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a i n t r o d u c t i o n A It is a truth commonly acknowledged that America is an empire, but its meaning is as varied as it is contradictory. To Chalmers Johnson (Blowback ), the presence of America’s military bases all over the world proves its global dominance; to Noam Chomsky (“The United States Is a Leading Terrorist State”), because the United States has often acted like the states it critiques for their indifference to human rights, it is a terrorist state just like the ones it condemns; to Richard Immerman (Empire for Liberty), America has always exercised imperial power inside and outside its national territory, but it has done so to advance the cause of liberty as well as to secure natural resources; to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (Empire), America’s contemporary status as a superpower marks a shift in the structures and logics of rule, in the sense that empire is sustained in the interests of peace, democracy, and liberty through the workings of national , international, and nongovernmental organizations; to Niall Ferguson (Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire), rather than denying its history as an empire, America should acknowledge it and lead the world as a global hegemon. These views about America’s emergence as an imperial power and rise to global preeminence reveal not only the different methodological and disciplinary approaches these scholars use to study America, but the highly contested meaning of “empire.” “Colonialism” refers to the settlement of another country or region and the appropriation of its resources, cultures, and peoples. “Imperialism” is about one region, nation, state, or empire advancing its own interests by directing and managing the internal affairs of another entity, and it does not necessarily involve the settlement of that other entity. “Empire” suggests vast territorial expansion but may not involve direct settlement or even constant intervention; it can be a form of domination and control in which those subjected to imperial rule might have varying degrees of power to direct their affairs—provided xii i ntro d ucti o n they support, directly or indirectly, the ventures undertaken by the dominant power, including waging war to dismantle or protect treaties and alliances . “Control” in this context can mean levying taxes, creating economic and political systems of dependency, using military power to intervene in another nation’s territory or negate a threat, providing skills and training to develop industries or institutions designed to further particular ends, and gaining control of or influencing the technologies and realms of cultural production.1 In the post–Cold War era, America exerts dominance and control across the globe: it has more than eight hundred bases (broadly defined as sites connected to, if not directly used by, the military) in the world.2 The real property maintained by the U.S. Department of Defense includes sites in thirty-eight countries, besides the fifty U.S. states and seven territories . The concluding paragraph of the department’s Base Structure Report states: “Our physical infrastructure provides the framework supporting our military forces globally. . . . Our network of quality operational and support facilities located at sites around the world are core to U.S. combat power, an inseparable element of the nation’s military readiness and wartime effectiveness.”3 America, avers Johnson, is actively trying to expand, not scale down, its military network; it is “doing everything in its considerable powers to perpetuate Cold War structures, even without the Cold War’s justification. . . . The by-products of this project are likely to build up reservoirs of resentment against all Americans—tourists, students, and businessmen, as well as members of the armed forces—that can have lethal results.”4 This resentment generates “blowback” to empire in the sense that America will reap what it sows, as the effects of empire will have an impact not only on Americans, but on people in countries affected by its policies and military bases; the September 11, 2001, attack on America underscores the prescience of Johnson’s arguments, published a year earlier. In Dismantling the Empire, Johnson explains that “‘blowback’ does not refer simply to reactions to historical events but more specifically to reactions to operations carried out by the U.S. government that are kept secret from the American public and from most of their representatives in Congress. This means that when civilians become victims of a retaliatory strike, they are at first unable to put it in context or to understand the sequence of events...

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