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The Forging of the American Empire
This is the story of a nation—the United States—that has conducted more than 160 wars and other military ventures while insisting it loves peace.
In the process, the US has forged a world empire while maintaining its innocence of imperialistic designs. From Mexico to Lebanon, from China to the Dominican Republic, from Nicaragua to Vietnam, the US has intervened regularly in the affairs of other nations.
Yet the myth that Americans are benevolent, peace-lving people who will fight only to defend the rights of others lingers on. Excesses and cruelties, though sometimes admitted, usually are regarded as momentary aberrations.
In this comprehensive history of American imperialism, Sidney Lens punctures the myth once and for all by showing how the US, from the time it gained its own independence, has used every available means—political, economic, and military—to dominate other peoples.
In the process, the US has forged a world empire while maintaining its innocence of imperialistic designs. From Mexico to Lebanon, from China to the Dominican Republic, from Nicaragua to Vietnam, the US has intervened regularly in the affairs of other nations.
Yet the myth that Americans are benevolent, peace-lving people who will fight only to defend the rights of others lingers on. Excesses and cruelties, though sometimes admitted, usually are regarded as momentary aberrations.
In this comprehensive history of American imperialism, Sidney Lens punctures the myth once and for all by showing how the US, from the time it gained its own independence, has used every available means—political, economic, and military—to dominate other peoples.
465 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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August 1, 2023
In 1783, George Washington called the US a “rising empire.” Not to be left out, Jefferson wrote in 1786 that “our confederacy must be viewed as the nest from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled.” Then, in a fit of generosity, Jefferson wrote that the Spanish could hold onto their colonies “til our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece.” So, before the “Good Neighbor Policy of 1933” was the “Bad Neighbor Policy of 1786”. Operation Territorial Lust.
George Washington knew what your history teacher would never tell you: The starving troops at Valley Forge were fed by Oneida and Tuscarora tribes when whites wouldn’t deliver food without payment up front. As George wrote, “If these Indians had been our enemies instead of our friends, the war would not have ended in American Independence.” On November 4th, 1791, US General Arthur St. Clair lost 630 soldiers and 280 seriously wounded; that’s a higher US casualty rate than any 24-hour stretch during the Vietnam War. The US war against the Seminoles in Florida cost $20 million and 1,500 lives, but it made Florida safe for both Disneyland and badly-dressed conservatives. Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia said that “the first holdings taken over by the whites were invariably the cleared fields which the Indians had sown for decades.”
Alexander Hamilton distrusted the common man, “extolled the virtues of child labor”, “refusing to redeem the continentals which were widely held by the poor.” “Most (settlers) were running away from their own poverty on the eastern seaboard on the eastern seaboard.”
Andrew Jackson: Jackson got his start representing creditors against debtors – rich against the poor. He got rich selling Indian land with cloudy titles. His whole thing was never conceding rights to Indians. A Cherokee chief clearly saved Jackson’s life during the Creek war and it got the chief absolutely nothing in return. What a scumbag. “During Jackson’s two terms alone, the natives were forced to sign 94 treaties ceding territory; those tribes which resisted were put down in eight ‘little’ wars.”
You’d expect during the Revolutionary War that Indians and Colonists might get along because they were both nationalists who wanted independence - but there was a key difference. The rebelling colonists were expansionists “who coveted Indian lands”. Cracker resistance to the Royal Proclamation. Did you know that “of the nearly 900,000 square miles of the United States in 1783, more than half was Indian country”? So thoughtful for Britain to give land that was never theirs to a known bunch of Indian land coveters. What could go wrong? Add to the mix, the weak chiefs who would traitorously give away land.
Origins of the War of 1812: The British had seized 917 American ships while the French took 558. Madison wanted to fight both nations. No doubt he held back because he didn’t want to start calling a French Kiss, a Freedom Kiss. The War of 1812 was a total failure that gave the US no new territory and its signed treaty with England even had zero provisions to keep US ships from being taken in the future. Counterproductive: US merchants kept trading beef and flour with Canada during the war. The Monroe Doctrine starts in December 1823. “Had it not been for John Quincy Adams there might not have been a declaration known as the Monroe Doctrine.” Adams was a hard-core nationalist (like Bismarck, Napoleon, and Bolivar). Think of the Monroe Doctrine not as a treaty or law, but as a “self-serving declaration.” Endless US expansion by force had strange bedfellows including liberal heroes Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Give me a progressive any day.
