IN AMERICA, THE C WORD TRUMPS THE E WORD: CONSUMERISM CHECKS EMPIRE-BUILDING

Michael H. Hunt & Steven I. Levine, Arc of Empire: America's Wars in Asia from the Philippines to Vietnam (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 2013) ("This study also provide a comparative perspective on the U.S. drive by treating it in terms of empire.... Imperial references have evoked anxieties for as long as Americans have debated their role in the world. Early generations of American leaders, steeped in classical traditions, regarded empire as a fundamental threat to the survival of republics, which history told them were inherently fragile. The fear of imperial tendencies repeatedly sounded in U.S. political debate through the nineteenth century. and though attenuated today, that fear can still be heard. American leaders, loath to acknowledge the existence of an American empire, have been quick to deny even the possibility. To some considerable extent they are captives of the broader popular view of the United States as an exceptional country immune to imperial temptations, and frequently at odds with those who have sought to dominion over others. Indeed, in major conflicts from the late nineteenth century onward Washington has sought to rally international support by drawing  clear line between its commitment to national liberation and its foes' records of imperial subjugation, Much of the indictment of Spain in 1898, Germany  over the first half of the twentieth century, Japan during the 1930s and early 1940s, and the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War was couched in terms of their imperial ambitions, The avowed U.S. goal was to check empire, not create." "Only in the last decade or so have the proponents of the uninhibited exercise of U.S. global power sought to sweep aside popular hesitations and doubt. Wearing empire as a badge of honor, they have challenged their fellow citizens to match the standards of service and sophistication set by the British in the nineteenth century. Yet, this argument had had virtually no impact on the outlook of the foreign policy establishment, journalists, policymakers, or the broader public. These latter-day champions of empire have ignored what American leaders have learned the hard way over the last half century. Citizens in a society devoted to the pleasures of personal consumption have proven averse to the persona sacrifices required by distant, dirty wars. The consumer-citizen's lack of enthusiasm for what it takes to impose and sustain dominance can be measured at the ballot box and by attitudes toward the draft. So even as the classical fears of empire have faded in U..S. political culture, powerful social trends have helped to maintain the allergy to the E word." Id. at 2-3.).