Asymmetrical Information

A great post! And very true, if we were imperialist Canada would be an American territory. In actuality, we display very anti-imperialist tendencies, based primarily upon our economic and security needs. Look at our actions after WWII, we rebuilt our former enemies into secure economic powerhouses (and good trading partners) in order to shore up the edges of Soviet expansion (a text-book example of "Empire"). One may argue that American businesses exploit third-world workers for cheap wages, a very imperialist evil, but if those companies were not paying the local predominant wage they would a) not have any workers volunteer to work in said factories or b) probably would not be there in the first place, and not providing jobs at all. I see this as more economic sense, the reality of globablization, than imperialist conspiracy. Our actions in Iraq, at it's most text book level, is in the pusute of security. In the end, we will leave a secure, hopefully democratic, and economically self-suficient country that will likely be willing to buy wirpool washing machines and Levi jeans for generations to come. That is our main goal after all, fight less wars and create business oportunites.

As Hannah Arendt argued, American can pursue a more exapansive and interventionist (read: nosy) foreign policy without being characterized as as imperialist. Why? The melting pot! If a significant number of american citizens are from eastern europe, we have more of a right meddling in eastern european affairs. This doesn't really hold true today for two reasons. Our melting pot is being dilluted by time and generations, and we are engaging ourselves in a more "foreign" part of the world, without a substantial number of descendants of that part of the world in our borders.

What's wrong with imperialism? Imagine that Canada and Mexico become hostile for whatever reason. Conquering them would be a perfectly sensible thing to do.

I don't know where the idea that "war never settled anything" came from, but its wrong.

"Imagine that Canada and Mexico become hostile for whatever reason. Conquering them would be a perfectly sensible thing to do."

I don't think that would be considered imperialism. Imperialism would be to conquer them now, without a justifiable reason, so that we can expand our foothold in the world and have more power and territory.

Thoughtful post. Ever heard of the Wolfowitz Memorandum ? You might be interested in doing a search over at Amazon on the words "wolfowitz memorandum" in Pat Buchanan's book "Republic not Empire". Cheers.

Wiki's definition of imperialism: a policy of extending the control or authority over foreign entities...either through direct territorial or through indirect methods of exerting control on the politics and/or economy of other countries.

Let's see...American military presence in 130 countries around the world, an invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq with accompanying occupation/martial law to impose Bush's vision of the world, US-funded NGOs imposing their ideas on Eastern Europe, the list goes on.
Whether you agree with it or not, it's imperialism on a huge scale.

I went to Wikipedia and went to ‘Manifest Destiny’ – I figured I would test your statement that

‘But Americans are not unaware that Manifest Destiny was a nationalist/imperialist impulse; indeed, we are so aware of it that the word "imperialist" is generally attached to it in our textbooks.’

If anywhere would have it, it would be there, as Wiki generally tries to hit on every major idea associated with an entry. There is no reference to imperialism on this page.

So then I went to Merriam-Webster to find out this uncomfortable definition of imperialism:

2 : the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas; broadly : the extension or imposition of power, authority, or influence

Yikes! Of course, every country is guilty of this! And the US is too! So then I went back to that dictionary site and found this for empire:

1 a (1) : a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority; especially : one having an emperor as chief of state (2) : the territory of such a political unit b : something resembling a political empire; especially : an extensive territory or enterprise under single domination or control
2 : imperial sovereignty, rule, or dominion

So how does that reconcile with this statement:

“Most people do not now think of the main body of Russia and China as empires, because they are, in the main, full of people who think of themselves as Chinese or Russian”

This may be literally true for right now. Until the very historically recent breakup of the USSR, I would say most of the people in the US correctly thought of Russia as an empire. It hit on both of the major parts of the definition, large territory and large number of different peoples under a single authority.

These are just asides really, because I don’t want to fall into the trap that most of your commentors do over here in the pit, that trap of discussing something other that what your post addressed.

It is in these two statements:

“His main argument is that our displacement of the Indians by white settlers is similar to that of imperial Russia and China; QED, we are an empire”

“Indeed, the definition that Mr Bertram uses is useless: if an empire is a nation where one or more dominant ethnic groups kicked the asses of smaller or weaker groups and took their land, then every single nation in the world is an empire. Our sins are merely more recent.”

I think you are wrong and here is why: The definition we looked at for empire included the idea that there must be a large territory or large numbers of different peoples involved. Singapore – not big enough. Iraq doesn’t cut it – too small. I think that this critical distinction is just assumed in Mr. Bertrams short (463 word) blog post. Why bother with restating this basic part of the definition? Note that he doesn’t mention small countries, just huge ones.

