The origins of the American empire:
“For decades,
anti-imperial thought has been largely absent from public discourse. So has the
word “imperialism.” The chief substitute for it has been “internationalism.”
This word evokes a vision of global cooperation, with examples ranging from the
Allied war against fascism to contemporary grapplings with climate change. No
one can deny the necessity of the United States engaging constructively with
the rest of the world; the problem is that engagement has so often involved
imperial aims and military methods. The rhetorical shift from imperialism to
internationalism suggests a sanitizing process at work during the twentieth
century, as the United States moved away from a formal empire based on the
occupation of foreign territory to an informal empire based on proxy
governments backed by occasional US invasions.”