US Bravery: The US fought Britain two times when it was also busy at war with France. The US fought France when Napoleon was busy elsewhere in Europe. The US fought Germany in WWI and WWII when it was already weakened by years of by fighting others. The author says the French alliance and its $280 million in financial loans “contributed decisively to the American victory at Yorktown in 1781.” In eternal gratitude, we soon would change French Fries into Freedom Fries. Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1783 that “there never was a good war or a bad peace.” He believed that arbitration was the way to go – much cheaper, and better than “fighting and destroying each other.” Today Ben could never have become President because he openly valued diplomacy over lucrative endless war and Lockheed Martin doesn’t want to hear that!
Reasons for England invading India: the decline of both the Mogul Empire in India and the Ottoman Empire. Notice that the US similarly took advantage of the decline of the Spanish Empire to take the lands of the Southwest from Mexico. Taking by force as the new black. Spain was fighting the Napoleonic War and not paying enough attention to the New World, and then Napoleon sells Louisiana to that guy who enjoyed wearing wigs and nailing his slave, I forgot his name. Up until that time, 70% of what is now the continental United States belonged to Spain.
Texas Plus: Notice how today people from Houston seem conservative, while people from Austin Texas seem hip? Almost 200 years ago in Texas, Sam Houston was a leading force in the war party while Stephen Austin was the leader of the peace party. Sam Houston came to Texas with the express purpose of changing it, by seizing Texas for Andrew Jackson. That took big balls because the Mexican Army was at the time 5x bigger than the US Army, and Britain and France sure didn’t want the US getting it all. As it was, Jackson waited for the last day of his presidency in 1837 to recognize Texas. President Polk (as well as my first two wives during divorce) was an expert in camouflaging aggression in defensive rhetoric (in Polk’s case by portraying US as the victim/aggrieved party while launching aggressive war against Mexico). Congressman Giddings at the time, properly called the Mexican War, “a war against an unoffending people, without adequate or just cause, for the purpose of conquest.” The center of opposition to the Mexican War was in New England, where the Massachusetts Legislature passed a resolution that branded the US as aggressor and conqueror.
Our Glorious West: Lest you were ever worried about General Custer’s last minutes alive, know that years before that, Custer killed 103 Indians in one hour only to be told he had killed friendly Cheyenne Indians. Custer’s response to his chilling deeds was to call it “a great and gallant victory for our beloved country.” Who knew it is gallant to murder those with whom you are friendly? Goebbels had his own children killed - no doubt it was also done gallantly, Custer style. At Sand Creek Colonel Chivington massacred/tortured innocent 300 women, children and men. Rutherford B. Hayes once told Congress that ‘many, if not most, of our Indian wars have had their origin in broken promises and acts of injustice on our part.” The author feels that after the Civil War there was no unifying Tecumseh to ensure/create Indian solidarity to successfully resist the pasty-faced invading crackers.
Note historically how Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and Holland all had to do their sleezy land thefts far away from home unlike the US and Russia which due to geography could both “expand contiguously.” That of course was also Hitler’s dream – Lebensraum – replace the people next door with your people. In the 50 years between 1850 and 1900, US manufacturing went from one billion to 11.5 billion products. American capital was driven into foreign markets. Policy changed from new land to new markets. The US buys Alaska for $7.2 million from Russia. Spain tried to sell Cuba to the US, but the US didn’t want to pay Cuba’s $400 million debt. Here’s a fun Lincoln quote you will never see Zionists use as a meme: “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it.”
The US war in the Philippines cost the US a whopping $170 million and a $1 billion in soldiers pensions and killed hundreds of thousands of Filipinos for their crime of wanting independence. How dare you want what we once wanted! In 1923, the US had over $1 billion invested in Cuba and “more than four fifths of all Cuba’s exports went to the US and three quarters of her imports came from there.” The US soon discovered that instead of occupying other countries they could get further with “commercial and financial agreements.” Thus, when Wilson was President, as Pugilist-in-Chief, he sent troops to Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, Soviet Russia, Honduras, China and Guatemala. 3,000 Haitians were killed and civilians in Haiti were forced by US soldiers to build roads; “those who protested or resisted were beaten into submission.” When Harding was President, General Russell ordered that if a Haitian wrote anything that made the US look bad, they would be brought before a military tribunal. The US instituted a military dictatorship in the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924. Its Congress was shut down and was ruled by a US rear admiral. Picture thousands of marines telling your people what to do and that they were no longer allowed to even have a public meeting. President Wilson fighting Mexico cost $130 million, and yet he couldn’t even capture Pancho Villa. Harding saw his presidential job as forcing other nations “through blandishment or coercion.”