If the word empire is to have any meaning, we must be considered to be an empire. That’s his point. I don’t like to think that. I take comfort in the fact that an empire doesn’t have to be an evil empire. I don’t think we are an evil empire. But, the US is an empire, by any reasonable definition.

We are the most powerful nation in the history of the world.

The singaporeans are not the original inhabitants of Singapore, and Iraq was, until we kicked them out, most assuredly an empire of the Sunnis extending dominion over the Shiites and Kurds, the latter of whom absolutely do not thing of themselves as, or want to be, Iraqi. There may be some remote Polynesian islands in which the current inhabitants are the descendants of the first humans to set foot on the territory, but pretty much everywhere else is somewhere that has been conquered and reconquered many times. Thus, pretty much every nation consists of an ethnic group which aggressively extended its dominion over the territories of another people.

I agree that Russia looks a lot less imperial than it used to, though there are still a number of ethnic groups, notably the Chechens, that want out. But the fact that we have territories does not, to my mind, make an empire, since the territories we now possess are very happy to to be our territories, and are welcome to leave if they want; we'll let Puerto Rico exit any time it gets enough votes, and I suspect we'd let Hawaii secede if it really wanted to. A voluntary association with us does not say "imperial" to me.

Were we imperialist in the past? Absolutely.

This is so exaggerated as to be almost false, because the context and comparison do matter. You really should have answered, "Barely", because of the stark contrast between our past behavior (even though we wouldn't repeat it today) and that of any other comparable power. For Exhibit A, I offer the Phillipines. In contrast, did Britain prohibit her citizens from owning property in East Africa during the heydey of the empire? I didn't think so...

Like 'fascist', the only meaning 'imperialist' has any more is 'something I disagree with'.

I don’t think the domination of the Sunnis over two other groups of people counts in an area the size of California. Two isn’t a large number, and Iraq is not a big enough piece of land. I really think he just glossed over the ‘large’ component of empire in his post. A mistake on his part, but not enough to say ‘Bah, Mr. Bertram you are totally wrong!”

If you look at the definitions provided from MW, it looks like Imperialism is the way you become an Empire. If you are successful enough at Imperialism, you get to become an Empire. You state that we were imperial in our way we dealt with the Indians. I don’t think there is much awareness of this in the general population, but that’s beside the point. We were Imperial in our expansion west. I say we were successful enough at that to be an Empire. We conquered a large territory. We conquered many peoples.

I would also say that our economic dominance of the world leads to a current classification as an empire. Check out this second part of the definition of ‘empire’:

b : something resembling a political empire; especially : an extensive territory or enterprise under single domination or control.

The connotations of ‘empire’ are what you don’t like.

mickslam raises a couple of interesting points.

First, with regard to Imperial Russia, two things should be clarified. The Russia of the tsars, i.e. Imperial Russia, did conquer many indigenous peoples who did not have national identities at the time. Cossacks (who may dispute they were ever conquered), nomadic tribes in the Arctic, Chechens, Georgians, Azeris, etc. etc. were all brought into the Russian empire by force to one degree or another over several centuries. While that may have been the way of the world, and while some - or even many - of the smaller groups of conquered peoples think of themselves as Russian now, I don't see how we can dispute this as imperialism or empire.

There are also clear similarities between Russian imperial conquest and the settlement of the continental US. Ergo one can draw a logical conclusion about US imperialism.

Second, Soviet imperialism should not be confused with Russian imperialism, even though there is historical overlap. Some nationalities (Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukranians, etc.) were brought into the Soviet empire in the form of 'independent' nations but hadn't been (successfully) incorporated into the Russian empire. The distinction between Soviet and Russian imperialism, therefore, has more to do with annexation of nations (even if nations in a nascent form) in the Soviet case versus conquest of peoples in much less defined groups in the Russian.

Incidentally, the Soviets also had plenty of problems with their various 'nationalities', some of which were legacies of Russian imperialism and some not. The Soviets tried to ameliorate the problems via their usual brutish methods as well as lots of lip service about happy coexistence.

Cheers,

Jane,

I hate to pick nits here, but I will. To at least some extent the displacement of the Native Americans owed more to tragedy than atrocity. Specifically, early American settlers were by nature toxic to the Native population. Even approaching with the best of intentions was tantamount to a death sentance due to viruses.

mickslam: "I take comfort in the fact that an empire doesn’t have to be an evil empire. I don’t think we are an evil empire. But, the US is an empire, by any reasonable definition."

