Addendum to last discussion - note date:
International Herald Tribune, Hong Kong edition, Wed., Aug. 22 originally a Paris newspaper; at www.iht.com):
U.S. Urged to Embrace an 'Imperialist' Role
Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Service
Wednesday, August 22, 2001
Worldwide Dominance Ignites a Debate
WASHINGTON People who label the United States "imperialist"
usually mean it as an insult. But in recent years a handful of
conservative defense intellectuals have begun to argue that the
United States is indeed acting in an imperialist fashion and that it
should embrace the role.
When the Cold War ended just over a decade ago, these thinkers
note, the United States actually expanded its global military
presence.
With the establishment over the last decade of a semi permanent
presence of about 20,000 troops in the Gulf area, they contend,
the United States is now a major military power in almost every
region of the world the Middle East, Europe, East Asia and the
Western Hemisphere.
And even though the United States is unlikely to fight a major war
anytime soon, they believe, it remains very active militarily around
the globe, keeping the peace in Bosnia and Kosovo, garrisoning
37,000 troops in South Korea, patrolling the skies of Iraq and
seeking to balance the rise of China.
The leading advocate of this idea of enforcing a new "Pax
Americana" is Thomas Donnelly, deputy executive director of the
Project for the New American Century, a Washington research
institute that advocates a vigorous, expansionistic Reaganite
foreign policy.
In ways similar though not identical to the Roman and British
empires, he argues, the United States is an empire of democracy
or liberty it is not conquering land or establishing colonies, but it
has a dominating global presence militarily, economically and
culturally.
...and it goes on like that.