Reason for US Entering WWI: The US government had underwritten a $400 million loan to the British. By 1917, US banks and investors had $2.3 billion in notes and bonds at risk if the allies lost. As a US ambassador wrote, “It is not improbable that the only way of maintaining our present preeminent trade position and averting a panic is by declaring war on Germany.” So unpopular was the war at first that less than 200,000 enlisted in the Army and draft had to be instituted and the US began a $$$ US propaganda campaign. Eugene Debs gets a ten-year sentence for 10 years for making a speech against militarism. A woman gets ten years in prison for writing a letter to the Kansas City Star saying, “no government which is for the profiteers can also be for the people.” The US officially entering WWI meant that Britain and France could now borrow directly from the US instead of J P Morgan, etc. The US then in one year (1917-1918) spends $22.6 billion on other countries. This changes the US from a debtor nation to a creditor nation. It had half of the world’s gold reserves. WWI deaths: US 320,000 dead. Austria Hungary 5 million dead, Germany 6 million dead, Britain 3 million dead, France 5.5 million dead, Russia 6.5 million dead.
US as Symbol of Freedom & Liberty: “there was never a day from 1919 to 1933 when American Marines did not intervene in or occupy the sovereign territory of another country.” Keystone Cops: “American troops invaded Mexico three times in 1918, and six times in 1919.” The Marines did a two for one sale by invading both Honduras and China both in 1921 and again in 1922. Back by popular demand, no doubt. In late 1918, the US had 7,000 US soldiers invading Russia.
WWII: The Japanese felt they couldn’t emigrate due to US anti-Japanese immigration policies and unfairly economically challenged by tariff barriers and so their last option was territorial expansion. Japan wanted to keep up industrially with the US and so invades Manchuria, turning it into a puppet state called Manchukuo. As Japan soon took control of more and more of Asia the US saw that 51.5% of US raw materials came from Asia and all of that was now threatened. The Reich, like Japan, was starved of materials. And they didn’t have the hard currency needed to buy whatever they wanted. Hitler wasn’t quickly stopped by the West once he began his one-way ticket to Crazy Town, because many in the West still had stiff woodies from Adolf wanting to destroy Russia. The US idly watched while Nazis flew planes over Spain to empower fascist Franco. So much for the theory the US actively fought WWII to stop fascism. Stalin makes a pact with Hitler when he sees the West hoping both Stalin and Hitler would fight each other silly while the sidelined West watches with a smile and popcorn.
During WWII, the Nazis torpedoed some shipping vessels only 30 miles from NYC. The Atlantic Charter offered liberation to countries under the Nazi yoke, but not under the British yoke. Good news for Greece and Austria, but bad news for India and Kenya.
Pearl Harbor was provoked: FDR intentionally cuts off oil, steel, and aviation gasoline to Japan in 1940. Japan then sees the US making loans to China to help with their defense against Japan. Right before Pearl Harbor, on November 25th, 1941, FDR met Cordell Hull, an Admiral and a General to discuss, “how we should maneuver them (the Japanese) into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.” The US quickly dropped the atomic bombs on Japan when they saw that the USSR had finally entered the war in Asia and that it might gain some $$$ concessions to the US if Japan then lost. NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger explained it well, “We did not go to war because we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. I hold that we were attacked at Pearl Harbor because we had gone to war.”
Cold War Not Inevitable (page 333): “It can only be said that Roosevelt and Henry A Wallace (my grandpa), who was his vice-president from 1941 until just before his death, would have tried harder (than Truman) to avoid a rupture with Moscow.” “Wallace had been bypassed by the big-city bosses in the nominations of 1944 because they didn’t want a man so consistently liberal.” Truman’s brusqueness towards meeting Molotov showed “the provincialism of a man who saw things as either black or white.” Truman was no friend of labor and in 1936 “he voted against a low-income housing project.” He was friends with bankers, industrialists, military men and lawyers. In the 40’s, British wealth dropped 30% and Britain became a borrower of $12 billion.