Also, for what it's worth, we probably didn't forcibly 'displace' nearly as many Native Americans as a generation of John Wayne films would have us believe. Many, if not the vast majority, were wiped out by European diseases** before any Euroamerican ever set eyes on them. Hence the popular conception during our westward expansion that it was our destiny to occupy a vast, empty land that was surely put there just for us. This does not excuse our mistreatment of the survivors, which continues to this day.

*"But, but, but.. 30,000 Iraqis have died since we invaded!" Yes, and it's estimated that Saddam killed about 2.5 million of them during his 25-year reign, so doesn't that mean there are 170,000 Iraqis alive today that wouldn't be if we hadn't invaded? (Okay, that's a horrible abuse of statistics, but still..)

**As far as I know, the popular belief that we deliberately infected the Indians with smallpox by giving them disease-infected blankets can't be substantiated. In the one case where we did give the Indians blankets (from the steamship Yellowstone) that may have been infected, smallpox broke out long before the incubation period would have allowed. There's also the wee quibble that the disease theory was far from widely accepted prior to 1800 when most of the Indians were wiped out.

Of course we're an Empire, just like the Borg!

Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated. Bwahahaha!!

Swen,

" Indeed. What has this great Pax Americana wrought? Just the longest period of peace and prosperity, for the greatest number of people, that the world has ever seen*. We're such big bullies that we're dragging people screaming and kicking out of their outhouses and giving them clean running water, safe food, medical care, paying jobs, and all the other trappings of civilization. Surely we should all be damned to hell for that."

I concur. Do you concur, Swen's evil twin? DO YOU CONCUR?

I CONCUR. WE WILL BE DAMNED (with faint praise at the very least).

Swen,

Unfortunately, I fear the second part of your statement is true, that we will be damned by the very people we've helped.

[Sigh] It was ever thus.

mickslam,

Step back, take a deep breath, and consider the bottom line of what you are arguing. Iraq, a nation comprised of one ethnicity dominating two others, a country that seeks territorial expansion and resource acquisition by invading its neighbors isn't imperialistic. But the United States, a nation whose interventions have consistently been aimed at preventing conquest by others and has consistently moved to restore the sovereignty of any territory taken post haste, is. Sorry, mickslam, but to accept your views, one has to assume that the term "imperialism" has no meaning.

mickslam,

To expand on Bill's point, your argument that size is more important to the definition of empire than, say, a power that claims sovereignty and extracts resources from a foreign land is a bit hard to swallow. One of Jane's points mentioned the Belgian Congo which, I would suspect, wasn't large enough to be considered part of an empire by your reasoning. What about Portugal's former colonial adventures? Heck, Denmark had something of an empire for a while.

In my opinion, size is only important in differentiating large empires from small ones.

As an Australian the history of my country leads me to think that all of the tests proposed are faulty in that they try to make black and white something that is very much shades of gray.

The English came to Australia and drove the aborigines off the land and came close to genocide (bad), but they settled and their descendents are there still (good), they certainly expected the empire to profit by exploiting the resouces of the new land (bad) but they left behind a free and prosperous country (good).

It was undoubtedly imperialism in the sense that Australia was part of the empire, but that doesn't really tell you if it was good or bad.

Reminds me a little of a scene from the movie Monty Python's Life of Brian. The leader of the Jewish underground played by John Cleese asks "what have the Roman's ever done for us?" After a brief pause soeone says "sanitation". Then someone says "roads". Then "aqueducts" and so on and so on.

Bill,

I think Iraq is imperialistic. I just don't think they are very good at it, and therefore not an empire.

I think, like Jane, that every country is imperialistic to one degree or another.

I think the US is pretty imperialistic. We were the first country to realize that conquest of the land is less beneficial than the conquest of the economic system. We fought a huge war with the USSR over this, and kicked their butt. We've convinced China - capitalism is better. Here is the second half of the def of imperialism:

"the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation...by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas; broadly : the extension or imposition of power, authority, or influence"

By this definition we are extremely imperialistic, and because of our unprecedented success, an Empire. Just because we are quite literally the good guys doesn't change anything.

mickslam,

But the clear fact of the matter is that we don't control China, and have no intention of doing so. In the case of the Soviet Union, we had no intention of controlling their political or economic life. We simply prevented them from controlling that of others. In fact, a great many other nations entered both markets to a far greater extent than we did. Think about it, if your model described reality, the a very large portion of the U.S. economy would be made up of non-domestic trade. Instead, we see diminimous levels of such trade in comparison to the rest of the world.

no one that I have ever met has tried to justify it

This is astonishing to me. And us on the left are accused of living in some sort of echo chamber! For starters, I get undergraduates *every quarter* who work very hard to do just that, generally trying to use Hobbes and Locke to do it. The red state branches of my family construct similar arguments, without the early modern political theorists guiding them.

