How to Hide An Empire
The United States and British establishments are in mourning over Afghanistan. Not because of the tens of thousands of lives lost or trillions of dollars wasted that could have been put towards education, healthcare, housing, or infrastructure. Rather, they are mourning the fact that the U.S. withdrew its forces at all. Twenty disastrous years, it seems, were not enough.
What underlies these reactions is a deeper concern over what this means for the future of the American Empire, assuming it has one. This fear is on full display in a New Yorker piece published on September 1, 2021, anxiously entitled, ‘Is the U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan the End of the American Empire?’ Staff writer Jon Lee Anderson frets that, ‘it feels as if the American era isn’t quite over, but it isn’t what it once was, either,’ and wonders whether ‘the U.S. may soon reassert itself somewhere else to show the world that it still has muscle’ (because showing muscle should be any country’s chief foreign policy objective). Rory Stewart, a former government minister under Prime Minister Theresa May, claims the withdrawal from Afghanistan is ‘deeply disturbing’ and asks, without irony, ‘whether the United States can claim much moral authority internationally.’ Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense James Clad has a far more level-headed response. ‘It’s a damaging blow,’ he admits, ‘but the “end” of Empire? Not yet, and probably not for a long time… In the wider world, America still retains its offshore power-balancing function.’ The defeat in Afghanistan is, in his estimate, ‘the geopolitical equivalent of egg on our face.’
If Clad’s imperial optimism sounds strange, that’s only because the true form and scope of America’s empire is rarely discussed in the media. It’s true that the U.S. does not overtly claim sovereignty over as much territory as it has in the past, but only because it doesn’t need to – with roughly eight hundred military bases around the world (all other countries combined operate about thirty overseas bases), it is fully capable of exerting influence across the globe. Then there are all the regimes the U.S. has either installed by force or offered support that ensure their domestic policies benefit the neoliberal world order, not to mention the traditional kind of colonies the U.S. still maintains such as Puerto Rico.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan has reignited discourse in the mainstream media over the future of American Empire, making it more important than ever for the public to understand America’s imperial past. Unfortunately, the American education system has traditionally ignored this history, which makes sense given it is a history full of broken promises, violent oppression, and outright massacres. The mere existence of colonies (or the more-friendly sounding ‘territories’) contradicts the idea of America as a democracy.
It is easier not to think about American Empire at all. But this ignorance comes at a price. The recent events in Afghanistan are the direct result of America’s empire, as is the continued suffering of Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria. The storm devastated the island, leaving it vulnerable to capitalist predation as documented in Naomi Klein’s The Battle for Paradise. The aid and attention it received were negligible compared to Florida, which makes sense given only a slight majority of mainlanders (Americans living in the contiguous forty-eight states) were aware Puerto Ricans were fellow citizens. Even before Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico was undergoing an economic crisis due entirely to policies Puerto Ricans themselves were not allowed to vote on, let alone help shape. Understanding contemporary politics is simply impossible without understanding the legacy of the American Empire. And just as importantly, the people who live in these territories deserve to have their histories remembered, not buried in unmarked graves – regardless of whether those histories relate to current events.
That is what makes Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States such a vital resource. While reading it I felt consistently ashamed at my ignorance and grateful to finally be receiving a full history of my own country. But even if you are already familiar with the Aleutian internment, the Insular Cases, or the fact that the Japanese did not only attack Pearl Harbor in December 1941 but the US-controlled Philippines, Guam, Midway Island, and Wake Island, along with a number of British colonies such as Singapore and Hong Kong, How to Hide an Empire has much to offer – particularly to those on the left. Far from being just a more robust history of the United States, Immerwahr offers an international perspective that connects the development of American Empire to revolutionary movements across the world, including Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Cuba, China, and the Middle East. By connecting so many disparate struggles, How to Hide an Empire demonstrates why international solidarity must be the foundation of any Marxist analysis that seeks to free the world from the obvious and subtle forms of imperialism that continue to haunt the world today.
