From: Cub Driver

Good post, Chris. You almost convinced me!

I'm glad I didn't! A few paragraphs in a usenet posting can't possibly be that
persuasive.

I certainly agree that we have not been bent on conquest for a hundred
years. Domination is something else, however. If you weren't American,
you could even argue that the U.S. doesn't have to conquer because we
can dominate without conquest. (Indeed, lots of Americans argue that
way It's merely that the British/French/Belgian/Japanese model of
colonialism doesn't work any longer, if indeed it ever worked; we have
simply carried colonialism to a new
level.

It's interesting that the Spanish-American War episode, which was so very close
to the classic European pattern of colonial imperialism stands as a singularity
in American power projection. It really wasn't what we were all about. That's
why it fell so easily victim to the scorn and satire of Bryan, Twain and Moody,
and was quickly viewed by Americans as an "ope'ra bouffe" imperial adventure
full of cheap jingoism that made the protagonists of the adventure--Hay,
Beveridge, Mahan and even TR--look like ninnies.
But the whole episode, with its noisy fireworks and the hoopla of Hearst
journalism, was marginal to the development of American power. The amasing of
American "imperial" power has scarcely followed the classic European pattern at
all. It has operated by the techniques of trade, investment and profitable
sales in foreign markets (you alluded to this in an earlier post and I was
hoping to draw you into a discussion of this interesting topic). It has not
been averse toward using "dollar diplomacy" to remove the obstructions in the
path of business profits (the Clinton Administration was very gung-ho on this),
to start convenient revolutions or quell inconvenient ones, and it has used
economic and technical aid as needed to secure its interests.
The S-A war did mark the coming of age of the US as a world power, and after
briefly veering into that European colonial rut, the country has stuck to an
amazingly consistant pattern. Since that time, and very especially since WW2,
which focused us wonderfully, the US has surprised both friends and foes by
its assertive diplomacy and an almost bristling eagerness to use American
military power. This policy reflects the basic American outlook or character,
unchanged from earliest days. It can be seen in every foreign engagement we
enter:
The attraction and recoil pattern, the fear of being hoodwinked by foreign
wiles, the chip-on-the-shoulder attitude, the demand for signs of affection
from the beneficiaries of American largess, the huffiness when these are not
forthcoming, the anxious pursuit of "national security," the belief that the
American angel must always, in the end, look homeward, followed by
introspection and the desire to withdraw from world affairs, only to be
followed by a reassertion of raw American power whenever the country encounters
a challenge from which it cannot escape. In the past that challenge was
German, Japanese, Soviet; today it is Islamic. We crush genuine threats with
brutal, unswayable determination--whatever it costs, however long it takes.
I don't believe this is at heart an "imperialistic" pattern: it is
self-defense writ large.


Chris Mark