Notes to commentors:

First:

"wiki" is not a synonym for "Wikipedia".

A wiki is a technology. Folks use them for all sorts of reasons.

Wikipedia is one particular wiki.

Second: Wikipedia, while a stunningly great resource, should rarely if ever be quoted as the definitive word on anything. E.g. from above: "...Wiki's definition of imperialism: ...". Whatever the definition is, it reflects only the MOST RECENT EDIT.

Bill,

I think our defeat of the USSR greatly expanded our power in the world. What do you think?

This is sometimes happens when one empire fights another of roughly the same power and wins. The capital is not pillaged, the women are not enjoyed, the treasures not moved. But the power of the victor is expanded just the same.

We don't control China. They've decided to copy parts of our method of domination, and they hope to use the power of 1B consumers to guide them to victory. I hope the current rulers lose because they are totalitarian &*%^@@.

I too would like to defend out treatment of the Indians. Sometimes it was shameful, but sometimes it wasn't.

Conflict with many tribes was more or less inevitable. A lot of tribes very violent and warlike. They engaged in practices like slavery, rape, and torture. For example, did you know that when the Chreokee were forced to travel the infamous "Trail of Tears," the Cherokee were allowed to take their (African-American) slaves with them?

And Indians had been doing these things to one another for centuries; they were not a reaction to provocation by American settlers, most of whom just wanted to farm. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Indian raids on settlements were a fact of life. A farmer might return home to find his wife and daughters raped, tortured, and murdered. His younger children might be taken as slaves by the tribe. Under the circumstances, conflict between settlers and Indians was inevitable.

Not all tribes engaged in systematic rape, murder, and torture. But a lot of them were, and Americans should not be ashamed of standing up to and vanquishing these savages.

Americans should be ashamed of some of the excesses that we went to during the Indian wars. For one thing, we tended to treat all of the tribes, even those that were not warlike, pretty shabbilly. And we did break a lot of treaties, there is no doubt about that. The Indians did too -- a lot of chiefs were not strong enough leaders to make thier braves stay on the reservation, and for the young warriors the allure of murder, plunder, and rape proved too strong, so they'd leave the reservation and break the treaty -- but that doesn't excuse our breaches.

And when we got into a serious confrontation with one of the more warlike tribes, we used some despicable methods. We'd routinely murder women, children, and the elderly. This was shameful.

But the story of the American frontier as taught in schools today simply does not recognize the fact that much of the conflict between settlers and Indians was inevitable. Indians had been raping, murdering, and torturing one another since time immemorial. When the European settlers came, these primitives were suddenly confronted with a stronger, better organized, and more determined enemy, and they got wiped out by a militarily superior foe. This was inevitbale, the excesses are shameful but the conflict itself is not.

It occurs to me that the US does not meet the definition of an imperialist state simply because that is NOT our policy objective. We don't want to "rule" other states, though we would like to influence most (this is called foreign affairs, the concept has been around longer than the nation state). This is different from, say, Imperial Britain, whose major policy objective was to "Make the world England". Our major policy objective as near as I can tell from the halls of power here in DC are: make the world secure for democratic/free economic interests. These days that translates into the War on Terror, pushing/supporting democratic values i.e., Ukraine, Georgia, and encouraging a free-market atmosphere in China. No part of that includes directly ruling a foreign state for the purpose of exploitation. "Ah", you say, "what about Iraq? You imperialist dog, the US freaking OWNS Iraq right now". Well, not quite, one may have noticed all that trouble that we have gone through to push election after election, build a stable military there, and rebuild and infrastructure. The US gains nothing from "owning" Iraq or any of its problems for any longer than needed, but we would like to keep the option of buying their oil and selling them washing machines and financial services.

Really, the only empire the US has effectively built over the last 50 years is the Empire of American Culture. In fact, maybe that is the conspiracy: McDonald's is an evil Neo-con plan to take over the world one cheeseburger at a time!

