When someone wants to talk about imperialism, I tell them ‘let’s talk about the map,'” says smiling Daniel Immerwahr, professor and director of the Department of History at Northwestern University, who assures that he “only talks about facts.” He now he publishes How to Hide an Empire. History of the colonies of the United States (Captain Swing), where he tells several episodes of the history of the United States territories outside the continent and the inhabitants of the “empire”. A word, “empire,” that Americans readily apply to other countries, but rarely to their own.
Even today, the US Constitution does not include the three and a half million citizens who live in the so-called territories.
Exact. The people who live there do not have the ability to vote for president or representatives in Congress, they are not covered by the laws in the same way, and many people in the country do not consider them Americans. In addition, all the territories have a lower GDP per capita than the rest of the states and are more vulnerable to environmental catastrophes.
What is this discrimination based on?
In the United States there is a myth that the so-called territories existed, but they ended up becoming states on an equal footing with the others. But this is not true, there are many territories that have never become states, and almost always the determining fact to make this distinction has been the number of whites. There are exceptions like Hawaii, but the story of America’s growth has been about securing white rights.
It says the US has 750 military bases in 42 countries. Are these guarantors of their hegemony?
Unlike France or Great Britain, the United States adopted a model of empire that I call pointillist, with hundreds of islands, military bases, and emplacements across the globe. Perceived as a threat or as protection, the US is involved in the foreign policy of all countries. Since 1942 there have only been two years, 1977 and 1979, in which it has not been fighting another country. We often think of US hegemony as having more money than other countries or a bigger army, which is true, but the way the US exercises its supremacy is by ensuring the security of the planet, and it does so through through all these enclaves without controversy.
Maintaining an empire is expensive.
The United States has suffered a lot to maintain hegemony. American taxpayers have neglected public services because of military spending. There is also the cost of the wars that the United States wages to maintain its hegemony, which are enormously expensive. Then there are the human costs. The consequence of living in a country that is constantly preparing for war is a highly militarized culture. One of the causes of our current political crisis is that there are guns everywhere.
“The people of the American empire have been shot, bombed, starved, interned, dispossessed, tortured and experimented on. What has not been done with them, in general, is to see them, â€he says.
It is almost impossible to argue that the empire has been good for other countries or for the people in their colonies. Yes, there has been some business success like Sony, or some musical success, like the Beatles. But the empire has been very destructive to the people who have had to live in its shadow.
Does Joe Biden continue with this line on foreign policy?
Lately there is a strong exhaustion and hostility towards the war. Trump was elected because he could say “Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq war and I wouldn’t have.” He presented himself as an anti-war candidate. But the Democrats also demonstrated this sentiment by withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. We are no longer in the years 2001 and 2003, when Washington confidently attacked any country on the planet. But Biden’s foreign policy remains that the US has to be in charge. A paternal model that is not yet questioned.
Has the invasion of Ukraine changed anything?
The war has shown that some powers dare to challenge the United States and NATO. The Russian aggression has to do with resentment towards the United States and towards the undemocratic state of world affairs.
Is the United States still an empire today?
The United States is losing global hegemony. In military terms, it still has the largest army on the planet, but China’s economy has already out-purchased it, and its influence has filled some presence gaps left by the US. Power is clearly being redistributed. There are two possible scenarios: that China is finally the new hegemonic power in a model similar to that of the 1950s, or that different great powers coexist. The US can stick with its status quo, but I don’t think this is a wise response. The other possibility is to accept that the US era at the top of the world is over.
