Latin
Lines 1.22-1.25
Imperialisms, Ancient and Modern, Cumings, Bruce, "Is America an Imperial Power?," Current History (November 2003). 1.22-25
Not analysed yet
The members of the Clinton administration alsoand they would say predictablypresided over the longest economic boom in postwar American history; involving great leaps forward in productivity from 1995 to 2000 that defied the assumptions of nearly all economists (and kept Greenspan scratching his head as to whether some kind of technological revolution was upsetting his conventional expectations). The new millennium thus. appeared to catch the high tide of American hegemony We all know Clinton's flaws, including those of his diplomacy and warfare, but in 2003 his leadership shines like a beaconas if the Enlightenment were unaccountably followed by the Dark Ages.
ARCHIPELAGO Of EMPIRE
Is there nonetheless in some sense an "American empire?" We can begin again with the question of territorial control: What are the empire's boundaries? How do we rule one nation or area of the world in, and another out? Simply to pose this question is again to denote the differences between classical empires and the post-1945 American realm of action in the world. Empires, whether of the traditional or capitalist type, encompass territory. If the United States has run an empire since 1900 or so, it has been a nonterritorial empire. Until the recent past, the only way in which the term "empire" applied to America was in the multitude of military bases that it maintains around the world. In the aftermath of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States has expanded this militarized structure to its farthest extent in history.
William Appleman Williams began the 1960s discourse on American empire with his classic 1959 book that influenced a generation of young people, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy . The United States had one or two colonies; like the Philippines. But what it really had since the 1890s, he thought, was an "open-door empire," merging the world economy with chunks of territorial control around the world, places where the United States dispatched the Marines (most of which were found in Central America). Is this America's empire? Pethaps, but in Joseph Schumpeter's sense and not Williams'. Schumpeter saw empire as an atavism similar to the later Roman empireredoubling its expansive efforts after losing sight of its goals. He also saw imperialism as a policy choice,that, once implemented, created in its wake a perpetual-motion machine dedicated to the service of empire. Forces called into being for one purpose remain long after they have lost sight of the purpose. This offers a way to think about the US military-industrial complex and its contemporary role in policing a world grown far beyond the old boundaries of American power.