relatively minor difference, in that after FDR’s policy change in 1932, your statement is irrefutably true.
I really have to disagree with a point in your summary of the post-WW2 political climate. the United Kingdom never “agreed” to dismantle anything. That choice was made by the colonies and/or dominions themselves, and the UK gracefully acquiesced. Well, mostly gracefully.
The bottom line is that it was not voluntary. This is how the Truman Doctrine came into being, when the UK admitted that they just didn’t have the resources to protect and nurture the new democratic government in Greece after the war.
Many people tend to point to WW2 as killing off the European empires, but in fact that happened during the first World War. The issue tends to be obscured by the fact that only twenty years passed between the wars, and half that time was dominated by what Churchill called the “economic blizzard,” and Americans know as the Great Depression.
Still, the main point stands. By 1945 the United States was the only major “first world” country in the world in any decent condition. Dean has in some ways summarized post-WW2 US international strategy.
This ignores another long tradition in US international politics: America as a “city upon a hill;” an example rather than a master. John Quincy Adams:
Or to quote Daniel Webster: “We are the friends of freedom everywhere but the guardians only of our own.”
These two philosophies have a long history of competition in our political thought.
Casey,
Well, that depends on which sociologists you’re talking about. No one yet has been able to come up with arguments that refute certain group dynamics as played out in observable fact.
And actually, except for the most ideologically biased sociologists (most, yes, plying their trade in dubious seats of universities) the greater balance of social scientists do not use the imperialist moniker in either a pro or con opinion.
Also, your analogy doesn’t convince. The US’ strength and influence is not merely a function of its great wealth. It is a triumph of culture, even as our critics vociferously deny that there is any such thing as American Culture.
The creation of wealth is one of America’s great gift to the world, but it is by far not the only, or, I would argue, the most important. America’s great contribution to world history is Freedom and Opportunity which has, at its base, little to do with outside wealth.
Certainly, America’s wealth allows it to project its power in ways that lesser countries cannot, but it got that way not through wealth, but the other way around. After WWII, the US (as you say) was the only world power still standing. However, long before the Great War, America was building and projecting its power through an aggressive immigration policy and international trade agreements that often lead to quite a lot of bristling from foreign quarters. To wit: the Japanese rationalization for the Pearl Harbor attack was the Western powers’ virtual embargo of Japan.
Don’t get me wrong; when I write that, from a certain standpoint, that the US is indeed imperialist, I am not saying that this is a bad thing. In fact, as an American Exceptionalist, I see US cultural imperialism as a general good–when done correctly–and not as has been practiced in recent years. The current administration seems to think that the world should love us just because we’re America, damnit! I have first-hand experience with the reactions of Americans who are shocked to hear that the rest of the world does not automatically give us a pass.
What politicos do not realise is that US corporations, for instance, are far more effective is spreading American influence than a hundred armies of diplomats. Of course, that depends on how one defines influence. Do we want to be liked by the few thousand foreign bureaucrats with whom we socialise, or do we want to be loved by the millions who buy our products and long to bask in the American sunshine?
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