American Empire

Paper Summary:

This essay examines numerous historical and political works which explicate the term empire and seeks to determine whether the United States fulfills those definitions.

From the Paper:

"In the late twentieth century, only leftists critics referred to America as an empire. In the present century, however, this label is being more widely. The case for American empire is convincing. America only emerged as an indirect empire during the Cold War, but the strategy and rationale for American empire predate the founding of the country. In "Empire", Dominic Lieven outlines the conditions needed for empire and although the US does not meet all the conditions, Lieven himself has commented that the definition of empire may need revision in order to reflect the contemporary political world. Of the four conditions Liven sets for empire, "great power" is both the most important and the most vague. Michael Mann's book "The Sources of Social Power" provides guidelines for analyzing power. America has great power in each of the four categories set down by Mann. Analyzed according to Lieven and Mann's criteria, America is indeed an empire, though it is closer to the neoimperialist, informal model of empire than to traditional, formal empire. Despite the justification for characterizing the United States as an empire, the term continues to be a dirty word in American politics. By being an empire and refusing to admit that it is one, America is to some extent what Mann labels an "incoherent empire." "

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