The Atomic Bomb: When Truman was told that the atomic bomb he had authorized had hit Hiroshima, he told sailors around him “This is the greatest thing in history.” Note how pseudo-Christian Truman found neither Jesus nor the Baptist faith to be the greatest thing in history, but that instantly incinerating 80,000 Japanese people (primarily as a warning to Russia) was Civilization’s grand triumph. Admiral Leahy said, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” Eisenhower said, Before the atom bomb was used I would have said, yes, I was sure we could keep peace with Russia. Now I don’t know.” One month after the bombings he approved, Secretary Stimson said, “I was wrong.” Byrnes wrote, “I feared what would happen when the Red Army entered Manchuria.” And Forrestal wrote in his diary, “Byrnes said he was most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians get in.” Leo Szilard was told by Byrnes that his view was “that our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe. So instead of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, think of murdering Peter to scare the shit out of Paul.
Sidney Lens sees the Cold War caused by Washington wanting continued world dominance and Russia not being sufficiently subservient (as Britain and France were). Clearly anyone actually looking at the post-WWII devastation in Russia saw it wasn’t presently a military threat. Sidney says the Cold War wasn’t about Communism or Stalin’s crimes, it was about killing opposition to US hegemony including (as Chomsky says) any potential threats of a good example anywhere in the world. Sidney calls Pax Americana, global imperialism. The Bretton Woods system excluded countries that nationalized foreign trade (like the Soviet Union). Sidney sees the US aim with the Bretton Woods system was to “force all nations to give up those devices they felt protected them.” Had the Soviets accepted it, it would have undone the whole reason for the Russian Revolution. Aid as a political weapon. America must receive “consideration” for everything it does to help others. Keeping the US system, the world’s system. Europe’s post-war economy was at the mercy of the US, and the dollar gap with Britain had it close to bankruptcy. We were taught the Marshall Plan was philanthropic, but it was done by the US to thwart all potential Soviet influence in Europe. And in return, European states and their colonies were to be easily financially penetrated by US business.
“In the nineteenth century Britain was able to pacify the subcontinent of India with only 50,000 soldiers.” “The French subdued large parts of Indochina with only 2,000.” The Boxer Rebellion was put down with only 20,000 westerners. On the other hand, France badly lost in Algeria pitting its 500,000 troops against 45,000 Algerians. France lost in Indochina with 116,000 troops against the Vietminh, well before the US had its ass handed back to it for comically attempting the same thing. Hubris.
Sidney talks about UNRRA which my mom was an interpreter for during WWII and explains how UNRRA went out of business after the war because it helped ALL people anywhere including those in the Soviet order. The Good Neighbor Policy for Latin America was also called “the theory of collecting debts by gunboats.” Part of that was trying to bring Mexico to its knees in 1938 when Cardenas threatened to nationalize foreign oil companies. That led to economic pressure, revoking silver sale privileges and a boycott on Mexican oil. The next Mexican president Camacho kissed the ass of the US, and all became ok again.
this Book Review continues in comment section due to length... cheers...
George Washington knew what your history teacher would never tell you: The starving troops at Valley Forge were fed by Oneida and Tuscarora tribes when whites wouldn’t deliver food without payment up front. As George wrote, “If these Indians had been our enemies instead of our friends, the war would not have ended in American Independence.” On November 4th, 1791, US General Arthur St. Clair lost 630 soldiers and 280 seriously wounded; that’s a higher US casualty rate than any 24-hour stretch during the Vietnam War. The US war against the Seminoles in Florida cost $20 million and 1,500 lives, but it made Florida safe for both Disneyland and badly-dressed conservatives. Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia said that “the first holdings taken over by the whites were invariably the cleared fields which the Indians had sown for decades.”
Alexander Hamilton distrusted the common man, “extolled the virtues of child labor”, “refusing to redeem the continentals which were widely held by the poor.” “Most (settlers) were running away from their own poverty on the eastern seaboard on the eastern seaboard.”
Andrew Jackson: Jackson got his start representing creditors against debtors – rich against the poor. He got rich selling Indian land with cloudy titles. His whole thing was never conceding rights to Indians. A Cherokee chief clearly saved Jackson’s life during the Creek war and it got the chief absolutely nothing in return. What a scumbag. “During Jackson’s two terms alone, the natives were forced to sign 94 treaties ceding territory; those tribes which resisted were put down in eight ‘little’ wars.”