Immerwahr’s book can be divided into three periods – the United States’ initial expansion across North America, its accelerated overseas expansion after the Spanish American War, and the apparent contraction of its empire post-World War II. The first period is likely the most familiar to readers and defined by the United States’ genocidal campaign against Indigenous peoples. But Immerwahr reveals much that is traditionally ignored. For example, the United States’ founders were against expanding the country’s borders at first. They believed the United States needed to expand at a slow, controlled pace as opposed to the more chaotic, random expansion promoted by men like Daniel Boone (who far from being hailed a pioneer was derided by political elites as a ‘white savage’). Their chief concern was maintaining white supremacy and their trepidation about bringing in black, Indigenous and people of colour would be a recurring theme of American Empire. It has always been interested in gaining territory, but preferably without people. Actual people, specifically non-Europeans, brought up all sorts of problems.
Another significant episode Immerwahr explores in this first section concerns Indian Country and Western Territory. The former was an initially massive refuge for Indigenous peoples that was gradually chipped away, while the latter was nearly a state governed by Native Americans who would have a representative in Congress. This last point in particular was too much for Congressmen who could not imagine having a Native American colleague when the vast majority still denied Indigenous peoples’ basic humanity.
The agricultural crisis of the mid-1800s is potentially the least well-known to readers and most consequential event from the pre-Spanish-American War period. Capitalism drove agricultural policies that led directly to ‘soil exhaustion’ – a lack of necessary nitrates in the soil that threatened the entire agricultural industry. Salvation came in the form of guano (bird and bat excrement), more specifically hundreds of islands where guano had built up over centuries. The United States supported corporations that went out to seize these uninhabited islands and collect the soil-rejuvenating substance.
These islands would prove crucial to America’s imperial ambitions. Without this guano, the massive population boom that propelled America’s westward expansion (and further terrorized Indigenous peoples) would not have been possible. But just as importantly, these islands would later provide sites for military bases, airstrips, and more. Just as the early American expansion depended on guano from these islands, these islands provided the logistical means for the United States to assert its global hegemony from the second half of the 20th century up to the present.
The real turning point, however, came in 1898. The Spanish-American War – which Immerwahr notes could be more accurately named the Spanish-Cuban-Puerto Rican-Philippine-American War – left the United States in possession of its first real overseas colonies. Granted, the guano islands were technically colonies. In fact, they functioned as corporate fiefdoms operating beyond the normal reach of the law. But until now the United States had done its best to acquire as much territory as possible without bringing in additional people. For instance, there was a sizable Muslim population in the southern half of the Philippines. Were these non-Christian, non-white people going to enjoy the same rights as mainlanders?
Between republicanism, white supremacy, and overseas expansion, Immerwahr explains, ‘the country could have at most two.’ ‘In the past,’ he continues, ‘republicanism and white supremacy had been jointly maintained by carefully shaping the country’s borders. But absorbing populous nonwhite colonies would wreck all that.’ In the end, the United States sacrificed republicanism.
America’s new colonies suffered dearly during the first few decades of the 20th century. Gregory Pincus, the inventor of the birth control pill, used Puerto Rican women for his research without warning some of his subjects about possible side-effects (and this was after he failed to force prisoners to undergo his experiments). These side effects ranged from dizziness and nausea to cervical erosion. However, all complaints were blamed on ‘the emotional super-activity of Puerto Rican women.’ Meanwhile, another doctor, Cornelius P. Rhoads, bragged about how he was purposefully giving his Puerto Rican patients cancer.
The Philippines provided another ‘playground’ for capitalists. In an early example of what Klein would later call the ‘shock doctrine,’ U.S. architects and politicians conspired to transform the city of Manila. This was a city that had suffered plagues and fires, not to mention the wrath of the Spanish and U.S. military. Amidst the rubble a new command center was built that included a country club, boat club, casino, and luxury hotel. Immerwahr notes they were not ‘built for Filipinos, and indeed some clubs would refuse to admit them.’ Rather, they were designed to attract foreign investors.
