Never before in modern history has a country dominated the earth so totally as the United States does today.
—Der Spiegel, German magazine
AG E EMPI R E of
There is certainly at least one way America is exceptional by Jake Highton
12 | RN&R |
OCTOBER 9, 2014
The U.S. Empire today is the largest in world history with 1,100 military bases and outposts spreading over the globe, dwarfing the Alexander, Roman, Ottoman, Hapsburg, Spanish and British empires of yesteryear. President Obama has urged Americans to shift attention to Asia but surreptitiously has increased militarism in Africa from A to Z (Algeria to Zambia). Africa swarms with U.S. military. Tom Dispatch, social media critic, reports, “Base construction, security cooperation engagements, training exercises, advisory deployments, special operations missions, and a growing logistics network, all undeniable evidence of expansion.” Above all, the ever-expanding American empire is the most destructive in history and the greatest disturber of peace in the world—a warmonger without parallel. William Randolph Hearst, who epitomized yellow journalism, boasted that the 20th century was the American Century. It was. And it will doubtless be the same in the 21st century, too. William Blum, historian of the U.S. Empire, published a book in 2000, Rogue State, recording the terrible military history of America since World War II. America has: • Dropped bombs on 30 countries. • Tried to oust 50 governments. • Tried to kill 50 heads of state. • Messed with democratic elections in 30 countries. • Tried to suppress populist movements in 20 nations. The list of Blum’s examples is too long to mention all of them, but the major ones are cited in this article. To begin with, U.S. empire building is nearly as old as the Republic. The “sainted” Thomas Jefferson, slaveholder, coveted all of North America for the United States. When the War of 1812 broke out, the great imperialist wrote to a friend: “The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax, the next and final expulsion of England from the American continent.” No one hates monarchies or denounces religion more than I do. I agree with the great polemicist Diderot: “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” But Jefferson’s comment is a frightful example of the expansionist spirit that has so often gripped America. Forty years later, it became known as Manifest Destiny, the notion that American settlers were destined to expand across the continent. Its twin themes: • The American people are exceptional and their institutions unique. • America’s mission is to spread that superior civilization to the West. Prominent Americans like Lincoln and Grant rejected Manifest Destiny. So did the Whigs, an important political party in the 19th Century. Historian Daniel Howe writes: “American imperialism did not represent an American consensus. ... Whigs saw America’s moral mission as one of democratic example rather than one of conquest.” The Whigs were right, but the “losers” don’t determine history. The rhetoric of Manifest Destiny was used by Democrats to justify the U.S.-instigated Mexican War (1846-1848). America won that war, seizing California and other vast tracts of land in the West. The seizure fulfilled the Manifest Destiny boast to stretch the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Other manifest destinarians wanted to grab a large part of present day British Columbia with their slogan “fiftyfour forty or fight,” referring to the 54/40 north parallel across the Pacific Northwest.
