# Cumings, Bruce, "Is America an Imperial Power?," Current History (November 2003). 1.31-33

Imperialisms, Ancient and Modern, Cumings, Bruce, "Is America an Imperial Power?," Current History (November 2003)., Lines 1.31-1.33. Latin.

Canonical: https://interlinea.aeterna-institute.org/library/latin/imperialisms-ancient-and-modern/cumings-bruce-is-america-an-imperial-power-current-history-november-2003/1.31

UNILATERAL IMPERIALISM
World War II began for Americans in the Pacific, and it remained the main theater of American warfare until the invasion of Europe in 1944. The United States was preeminent in the defeat of Japan, and proceeded to organize a unilateral occupation of Japan and a general reorganization of postwar East Asian international relations. After the Korean War, the United States maintained a permanent peacetime defense budget of between $300 billion and $500 billion in current dollars. At the same time the American military "locked in" its war gains from the defeat of Japan and the defense of South Korea and Taiwan with a series of military bases that (with the exception of Taiwan) still form the basis of American coercive power in Northeast Asia.
Since 1945 the United States has operated differently in East Asia compared with Europe, with an emphasis on unilateralism, bilateral rather than multilateral diplomacy, and the efficacy of military force. Likewise, the Republican Party has long embraced both tendencies: the free-trade multilateralism and Atlanticism of the Eastern wing, but also the expansionist, unilateralist outlook of Western Republicans, symbolized by the "Asia firsters" of the 1950s. The former was hegemonic on the British model, taking the world economy as its main arena of action. The latter was imperialist, beholden to the myths and realities of the frontier, the cowboy and the cavalry, and supporting unilateral expansion to the West, the subjugation of the Philippines, and eventually China (always, to these foreign affairs naifs, the "China" of their imagination). The reigning hero of this tendency was General Douglas MacArthur, a classic man on horseback, brutalizer of the Bonus Marchers, suzerain of the Philippines, conqueror of Japan who became its benign emperor for six years, only to suffer defeat at the hands of a Sino-Korean peasant army in 1950.

---

Imperialisms, Ancient and Modern, Cumings, Bruce, "Is America an Imperial Power?," Current History (November 2003).. Text: The Latin Library (thelatinlibrary.com), used with permission. Changes: HTML markup removed and the text divided into reading sections by Interlinea.
License: Used with permission (https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/about.html). Source: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/readings/cumings.html.