You’d expect during the Revolutionary War that Indians and Colonists might get along because they were both nationalists who wanted independence - but there was a key difference. The rebelling colonists were expansionists “who coveted Indian lands”. Cracker resistance to the Royal Proclamation. Did you know that “of the nearly 900,000 square miles of the United States in 1783, more than half was Indian country”? So thoughtful for Britain to give land that was never theirs to a known bunch of Indian land coveters. What could go wrong? Add to the mix, the weak chiefs who would traitorously give away land.
Origins of the War of 1812: The British had seized 917 American ships while the French took 558. Madison wanted to fight both nations. No doubt he held back because he didn’t want to start calling a French Kiss, a Freedom Kiss. The War of 1812 was a total failure that gave the US no new territory and its signed treaty with England even had zero provisions to keep US ships from being taken in the future. Counterproductive: US merchants kept trading beef and flour with Canada during the war. The Monroe Doctrine starts in December 1823. “Had it not been for John Quincy Adams there might not have been a declaration known as the Monroe Doctrine.” Adams was a hard-core nationalist (like Bismarck, Napoleon, and Bolivar). Think of the Monroe Doctrine not as a treaty or law, but as a “self-serving declaration.” Endless US expansion by force had strange bedfellows including liberal heroes Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Give me a progressive any day.
US Bravery: The US fought Britain two times when it was also busy at war with France. The US fought France when Napoleon was busy elsewhere in Europe. The US fought Germany in WWI and WWII when it was already weakened by years of by fighting others. The author says the French alliance and its $280 million in financial loans “contributed decisively to the American victory at Yorktown in 1781.” In eternal gratitude, we soon would change French Fries into Freedom Fries. Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1783 that “there never was a good war or a bad peace.” He believed that arbitration was the way to go – much cheaper, and better than “fighting and destroying each other.” Today Ben could never have become President because he openly valued diplomacy over lucrative endless war and Lockheed Martin doesn’t want to hear that!
Reasons for England invading India: the decline of both the Mogul Empire in India and the Ottoman Empire. Notice that the US similarly took advantage of the decline of the Spanish Empire to take the lands of the Southwest from Mexico. Taking by force as the new black. Spain was fighting the Napoleonic War and not paying enough attention to the New World, and then Napoleon sells Louisiana to that guy who enjoyed wearing wigs and nailing his slave, I forgot his name. Up until that time, 70% of what is now the continental United States belonged to Spain.
Texas Plus: Notice how today people from Houston seem conservative, while people from Austin Texas seem hip? Almost 200 years ago in Texas, Sam Houston was a leading force in the war party while Stephen Austin was the leader of the peace party. Sam Houston came to Texas with the express purpose of changing it, by seizing Texas for Andrew Jackson. That took big balls because the Mexican Army was at the time 5x bigger than the US Army, and Britain and France sure didn’t want the US getting it all. As it was, Jackson waited for the last day of his presidency in 1837 to recognize Texas. President Polk (as well as my first two wives during divorce) was an expert in camouflaging aggression in defensive rhetoric (in Polk’s case by portraying US as the victim/aggrieved party while launching aggressive war against Mexico). Congressman Giddings at the time, properly called the Mexican War, “a war against an unoffending people, without adequate or just cause, for the purpose of conquest.” The center of opposition to the Mexican War was in New England, where the Massachusetts Legislature passed a resolution that branded the US as aggressor and conqueror.
Our Glorious West: Lest you were ever worried about General Custer’s last minutes alive, know that years before that, Custer killed 103 Indians in one hour only to be told he had killed friendly Cheyenne Indians. Custer’s response to his chilling deeds was to call it “a great and gallant victory for our beloved country.” Who knew it is gallant to murder those with whom you are friendly? Goebbels had his own children killed - no doubt it was also done gallantly, Custer style. At Sand Creek Colonel Chivington massacred/tortured innocent 300 women, children and men. Rutherford B. Hayes once told Congress that ‘many, if not most, of our Indian wars have had their origin in broken promises and acts of injustice on our part.” The author feels that after the Civil War there was no unifying Tecumseh to ensure/create Indian solidarity to successfully resist the pasty-faced invading crackers.
Note historically how Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and Holland all had to do their sleezy land thefts far away from home unlike the US and Russia which due to geography could both “expand contiguously.” That of course was also Hitler’s dream – Lebensraum – replace the people next door with your people. In the 50 years between 1850 and 1900, US manufacturing went from one billion to 11.5 billion products. American capital was driven into foreign markets. Policy changed from new land to new markets. The US buys Alaska for $7.2 million from Russia. Spain tried to sell Cuba to the US, but the US didn’t want to pay Cuba’s $400 million debt. Here’s a fun Lincoln quote you will never see Zionists use as a meme: “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it.”
