American history

After World War II

After helping defeat Nazi Germany, the United States occupied the southern portion of the Western sector of Germany (what later became West Germany) for ten years (1945 to 1955). More intense was the occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1951, during which time the US occupation force, led by General Douglas MacArthur staged a dramatic restructuring of Japanese society in order to prevent the nation from re-emerging as a military threat.

As with most aspects of American imperialism the nature of these more recent events are still disputed (especially in the United States itself), as many believe that they were not genuinely imperialist. Many of the post-war actions were implemented as the result of Cold War policy and anti-Communist sentiment, which were the basis of much of United States foreign policy.

During this period, the United States actively intervened in the politics of many nations, usually for the stated purpose of curbing the expansion of the influence of the Soviet Union, which, it was asserted, quite openly employed imperialistic policies.

Some critics alleged that the United States' adversarial attitude toward the Soviet Union and anti-Communist sentiment (sometimes bordering on paranoia or even mass hysteria) caused the American government to become needlessly imperialistic, either by propping up or overthrowing foreign regimes on potentially questionable or suspicious grounds.

Other critics, especially those on the far left went even farther, alleging that the threat of Communist or Soviet expansion was a largely non-existent, and that the United States was simply meddling in the affairs of other states for more openly imperialistic purposes, such as gaining control of natural resources, land, or military bases.

This left wing thought became prominent in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly as a result of the backlash against the Vietnam War. Leading advocates of this new anti-imperialism included Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, and Tariq Ali.

The most notable aspects of this period tend to be American military interventions in areas such as Vietnam, Grenada, and Iraq. Many would argue, however, that cultural and economic imperialism of far greater import.

1. Europe

During the 1960s and 1970s it became fashionable to view the Soviet Empire in eastern Europe as comparable to the American domination of western Europe. It was frequently argued that, through economic and military pressure, the United States pursued hegemony just as aggressively as the Soviet Union. The post-revisionist school, which, since the fall of the USSR, has come to dominate the study of Cold War history, has rejected this view, arguing that the full extent of Soviet aggression has become apparent as a result of the opening of the Kremlin's archives.

2. The Third World

During the Cold War the United States maintained an active presence in many Third World nations, especially in the form of spy groups and intelligence-gathering agencies. These groups often earned a reputation for actively meddling in the governments of many nations, and in some cases were blamed for orchestrating coups d'état or assassinations.

3. Iraq

Declassified British Cabinet papers, published in The Guardian in 1994, indicate the possibility that the CIA and MI6 both provided backing for the 1963 military coup of Iraqi Colonel Abdul Salam Arif which overthrew Brigadier General Abdul Karim Qassim. Qassim had attempted to nationalize the Iraq Petroleum Company, of which U.S. companies were major shareholders, and in order to assert Iraqi rights to the territory of Kuwait. Following the coup, both these policies, disapproved of by the governments of both the U.S. and the United Kingdom, were abandoned.

4. Cultural imperialism

Since the end of the Second World War the United States has been dominant in most cultural industries, and has often been accused of cultural imperialism. American movies, television, food, and music are popular throughout the world. Many argue that this serves to inculcate populations with American values, while at the same time destroying indigenous cultures.

This is often of greatest concern in other developed nations such as France and Canada. However, American cultural imperialism can not be considered intentional on the part of the United States government, as the government plays no pertinent role in these industries. The lack of government role or investment in these industries makes the spread of American movies, food and the like essentially a side-effect of capitalism and foreign consumers' own desire for American culture than of any insidious U.S. effort to spread its culture abroad, although this expansion is often condemned as such.

It can be argued that for any nation to seek to "preserve" (viewable as a euphemism for "impose") a national cultural identity for its citizens, by openly condemning external "interference" in native cultures, and opposing the freedom of individuals to arbitrarily desire, select, and mix cultures, or adopt foreign ones, for the express purpose of maintaining a perceived "ideal" of national cultural "purity," is an attitude conceivably described as "Cultural Fascism".

Proponents of this view argue that not only is "Cultural Imperialism" a misnomer and an intellectually invalid concept, but is by nature a culturally fascist accusation or retort against cosmopolitanism, and, ultimately, racist. This is part of a larger world view known as Circular Political Theory (the farther you go to the extreme left, the closer you come to the extreme right, and vice versa), which interprets so-called "anti-imperialist" movements and the "new leftism" as merely superficial reworkings of classic fascism.

5. Late 20th century

While for most of the United States' history imperialism has been a term used by critics to decry American policies, in recent years some have adopted the view that some forms of imperialism are desirable. Michael Ignatieff argues that American interventions should enforce intrinsic notions of human rights, and should have a form of "Empire Light" to do so. On the right-wing there are now thinkers who believe the United States should aggressively pursue a sort of democratic imperialism. Oft-cited proponents of this philosophy include Paul Wolfowitz and William Kristol.