November 26, 2006
America's current quest to install a system of international law and order in the 21st century---a pax Americana--can, and should be, understood in terms of the United States essentially being an empire, even if the US has no colonies, and it does not annex foreign territory. As Howard Brasted observes in a review of some books on empire at the Australian Review of Public Affairs the US:
...does preside over a network of client states, seeks to expand its frontiers of global power by means of market forces, corporate capitalism, and international monetary organisation, and it regularly sends in gun-ships and guided missiles to topple recalcitrant regimes or prop up friendly ones. It stations significant troop numbers in Asia, Europe and the Middle-East and maintains military outposts---some 725 of them according to one tally---in more than half the countries of the world. In Ferguson's view this is imperialism 21st century style.
The reference is to Niall Ferguson's Colossus: The Price of America's Empire. Since 1991 the word 'empire' now refers to the maintenance of American supremacy in a world of nations. Regardless of any proclaimed commitment to the concept of a self-governing world, self-aggrandisement and self-interest largely informed American expansionism. In short the United States is more imperialistic than Americans have cared to recognise.
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