Hmm tough choice,have my differences with a neighbour go through a court of law with an advocate AND a written code of law or rely on the memory of a druid who is using mystical influence to guide his decision.
Do I have a bowel movement in a hole in the ground (If lucky) and have its presence around me until it decays or do I use a toilet connected to a sewer system?
Well I wont go on because obviously I’d much rather live in a hut in the woods then a marble palace in Rome.
So supporting a leadership that supports our interest in the region isn’t something that Empires do? The involvement of the British don’t change it. So the British were pursuing their Imperial interests as well.
So what? None of that is relevant. We forced them into a particular governmental/economic model. And it’s not different than you’ve heard before because you are actually arguing against arguments you’ve had with other people in the course of this. I am not the only person who thinks the US is an Empire that you’ve spoken to.
Yes, basically they are the same. Lets call a spade a spade. And no, not every major nation on Earth would be an Empire because not every major nation on Earth can dictate terms to the vast majority of nations on the planet. If you’re looking at France or England for instance, no one is disputing that they DID have Empires and they still have some residual benefits from those Empires.
No not at all. Quite the opposite. I am saying that you’re explaining the mechanisms by which the Empire works and saying, “See because of these mechanisms it can’t be an Empire!”
Right, we as part of our Empire needed to control the world economic system so we had to oppose communism in favor of our preferred capitalism. And yes, what you describe is ‘resisting our hegemony’. They were hostile because we wanted to control their political make-up.
Umm, much more favorable terms? We are the richest nation ever to exist. And you have it backwards. In an Empire the wealth of the world draws toward the CENTER, not the opposite. So we are acquiring THEIR products because we are wealthier.
Yes it does.
Your use of the term ‘comic-book’ is unimpressive.
You have a very Romanticized view of Imperial life to say the least. I’d rather live in a High-Rise Penthouse apartment than my second floor three bedroom!
Being Roman meant living in a marble palace for a tiny fraction of the Imperial population.
I recall the time that Isaac Asimov responded to someone asking if he’d like to live in ancient Greece so he could talk to the ancient philosophers; his response was “Of course not ! I’d probably be a slave !” Given the choice between being a free German and being a Roman slave, I’d certainly choose to be the free German.
Of course we did; we re-wrote their laws for our own advantage and built multiple “enduring bases” there, among other things. We tried to reshape them into a colony; it has failed miserably because they resisted, and because Bush and friends tried to do it on the cheap. Just because we failed doesn’t mean we didn’t try.
That’s nothing but a pre-emptive attempt to handwave any criticism on my part as “threadshitting”. Mostly because America’s behavior HAS been awful and you have no good defense of it; all you can do it hope to shut me up with irrelevant insults.
It’s also a ridiculous thing to say in a thread that asks if America being an empire is a bad thing; that question demands moral judgement. And to answer it, America’s influence on the world has largely been a destructive one; call it an empire or something else, it’s bad.
Welllll, if you expand your scope of discussion beyond the past decade or two, and account for other things besides Bushly behavior, America has done a fair bit of imperial hegemonic activity like fighting nazis and humanitarian aid and the like. It shouldn’t be too difficult to arrange a way to assess american influence to make it less of a wash.
And supporting dictatorships and terrorists, encouraging torture, overthrowing democracies, multiple wars, economic exploitation, and so on.
Après moi, le déluge. :rolleyes:
I agree with this. We have always been an Imperial nation, we started as an arm of the British Empire and then split off and went on to conquer the continent from coast to coast by the James K. Polk administration. Commodore Perry forced open the ports of Japan when they didn’t want to trade with us, then there was the Spanish-American war and so on. Our first foreign military adventure the fight against the Barbary Pirates under Jefferson was a matter of our emergence from isolation being forced upon us, but very few of them have been about that.
I agree with Der Trihs that we are an Empire, but I disagree with him on his ‘Evil Empire’ take. The United States as far as Empires go is probably the least evil in history. I don’t believe that we could simply not be an Empire, if it’s not us then it’s someone else, and I think the lesson we took away from World War II is that the someone else can be a lot worse than we are.
Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos Hang on to the goodness of American Imperialism as long as you can. Pretend we are magnanimous and kind leaders who wish the best for countries we take over. Then explain Bremer’s Rules when he took over the leadership or Iraq and tell me how they were something other than a economic take over and a new financial order. it is very clear what it was about. These rule appeared instantly. They were however planned long in advance. It was a business move.
Thank you for your brilliant participation in the thread. Try not to drip on the carpet…
You are starting with the assumption that the US is an empire and then thrashing about to find examples to suit your premise. You could prove that America is a buttercup using this same methodology. Basically it all hinges on one’s definition of ‘empire’…obviously you are using mswas’s definition of what a ‘modern empire’ is, and then constructing your argument from there.
To me the first prerequisite of an empire is having an emperor. Secondly is exercising DIRECT (imperial) control of the supposed empire. Examples of this would be things like the British Empire, French Empire, Austrian Empire…Roman Empire, etc etc. The US doesn’t look like ANY of those, either in how it exercises power or how it handles trade. Obviously if you make up your own definition though it fits perfectly.
No…you certainly aren’t the only person who claims the US is an empire. You have the whole making up the definition to suit your data thingy in common with the other ones however.
The reason it’s relevant is that it doesn’t fit the model of past empires…which was my point.
