November 23, 2003

Richard Falk^*

AAmerican Imperialism in the Middle East@

...

What the United States seems to be doing in the World

AIn one sense, the United States has been an empire ever since its origins B if one understands by empire, domination of others and economic-political exploitation of others who are displaced or dispossessed or dominated in the land where they are. So that in a certain sense, even though America was a colony itself, it was an imperial power in relation to Native Americans who occupied North America...@

AThroughout its history, [the United States] has expanded at the expense of others... Mexico, Latin America in a variety of ways. At the end of the 19^th century, during the Spanish American War (1898-1901), it embraced a policy of imperial expansion explicitly, without disguising it B Puerto Rico, the Phillippines and Hawaii were acquired as a consequence of that War...@

>This [American expansionist identity] became more pronounced during the 20^th century B the ascendency of the United States in World War I and World War II... In the period of the cold war, [this] meant frequent interventions in the Third World, frequent interferences with the proclaimed commitment that the United States had made to the ideas of self-determination. So that either covertly, as in Iran in 1953 or Guatemala in 1954, or more overtly, as in the Dominican Republic in 1965 and, of course, the long period in Vietnam, the United States projected its power in such a way as to [both] deny peoples of Third World countries the political autonomy to determine their own future, and extend its power over their sovereign rights.@

AWe now have a new stage of this discussion... [There has been] a recent surge of imperial tactics and strategy... The question that urgently demands attention is what sort of empire [the United States will be]... It is important to acknowledge that the United States at this stage, whatever else it is, is also an imperial actor on the global stage. The question that I would pose is, >What kind of empire and with what consequences?=@...

A[We are now] in a new phase of imperial geopolitics...@

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^* Professor Emeritus of International Law, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. This is an excerpt from a speech given at the University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, Fall 2003.