The US war in the Philippines cost the US a whopping $170 million and a $1 billion in soldiers pensions and killed hundreds of thousands of Filipinos for their crime of wanting independence. How dare you want what we once wanted! In 1923, the US had over $1 billion invested in Cuba and “more than four fifths of all Cuba’s exports went to the US and three quarters of her imports came from there.” The US soon discovered that instead of occupying other countries they could get further with “commercial and financial agreements.” Thus, when Wilson was President, as Pugilist-in-Chief, he sent troops to Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, Soviet Russia, Honduras, China and Guatemala. 3,000 Haitians were killed and civilians in Haiti were forced by US soldiers to build roads; “those who protested or resisted were beaten into submission.” When Harding was President, General Russell ordered that if a Haitian wrote anything that made the US look bad, they would be brought before a military tribunal. The US instituted a military dictatorship in the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924. Its Congress was shut down and was ruled by a US rear admiral. Picture thousands of marines telling your people what to do and that they were no longer allowed to even have a public meeting. President Wilson fighting Mexico cost $130 million, and yet he couldn’t even capture Pancho Villa. Harding saw his presidential job as forcing other nations “through blandishment or coercion.”
Reason for US Entering WWI: The US government had underwritten a $400 million loan to the British. By 1917, US banks and investors had $2.3 billion in notes and bonds at risk if the allies lost. As a US ambassador wrote, “It is not improbable that the only way of maintaining our present preeminent trade position and averting a panic is by declaring war on Germany.” So unpopular was the war at first that less than 200,000 enlisted in the Army and draft had to be instituted and the US began a $$$ US propaganda campaign. Eugene Debs gets a ten-year sentence for 10 years for making a speech against militarism. A woman gets ten years in prison for writing a letter to the Kansas City Star saying, “no government which is for the profiteers can also be for the people.” The US officially entering WWI meant that Britain and France could now borrow directly from the US instead of J P Morgan, etc. The US then in one year (1917-1918) spends $22.6 billion on other countries. This changes the US from a debtor nation to a creditor nation. It had half of the world’s gold reserves. WWI deaths: US 320,000 dead. Austria Hungary 5 million dead, Germany 6 million dead, Britain 3 million dead, France 5.5 million dead, Russia 6.5 million dead.
US as Symbol of Freedom & Liberty: “there was never a day from 1919 to 1933 when American Marines did not intervene in or occupy the sovereign territory of another country.” Keystone Cops: “American troops invaded Mexico three times in 1918, and six times in 1919.” The Marines did a two for one sale by invading both Honduras and China both in 1921 and again in 1922. Back by popular demand, no doubt. In late 1918, the US had 7,000 US soldiers invading Russia.
WWII: The Japanese felt they couldn’t emigrate due to US anti-Japanese immigration policies and unfairly economically challenged by tariff barriers and so their last option was territorial expansion. Japan wanted to keep up industrially with the US and so invades Manchuria, turning it into a puppet state called Manchukuo. As Japan soon took control of more and more of Asia the US saw that 51.5% of US raw materials came from Asia and all of that was now threatened. The Reich, like Japan, was starved of materials. And they didn’t have the hard currency needed to buy whatever they wanted. Hitler wasn’t quickly stopped by the West once he began his one-way ticket to Crazy Town, because many in the West still had stiff woodies from Adolf wanting to destroy Russia. The US idly watched while Nazis flew planes over Spain to empower fascist Franco. So much for the theory the US actively fought WWII to stop fascism. Stalin makes a pact with Hitler when he sees the West hoping both Stalin and Hitler would fight each other silly while the sidelined West watches with a smile and popcorn.
During WWII, the Nazis torpedoed some shipping vessels only 30 miles from NYC. The Atlantic Charter offered liberation to countries under the Nazi yoke, but not under the British yoke. Good news for Greece and Austria, but bad news for India and Kenya.
Pearl Harbor was provoked: FDR intentionally cuts off oil, steel, and aviation gasoline to Japan in 1940. Japan then sees the US making loans to China to help with their defense against Japan. Right before Pearl Harbor, on November 25th, 1941, FDR met Cordell Hull, an Admiral and a General to discuss, “how we should maneuver them (the Japanese) into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.” The US quickly dropped the atomic bombs on Japan when they saw that the USSR had finally entered the war in Asia and that it might gain some $$$ concessions to the US if Japan then lost. NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger explained it well, “We did not go to war because we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. I hold that we were attacked at Pearl Harbor because we had gone to war.”