Can someone tell me a nation we rule? Who by calling a press conference and saying we want the U.S. bases closed and the U.S. military gone would not have it happen? The definitions of "imperialism" I have seen on the left redfine what has been known as imperialism for hundreds of years. With no justification.

mickslam,

I think our defeat of the USSR greatly expanded our power in the world. What do you think? This is sometimes happens when one empire fights another of roughly the same power and wins. The capital is not pillaged, the women are not enjoyed, the treasures not moved. But the power of the victor is expanded just the same.

We don't control China.They've decided to copy parts of our method of domination, and they hope to use the power of 1B consumers to guide them to victory.

I hope the current rulers lose because they are totalitarian &*%^@@.

I think it's worth a shot to dispute the notion that America's actions toward the native americans were imperialistic, or even necessarily shameful. Certainly tragic, but beyond that it's difficult to make sweeping generalizations. Keep in mind that the diseases that caused population crashes in native american tribes were mostly spread accidentally. There is no more reason to blame European immigrants for that tragedy than there is to blame the Chinese for the black plague that devastated European populations. Also, in regard to warfare, its worth keeping in mind that many native american tribes purposefully made war against European settlers (whether they had a good reason to or not). They also, as so many people tend to forget, allied themselves with various foreign powers in such wars. Tribes allied with the French, British, Spanish, etc. to make war against Spanish, French, British, etc. colonies. They were not innocents, nor were they powerless, nor were they blameless.

The narrative of the noble savage being victimized by the white man is largely a manufactured conceit composed after the fact. Its believability rests almost solely on the sympathy for native americans that comes from having ended up the losers in the fight. Nevertheless, it bears little resemblence to the truth.

For a similar example, look to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its perception.

Robin,

I don't think it is relevant that most Native American cultures were also willing to war for personal gain. All of the cultures and nations that Rome conquered were also warlike and perfectly willing to invade and sack their neighbors -- they just weren't as good at it as Rome was. Rome was an empire not because its enemies had been minding their own business, but because it ruled the nations it conquered as territorial possessions.

The reason why "manifest destiny" wasn't imperialistic, in my opinion, is that it was done with the intention of making all of the territory part of the United States, rather than making it territory *controlled* by the United States. "Expansionist" is a better term than "imperialist".

Whenever American forces are abroad, the American public wants them back home. The American sentiment is far more isolationist than imperialist. Few Americans wants American bases in Iraq one hundred years from now, and no Americans desire an "Empire or Commonwealth [that] lasts a thousand years".

During the Soviet era, American forces were in West Germany with the consent of the Germans. If Americans were imperialists, we would have immediately expanded our presense in Germany with the fall of the Soviets. At the very least, we would have expanded into East Germany as well.

Not only did we not increase our forces, not only did we not expand into East Germany, we cut our forces to nearly nothing and handed sovereignty back to Germany.

How much less imperialistic can you get than that?

We had every opportunity to take over a foreign country, and we got up and left. Every time we take troops out of Germany, it's the Germans that are complaining.

The only time I can point to America being truly imperialistic was the Civil War. The Southerners were a culturally distinct people, they had territorial integrity, they wanted to leave, and we used military force to stop them.

In my opinion, stopping them was a good thing, but it's still imperialistic.

I'm not quite clear. Are you arguing that the USA is not an empire because its expansion was horse-borne not ship-borne, or because it exterminated Indians rather than ruling them?

"Our exceptionalism comes from the fact that, for example, we actually lived here, rather than simply trying to ship the booty back home across the sea. There is a difference between having an overseas empire and having a local one; Russian and Chinese expansionism may not be superior to the European kind (although I would argue that, for all its brutality, in many cases it was), but it has a very different character."

Funny, since American and British advocates of Empire took exactly the opposite position: sea empires were better than land empires - they were based on mutually beneficial commercial arrangements and prevent changes in the core that make it impossible to have both a republic and an empire. There's some merit here. After all, Pacific Islanders got a better deal from the US, in general, than Amerindians.

At some level, this is all pretty silly. Empires and processes of imperial expansions vary tremendously on how shitty (or good) they make life for those they conquer/colonize/subjugate. A number of South Asian writers point out that, as bad as many of the consequences of the British Raj were, they were lucky it wasn't the Germans or the Belgians who ruled them. This is a completely independent issue from whether empires and imperial expansions - including US westward expansion - share similarities that make it useful to compare and contrast them.

Comments are Closed.