The Forging Of The American Empire

From Mexico to Vietnam, from Nicaragua to Lebanon, and more recently to Kosovo, East Timor and now Iraq, the United States has intervened in the affairs of other nations. Yet American leaders continue to promote the myth that America is benevolent and peace-loving, and involves itself in conflicts only to defend the rights of others; excesses and cruelties, though sometimes admitted, usually are regarded as momentary aberrations.This classic book is the first truly comprehensive history of American imperialism. Now fully updated, and featuring a new introduction by Howard Zinn, it is a must-read for all students and scholars of American history. Renowned author Sidney Lens shows how the United States, from the time it gained its own independence, has used every available means - political, economic, and military - to dominate other nations.Lens presents a powerful argument, meticulously pieced together from a huge array of sources, to prove that imperialism is an inevitable consequence of the U.S. economic system. Surveying the pressures, external and internal, on the United States today, he concludes that like any other empire, the reign of the U.S. will end -- and he examines how this time of reckoning may come about.

The award-winning historian delivers a “brilliant and deeply informed” analysis of American power from the Spanish-American War to the Trump Administration (New York Journal of Books). In this sweeping and incisive history of US foreign relations, historian Alfred McCoy explores America’s rise as a world power from the 1890s through the Cold War, and its bid to extend its hegemony deep into the twenty-first century. Since American dominance reached its apex at the close of the Cold War, the nation has met new challenges that it is increasingly unequipped to handle. From the disastrous invasion of Iraq to the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, fracturing military alliances, and the blundering nationalism of Donald Trump, McCoy traces US decline in the face of rising powers such as China. He also offers a critique of America’s attempt to maintain its position through cyberwar, covert intervention, client elites, psychological torture, and worldwide surveillance.

This is a very,very short book, or a long essay, depending on your point of view. It begins with the early attempts to connect Canada to the United states, often against the wishes of the Canadians- and often through force. It ends just about the time of WWI, with Eugen Debs sitting in a prison cell for speaking out against the war, and Jeannette Rankin being one of the few memebers of congress to vote against WWI, not to mention the only one to vote against WWII much later. Mark Twain, Smedley Butler, and others played a role in shaping the American "anti-imperialist" faction.

That the early United States was (or were) referred to as the New Empire would seem nonsensical or flatly erroneous today on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, Europeans and Americans alike viewed the United Colonies as a potential empire existing uneasily within an empire, the British Empire. This perspective impacted the crafting of the Continental Congress and the U.S. Government, whereas the governments of the member-states were viewed as commensurate with the contemporary kingdoms in Europe. Yet today, the U.S. as a whole is typically assumed to be equivalent to a large E.U. state, hence leaving out vital empire-level attributes and dynamics that the American founders assumed would continue to be taken into account in American constitutional law and governance. The basic premise of this book says to Americans: remember, if you forget who you are, you are bound for trouble.

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