Related Papers
Return to Empire: The New U.S. Imperialism in Theoretical and Historical Perspective (2005)
George Steinmetz
The Heart of Empire? Theorising US empire in an era of transnational capitalism
Sibgha Syed
Contemporary critical theorising on US Empire tends to diverge in two ways. First, more traditional approaches tend to foreground the national basis of the USA's imperial project and the subsequent ongoing inter-imperial rivalry inherent between rival capitalist states and regions. A second 'global-capitalist' approach rejects the notion of US Empire and instead posits the transcendence of a nationally based imperialism in favour of an increasingly transnationally orientated state and global ruling class. I argue that both accounts fail in their singularity to capture the nature and role of the US state within a global political economy. Instead, I argue that the US state has long been both subject to and demonstrative of a dual national and transnational structural logic that seeks to enhance US national interests while reproducing a world order favourable for global capital as a whole. Crucially, the end of the Cold War and the terrorist attacks on 9/11 have exacerbated the tensions between these dual logics; these will potentially affect both the hegemony of American Empire and the future of international relations in profound ways. After 9/11 it has become common to analyse the USA as an empire and US interests in the third world as essentially (neo)-imperialist. This 'new imperial' discourse is typically periodised in relation to either the post-9/11 era or the end of the Cold War. This article starts by outlining these new discourses and then critiquing them by arguing that the US state has long been imperial. I ground the contemporary trends in US foreign policy within the historical development of global capitalism. While historical materialism has long theorised on the relationship between capitalism and imperialism, Lenin's notion of inter-imperial rivalry between leading capitalist states is not sufficiently attentive to the transnationalisation of capitalism and the relatively benign and positive-sum nature of US Empire in relation to other core capitalist powers. Conversely, 'global-capitalist' theorists who posit the transcendence of the nation state and American Empire through the transnationalisation of capital and class fail to fully capture the continuity of a logic of 'national interest' inherent within US Empire. After outlining
New Global Studies
American Empire: A Global History
2019 •
Sahan Savas Karatasli
“US Foreign Policy, Intersectional Totality, and the Structure of Empire,” Third World Quarterly 35, no. 9 (2014): 1566-1581.
John Munro
Historical Materialism
Reflections on Empire, Imperialism and United States Hegemony
2003 •
Simon bromley
Current History
The US and Latin America Through the Lens of Empire
2004 •
Michael Shifter
An unvarnished sense of superiority, displayed proudly on the regional and global stage, has revived the resentment and distrust of Latin Americans toward the United States that had recently shown signs of receding.
Interventions International Journal of Postcolonial Studies
What is an Empire? Assessing the postcolonial contribution to the American Empire Debate
2018 •
April Biccum
The American Empire Debate (AED) erupted in the late 1990s and prompted a research agenda among American international relations scholars that attempts to construct universal political theories of empire to answer the question of whether or not the United States is an empire. Conversely, postcolonial scholars have contributed to the AED without confronting the larger question at its root – what is an empire? This essay is a clarion call to postcolonial scholars and poses the following questions: How do scholars in postcolonial studies respond to the revival of the word “empire” in the public and academic domains in response to America’s role in the international system? What would be at stake in theorizing empire as a form of politics and what would postcolonial theory have to contribute to such an endeavour? The aim of this essay is to point out first that there has been a revival of the word “empire” in the public and academic domains and, given the traditional framing of the disciplines of political science and international relations around the state, this revival is significant, as are attempts to theorize it. As such, this essay is an attempt to deepen the conversation between postcolonial studies and international relationsaround a key term that actually links the two together – empire. It also aims to gesture toward what would happen to our understanding of global politics if we take “empire” as our central analytic.
Filipinx American Studies: Reckoning, Reclamation, Transformation (ed) Rick Bonus, Antonio T. Tiongson
Empire: US States at the Intersection of Diaspora and Indigeneity
2022 •
Dean Saranillio
Taking up the White Man’s Burden? American Empire and the Question of History
johan hoglund
Many political commentators, historians, politicians and laymen inside as well as outside the United States have begun to argue that the US constitutes and empire in the same way as the Roman or British empires. The debate on US empire can be understood in several ways: As an attempt to rethink American historiography; an effort to predict the challenges America is likely to face in the future; an endeavor to establish historical and political legitimacy for an expansive American foreign policy; or as an undertaking to debunk this same policy through historical and political examples. The aim of this study is to survey the ‘empire’ literature, engaging with several of the main authors and analysing the motivations for and implications of the various standpoints taken.
For God and Country - A History of the American Empire
Max Morin
A study of the American Empire, its roots and its development, from the early 19th century to the late Cold War