These horrors were only possible because Americans, by and large, had no idea they were happening. Most were unaware the United States even had colonies in the years leading up to World War II. It was this widespread ignorance that gave capitalists, backed by the state, free reign.
It did not have to be this way. The colonies themselves expected America to live up to its professed love of freedom and democracy and give them independence. But President Woodrow Wilson chose to prioritize empire and white supremacy after World War I, vetoing ‘even the principle of racial equality’ from being articulated in the League of Nations covenant. Wilson’s decisions would set in motion a series of events that would facilitate the rise of Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Pedro Albizu Campos, who would be transformed from a Harvard-educated America-loving Puerto Rican into ‘the most dangerous domestic anti-imperialist the United States would ever face.’
Everything changed again with World War II. As in the first section, Immerwahr highlights historical facts that are traditionally diminished, rationalized, or deliberately erased. One of the more startling examples is how Hawai’i was ruled by the military after Pearl Harbor until well after the war ended. The justice system was a farce, with no real trials and excessive sentences for transgressions, however slight. A black man discovered just how harsh the American military’s rule over a U.S. territory was when he was fleeing from a group of white men trying to beat him. He bumped into a police officer who, instead of helping the man, arrested him. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
After the war, the American Empire appeared to shrink. The Philippines became independent, territories like Alaska and Hawai’i became states, and Puerto Rico became a commonwealth. Granted, Puerto Rico was and remains in essence a colony. But the fact that so much effort was put into making it not seem like a colony is significant, especially given that the United States was in a position to practically conquer the world if it desired.
So why did the empire contract? Immerwahr grants that the surge in revolutionary movements in various colonies played a part, as did the growing anticolonial sentiment world-wide. But he argues the most important factor was technology. Technological advancements made simply traditional empires unnecessary. Before World War II, and for most of human history, controlling territory by force was necessary to ensure access to raw materials, rapid and secure communication, and as a means of waging war. Synthetic substitutes, however, made raw materials less vital, while radio and the Internet diminished the need for actual land over which to carry messages. As for war, drones have made it possible to devastate entire regions without putting a single soldier on the ground. These weapons depend on satellite technology, which offers a level of surveillance beyond the most sinister dreams of past imperialists.
That said, the physical American Empire didn’t disappear, as evidenced by the enormous number of bases throughout the world. With so many bases in so many different countries, the United States doesn’t need to directly control territory to ruthlessly exploit it. This is especially true in areas where the United States merely needs to overthrow a government and install a more capitalist-friendly regime. It has also used more subtle means to exert influence – I certainly never thought of the standardization of industrial products like screws as helping cement America’s hegemony. But, as with guano, Immerwahr once again proves how something typically overlooked can be a major driver of history.
By September 11, 2001, the U.S. was completely disavowing its imperial past and denying that its current empire even existed. This put the Bush administration in a difficult position in regards to Afghanistan. While conservatives like Max Boot believed the United States needed ‘a colonial office – fast’ in Afghanistan, the government resisted. It is bizarre to hear conservatives now despair over whether the American Empire is at an end given that the twenty-year debacle began with George Bush insisting ‘We’re not an imperial power.’
From Immerwahr we learn that in the years following the American Revolution the nation was ambivalent about whether it should be an empire at all; after 1898, it was proud to be an empire; and after WWII it denied being an empire while enjoying a more powerful, if shadowy, imperial force than ever. Now we may be living through another turning point in the story of American Empire, as elites fear the empire is at an end. Whether this proves to be the case remains to be seen. Either way, How to Hide an Empire provides a fascinating account of American Empire that details the way capitalism has consistently shaped the imperial ideology of the United States. And for leftists of all stripes, it is an invaluable tool in understanding how the empire was born, how it changed, and, perhaps, how we might liberate the world from its grasp once and for all.
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
Daniel Immerwahr
Macmillan, 2020
9781250251091