American Imperialism

The United States is the most powerful political agency in the world, supported by the strongest economy, largest educated population, and the most lethal military machine. But it supports the ideals of liberalism and is using its power to try to create a liberal world order. No other state can presently resist this process. Nonetheless, the very libertarian nature of the emerging order--with powerful independent corporations and particularistic nationalisms and cultures--may be beyond the capacity of any single state to manage--even the United States.

Francis A. Boyle discusses U.S. assistance to Iraq during and its conduct of the 1990 Gulf War, the Afghanistan war and the current Iraq war in relation to violations of the laws of neutrality, humanitarian law, the laws of war and the U.S. Constitution. The concluding chapter includes draft articles for the impeachment of President George W. Bush.

Many historians of U.S. foreign relations think of the post-World War II period as a time when the United States, as an anti-colonial power, advocated collective security through the United Nations and denounced territorial aggrandizement. Yet between 1945 and 1947, the United States violated its wartime rhetoric and instead sought an imperial solution to its postwar security problems in East Asia by acquiring unilateral control of the western Pacific Islands and dominating influence throughout the entire Pacific Basin. This detailed study examines American foreign policy toward the Pacific Basin from the beginning of the Truman Administration to the implementation of Containment in the summer and fall of 1947. As a case study of the Truman Administration's Early Cold War efforts, it explores pre-Containment policy in light of U.S. security concerns vis-a-vis the Pearl Harbor Syndrome.

John Carlos Rowe, considered one of the most eminent and progressive critics of American literature, has in recent years become instrumental in shaping the path of American studies. His latest book examines literary responses to U.S. imperialism from the late eighteenth century to the 1940s. Interpreting texts by Charles Brockden Brown, Poe, Melville, John Rollin Ridge, Twain, Henry Adams, Stephen Crane, W. E. B. Du Bois, John Neihardt, Nick Black Elk, and Zora Neale Hurston, Rowe argues that U.S. literature has a long tradition of responding critically or contributing to our imperialist ventures. Following in the critical footsteps of Richard Slotkin and Edward Said, Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism is particularly innovative in taking account of the public and cultural response to imperialism. In this sense it could not be more relevant to what is happening in the scholarship, and should be vital reading for scholars and students of American literature and culture.