Imperial Power
by Keith Shirey
6/7/06


I have received e-mails which complain that I am wrong when I assert that the United States is and imperial power or empire. Here is my response:

Wikipedia states: "Empire" is a somewhat ambiguous term. In one sense, the U.S. is uncontroversially not an empire, because it lacks a legal emperor, king, despot, or other hereditary head of state. In another sense, the U.S.
is indisputably an empire, because it possesses sovereignty over territories which it has not annexed as states, such as the Puerto Rico and American Samoa, and in the past the Philippines and Guam. Perhaps the most important component of Empire is the ideology of militarism.

Evidence that the U.S. is an empire is said to be the following:
The genocidal massacre or the forced diaspora of Native Americans, for example in the Trail of Tears (1831, 1838); Mexican-American War of 1848 and subsequent annexation of Mexican territory; The support of the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani in early 1893, the attempt to reinstate the queen in late 1893, and the subsequent annexation of Hawaii in 1898; The Spanish-American War in 1898 and the resulting occupation of Cuba, annexation of Puerto Rico, and Philippine-American War (1899-1913); Use of gunboat diplomacy to allow the building of the Panama Canal (1904-1914); The Vietnam War from the early 1960s to 1973 and the bombing of Cambodia during the war; Numerous interventions in Latin America justified by the Monroe Doctrine in countries such as Haiti, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua during the late 19th century and early 20th century, and intervention in Haiti in 2005-6; Participation in the Iraq War from 2003 onward.

Further evidence the U.S. empire exists is that the forces of the United States Military are deployed in nearly 130 countries throughout the world. While the U.S. is closing some bases, it is opening new bases, particularly in that part of the world where there is oil. For example, According to Ghanaweb.com (General News of Wednesday, 22 February 2006), the United States of America is seriously considering the establishment of a military base in Ghana for the sole purpose of protecting its access to West African oil reports the Insight newspaper Marine General James L. Jones, Head of the US European Command, who made the disclosure said the Pentagon was seeking to acquire access to two kinds of bases in Senegal, Ghana, Mali and Kenya and other African Countries.

More evidence of empire is that supposedly reacting to to the monstrous attacks of al Qaeda on September 11, 2001, President Bush declared that the United States would dominate the world through absolute military superiority and wage preventive war against any possible competitor. He began to enunciate this doctrine in his June 1, 2002, speech to the cadets of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and spelled it out in his "National Security Strategy of the United States" of September 20, 2002.

Bush said that the U.S. has a unilateral right to overthrow any government it wants. Later, Vice President Cheney said there were 40 to 50 possible nations on the U.S. list. This is not a doctrine of preemptive war, to repeat myself, it is a doctrine of preventive war. It has absolutely no basis in international law. The doctrine simply says the the U.S. can rule the world by force if it thinks its domination is threatened by by any nation state. The Bush administration believes that it has the right and duty to invade and conquer any nation-state it desires to and force upon it the economic and governmental structure it chooses.

Perhaps the major component of Empire is militarism. Of course the U.S.
needs to defend itself against those who would attack us, but that is not what we are talking about here.

Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarism for an expanded definition.
Militarism or militarist ideology is the doctrinal view of a society as being best served (or more efficient) when it is governed or guided by concepts embodied in the culture, doctrine, system, or people of the military. Militarists hold the view that security is the highest social priority, and claim that the development and maintenance of the military ensures that security. Militarism connotes the drive to expand military culture and ideals to areas outside of the military structure, most notably in areas of private business, government policy, education, and entertainment.

Militarism is ideologically rooted in or related to concepts of alarmism, expansionism, extremism, imperialism, loyalism, nationalism, patriotism, protectionism, supremacy and triumphalism.

The engine that makes militarism run is money. Professor Jurgan Brauer points out that "Many Americans believe that 19 cents on defense for every
81 cents on non-defense is a reasonable way to spend a tax dollar But by another calculation, the tax dollar splits 68 cents for defense and 32 cents on everything else. It is a common misconception that U.S. defense expenditure is equivalent to the Department of Defense outlays. Instead of $436.4 billion of defense expenditure, as Congressional budgeteers count, government statisticians in the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) counted $548.0 billion for calendar year 2004‹a whopping $112 billion difference.
And by our own calculations, U.S. defense expenditure is much higher than even the BEA's numbers suggest, namely $765.6 billion in calendar year
2004, about $330 billion or 75 percent more than the Department of Defense outlays." http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2005/06/10/twothirds_on_defense.php Brauer further states, "On a per-capita basis, the average American in 2004 then did not pay $1,488 for defense but $2,605. In a word, the military ran on $217.08 per citizen per month, while the remainder of the federal government ran on $103.83 per citizen per month." With Bush and the republicans ideology of perpetual war, we indeed live in a Warfare State.

My view of U.S. militarism has been informed by Andrew Bacevich. He
points out in one of the most acute analyses of America to have appeared in recent years, the United States itself is in many ways a militaristic country, and becoming more so. The president's title of "commander-in-chief" is used by administration propagandists to suggest, in a way reminiscent of German militarists before 1914 attempting to defend their half-witted kaiser, that any criticism of his record in external affairs comes close to a betrayal of the military and the country.

Bacevich argues that to understand how the Bush administration was able to manipulate the public into supporting the Iraq war one has to look for deeper explanations. They would include the element of messianism embodied in American civic nationalism, with its quasi-religious belief in the universal and timeless validity of its own democratic system, and in its right and duty to spread that system to the rest of the world.

This leads to a genuine belief that American soldiers can do no real wrong because they are spreading "freedom". Also of great importance, at least until the Iraqi insurgency rubbed American noses in the horrors of war, has been the development of an aesthetic that sees war as waged by the US as technological, clean and antiseptic; and thanks to its supremacy in weaponry, painlessly victorious. Victory over the Iraqi army in 2003 led to a new flowering of megalomania in militarist quarters.

Many movies and novels, like those of Tom Clancy , glorify violence, military might and technological prowess. They reflect a belief, genuine or assumed, in what the Germans used to call Soldatentum: the pre-eminent value of the military virtues of courage, discipline and sacrifice, and explicitly or implicitly the superiority of these virtues to those of a hedonistic, contemptible and untrustworthy civilian society and political class. I find these attitudes to be widespread in American popular culture.

Also, of particular interest to me, is that the U.S. the army is beginning to imitate ancient Rome in offering citizenship to foreign mercenaries in return for military service, something that brought about the fall of the Roman Empire. Of course, many people are driven into what amounts to the U.S. imperial mercenary army (our boys and girls in uniform) by desperate social and economic conditions that, in a way, force them to enlist.

Finally, Ruling elites have always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources have been allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military is seen as an expression of nationalism, and is used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite. Corporations, labor unions, universities all have a vested interest in supporting the Military-Industrial-complex, and often, militaristic values. The rule here is simply, "follow the money."

The American taxpayer has spent over $15 trillion since the end of World War II on the U.S. Military-Industrial-complex. This is not to argue that some of that spending was not necessary for self defense. But perspective is needed: This amount is more than the amount of money spent on all the existing man-made wealth of the U.S., that is every building, highway, park, factories, cars, and what have you. That helps you imagine the weight of this spending. It's a terrible diversion from the things we desperately need: health care, education, environmental protection, infrastructure improvements, and alternative energy. Its not that we can't afford these things, it's that out Government chooses not too spend money on these things; instead it chooses to pour money into armaments.

In view of the points made above, I would conclude that the U.S. is a militaristic imperial power.