Sure…they DID have an empire. But by your definition they still do, since they also attempt outside influence of foreign countries (including our own). You used an example of such when you commented about Iran. There are several others…and many concerning France as well. And Germany. Russia. China. Almost any major nation would be an empire by your definition…which would so diffuse the term as to make it meaningless.
Instead of trying to torture ‘empire’ to fit your definition why not call the US a hyperpower or something…put it in it’s own terms instead of a loaded term that doesn’t really fit the historic model?
You attempted to use an example that didn’t work so you handwaved it away. It’s not an example of the US exercising imperial power, or of the US being an empire.
Buttercup
And lose jobs because of it. If we were truly exercising imperial power we would FORCE them to buy our products and to sell us theirs at hugely favorable exchange rates to us. One has but to look at the British EMPIRE to see examples of this (does tea ring a bell? manufactured goods? India? China? That whole American Revolution thingy?). The fact is we don’t exercise imperial control, we don’t have an empire and the reality is that we run some pretty hefty trade deficits with several countries…and that this situation has been and is quite unfavorable to us in many ways, especially short term.
Never bet against a Sicilian when death is on the line…
As is your made up definition of ‘empire’ and the amount of jury rigging it takes to make it fit with the US. What can I say? We are both unimpressed.
-XT
Actually I bet if you polled the people who think the US is an Empire and asked what they thought about how I am using the word they’d say they agree and that it’s not idiosyncratic at all.
Ok the only one you have right is that we don’t have an Emperor. As for the rest, it seems like we are pretty directly involved in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Der Trihs Do you find how I am defining Empire to be strange in any way?
And Babylon wasn’t exactly like Rome who were not exactly like the Sassanids who weren’t exactly like the British so what’s your point?
Yes, they do still have remnants of an Empire. The British and the French also did not have an Emperor. Reagan called the USSR the Evil Empire, was that meaningless hyperbole? Because they didn’t have Emperor either.
The historic model of Empire has changed depending on which Empire was in power. The word Hegemony works well.
No, it works just fine, to many people, you’re the one who is handwaving things away. And it IS an example of the US exercising imperial power as we are the ones who disarmed them and then reorganized their society in the first place.
We lose jobs and we gain jobs. This line of argument goes nowhere because domestically we are fabulously wealthy. It’s possible that our star is declining, but that doesn’t make it not an Empire. For most of the twentieth century the United States WAS the world’s net exporter. You can assert all you want about ‘reality’, but your examples are poor. Having trade deficits isn’t the end all be all of foreign relations. And we DO exercise DIRECT control as we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, as we did in the Balkans in the 90s and Vietnam in the 60s and 70s.
As I’ve said, I am hardly ‘making up’ a definition of Empire. There are plenty of people who disagree with you who would be just fine with how I am using the term. You are just using this as a very cheap tactic to dismiss the very topic by claiming any definition but your own is simply ‘made up’.
An empire is primarily a money-making enterprise, and the British Empire was profitable to the ruling class, and to some extent the common people, of the UK. The colonies were full of raw resources, cheap labor, and customers for British manufactured goods. But global economic conditions have changed. In a “flat” world, an empire is pure expense for little return. America’s global military hegemony has only military purposes.
How are US multinationals any different in this respect when the US has the military means (sometimes legitimate sometimes not) to help open up markets for them to invest in? I’m not saying the US does military adventures purely for this purpose, but sometimes it has. How is this different from the previous empires which preceeded it?
That’s how it worked for American business interests in the Caribbean and Central America in the early 20th Century, to be sure; the Marines would prop up any government that offered a favorable environment to United Fruit, etc., and crush any rebels against such a government. But it’s a different world now. Latin American states won’t be bullied by us any more. Afghanistan is not much of a market; maybe there were some hopes for Iraq in that regard but it hasn’t worked out too well. And, yes, the U.S. motives for the Iraq War were primarily economic, but of a somewhat different and more complicated nature than the traditional colonial-imperialist agenda. The U.S. military hegemony does have an economic function, broadly speaking, in keeping the sea lanes open and safe for shipping; but there are not many threats to shipping nowadays anyway, beyond a little penny-ante piracy in certain coastal waters.
BrainGlutton How can you say that when America’s wealth was on a sharp increase across the board since World War II? Besides a blip in the 70s and possibly now America’s wealth has increased incredibly. That seems like an ideological stance with little backing by the facts. America has clearly benefitted economically from the world order it props up militarily.
Are you asserting that some successes cancel out the failures? And that ones that are that historical still carry the same weight as more recent fuck-ups?
It is a non sequitur. If you’d like me to say bad things about the British Empire as well, I’ll be happy to oblige.
No, I’m stating that using two recent examples of alleged US imperialism would be as bad as me using Germany and Japan to determine on a whole, whether or not the US ‘Empire’ so to speak, was a legacy for good.
And I’d say that if you stuff up even one country, even if you save a dozen, the bad outweighs the good. Especially if your stuff-ups are as malicious in intent as Iraq was.
By your own measurements could you give a few examples of nations then who’s good outweighs the bad?
-XT
Canada seems to do OK. They’re in Afghanistan, sure, but not Iraq. Balance that against being on the right side of 2 World Wars and I think they come out ahead.
We won’t hold the South African war against them.
Most scandinavian countries seem to have the hang of things when it comes to positive meddling.