Should We Have Kept the American Empire?

suddenlybananas

This entire article is based on the false premise that the American empire was given up. If anything, it became more powerful and pernicious across the world following WWII, though its power is obviously waning right now.

natbennett

“Only an extreme blood-and-soil nationalist would prefer indigenous anarchy or tyranny to imperial democracy, prosperity, and rule of law.” This sentence is extremely funny in the context of actual ethnographic research on “indigenous anarchy.”

mullingitover

The thrust of the article is that the US made a strategic and moral error by dumping these territories. Left unsaid is that the US collects moral errors like Pokemon cards. If there's a win-win that would mean some non-anglo people would be allowed to win, this US will set itself on fire to prevent it from happening.

jackconsidine

> The economic performance of the states and territories still within the US compared to the nations we let go is evidence that American annexation has large positive effects. “Economic performance” between states and territories though differ dramatically. Look up the GDP of the poorest US state and that of Puerto Rico. And then maybe for good measure a Western European country. I know, GDP is a rotten proxy

diego_moita

I found it fascinating that, when people discuss the US in English there are 2 words that are never discussed and never understood, even if anyone mentions them. On the other hand, if people discuss the US in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian or German, these 2 words are all over the discussion, even if no one says them: "imperialismo americano", "imperialisme américaine", "amerikanischer Imperialismus". The funniest case is Canada: in the English speaking part no one understands the concept, in Quebéc everyone understands. Evidence: read the famous Mark Carney's speech in Davos, he never uses the words, although he was talking only about it. And their country was invaded twice by the Americans (1775 and 1812). The craziest case is the US itself: because they can't even consider the idea they invent a lot of excuses and fantasies to hide: American Exceptionalism is the most pathetic one. Edit: it is funny how every empire invents their own hypocrite excuses for their own imperialism. Romans used the "Pax Romana", Islamic Caliphate and Ottoman Empire used "jihad to convert the infidels", the Spaniards used "give savages the blessing of Catholicism", the British boasted about the "white man's burden". The Americans say "freedom".

profsummergig

While on the subject of alternative colonialism: This is very controversial among Indians, but there are many among Indians who wish the British never left. The major builder of modern Delhi was a person named Sobha Singh. His son, Khushwant Singh, was a major writer/journalist in post-Independence India. The son has written a book about how when the British were in control, his father would sometimes gift fruit baskets to the British managers/bureaucrats (of the Delhi-building project), and they would accept the gifts, but they never asked for bribes (or fruit baskets). After the British left, and Indians (government bureaucrats/civil servants) took over the project, his father had to always pay them bribes to get movement on projects. India had airplane factories (multiple) before and during WW2. They were all shut down after Nehru's nationalization of industries project. It took almost another hundred years until India made planes again (I use the word "made" loosely... they mostly assemble...). Places like Hispaniola (Haiti/DR), Philippines, Cuba would be far, far ahead of where they are today if a benevolent USA still had them in her territories (of course, the "benevolent" is important here, it shouldn't be a vindictive, extractive power).

regularization

The US and Europeans did not make decisions to "keep" countries under subjugation - they were tossed out - in Ireland, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Vietnam, Indonesia and so on. The US lost 50,000 soldiers trying to subjugation the Vietnamese, who would nit bend.

wredcoll

This is, obviously, an incredibly complicated discussion and any attempt to predict what the world would look like now if we changed a decision made 200 years ago is doomed to failure. That being said, as an American, I think we were in a somewhat unique position to allow other states to voluntarily join us but we've always shied away from fully implementing that, basically due to racism as far as I can tell. (For a while you had slave state vs free state dynamics at the federal level which is obviously predicated on slavery existing in the first place, then after that you just had, garden variety racism about brown immigrants and stuff) I think, in general, America deserves some degree of credit for actually making reasonable attempts to "free" the foreign states it ended up in control of, particularly in the pacific region. Obviously, obviously there are many other sins America is guilty of, but as any parent knows, focusing purely on the negatives makes for a child unlikely to improve. The Philippines is a fascinating example of a group of islands that was independent but not exactly a state, then became a colony of spain, then was conquered at least partly accidentally by America, which immediately implemented a long term plan to restore its independence, but didn't do so immediately a large variety of reasons, some of which counted as "paternalism" but others involved legitimate fears that they would just be reconquered by another european country (from memory germany and japan offered to purchase the islands from america after the war and american refusal was strongly influenced by the idea that being a german colony would suck just as much as being a spanish colony). Of course, less than a year after this, America was fighting and killing Filipinos attempting to establish their own independent government (calling them Filipinos is a bit of a misnomer since "the Philippines" as a united state/country/entity certainly didn't exist at the time, so america was fighting one of the larger tribes who lived on the islands and thought they should be in charge of everyone else instead of america). So after killing a whole bunch of native islanders who tried to get rid of americans, america spent the next 50 years basically setting up a system where the philippines would be a free and independent (hopefully democratic) country with no overt american control... at which point the japanese invaded. So america invaded the philippines again . Roughly 75 years after that , the philippines are an independent semi-democratic country that is no more controlled by america than france is. You can tell similar stories about places like cuba and a bunch of other islands, although this contrasts with, say, hawaii, which america invaded and then just kept. Not to mention the actual contiguous bits of the american mainland, like, say, all of it. So, like I said, things are complicated and knowing what actually happened is important to understand why things are the way they are right now, but I also want to make a point about letting past injustices destroy your current life or your children's lives. It is, presumably, easier for me to say, since as far as I know none of my ancestors have lived anywhere that's been conquered for the last 500+ years (although I honestly know basically nothing past my grandparents, so, who knows) but that doesn't mean I'm wrong when I say that people should move forward to what's best for everyone and the most likely thing to happen.

kelseyfrog

> Haiti and Cuba are extreme examples of failure. Haiti and Cuba are epitomes of states who were "made examples of" for defying the economic order. Haiti, firstly, for being the only successful slave revolt in human history(1791), was an international pariah precisely because slaveholders elsewhere didn't want to be similarly overthrown. Cuba, likewise, became a target once the politically powerful came to fear that Communist insurgencies would spread through the nations of Latin America, as they had in Southeast Asia, expropriating private property. The formula is simple: deliberately kneecap the nation economically, then use that as evidence that its economic situation is a consequence of its ideological differences. It's a poor smoke screen for, "we would stand to lose our wealth," yet I'm sure I'll see responses to this that willingly repeat propaganda for property owners to spite themselves.