Cold War Not Inevitable (page 333): “It can only be said that Roosevelt and Henry A Wallace (my grandpa), who was his vice-president from 1941 until just before his death, would have tried harder (than Truman) to avoid a rupture with Moscow.” “Wallace had been bypassed by the big-city bosses in the nominations of 1944 because they didn’t want a man so consistently liberal.” Truman’s brusqueness towards meeting Molotov showed “the provincialism of a man who saw things as either black or white.” Truman was no friend of labor and in 1936 “he voted against a low-income housing project.” He was friends with bankers, industrialists, military men and lawyers. In the 40’s, British wealth dropped 30% and Britain became a borrower of $12 billion.
The Atomic Bomb: When Truman was told that the atomic bomb he had authorized had hit Hiroshima, he told sailors around him “This is the greatest thing in history.” Note how pseudo-Christian Truman found neither Jesus nor the Baptist faith to be the greatest thing in history, but that instantly incinerating 80,000 Japanese people (primarily as a warning to Russia) was Civilization’s grand triumph. Admiral Leahy said, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” Eisenhower said, Before the atom bomb was used I would have said, yes, I was sure we could keep peace with Russia. Now I don’t know.” One month after the bombings he approved, Secretary Stimson said, “I was wrong.” Byrnes wrote, “I feared what would happen when the Red Army entered Manchuria.” And Forrestal wrote in his diary, “Byrnes said he was most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians get in.” Leo Szilard was told by Byrnes that his view was “that our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe. So instead of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, think of murdering Peter to scare the shit out of Paul.
Sidney Lens sees the Cold War caused by Washington wanting continued world dominance and Russia not being sufficiently subservient (as Britain and France were). Clearly anyone actually looking at the post-WWII devastation in Russia saw it wasn’t presently a military threat. Sidney says the Cold War wasn’t about Communism or Stalin’s crimes, it was about killing opposition to US hegemony including (as Chomsky says) any potential threats of a good example anywhere in the world. Sidney calls Pax Americana, global imperialism. The Bretton Woods system excluded countries that nationalized foreign trade (like the Soviet Union). Sidney sees the US aim with the Bretton Woods system was to “force all nations to give up those devices they felt protected them.” Had the Soviets accepted it, it would have undone the whole reason for the Russian Revolution. Aid as a political weapon. America must receive “consideration” for everything it does to help others. Keeping the US system, the world’s system. Europe’s post-war economy was at the mercy of the US, and the dollar gap with Britain had it close to bankruptcy. We were taught the Marshall Plan was philanthropic, but it was done by the US to thwart all potential Soviet influence in Europe. And in return, European states and their colonies were to be easily financially penetrated by US business.
“In the nineteenth century Britain was able to pacify the subcontinent of India with only 50,000 soldiers.” “The French subdued large parts of Indochina with only 2,000.” The Boxer Rebellion was put down with only 20,000 westerners. On the other hand, France badly lost in Algeria pitting its 500,000 troops against 45,000 Algerians. France lost in Indochina with 116,000 troops against the Vietminh, well before the US had its ass handed back to it for comically attempting the same thing. Hubris.
Sidney talks about UNRRA which my mom was an interpreter for during WWII and explains how UNRRA went out of business after the war because it helped ALL people anywhere including those in the Soviet order. The Good Neighbor Policy for Latin America was also called “the theory of collecting debts by gunboats.” Part of that was trying to bring Mexico to its knees in 1938 when Cardenas threatened to nationalize foreign oil companies. That led to economic pressure, revoking silver sale privileges and a boycott on Mexican oil. The next Mexican president Camacho kissed the ass of the US, and all became ok again.
this Book Review continues in comment section due to length... cheers...
February 11, 2019
Whew, this is Crucial to my efforts to be less dumb about things. Both specific and general, explains WHY and HOW this country does such dumbass, immoral things around the world. I feel like I need to know more about how money works to REALLY get it, but this book shows how the whole process of interfering abroad evolved and explained simply what often seems too complicated to wrap my head around.
October 12, 2022
This is an excellent book HOWEVER it is very long and detailed and may take you over a month to fully read and digest. It feels like a bible of sorts for learning American history through the lens of imperialism. I really liked the second half of the book aka everything post 1900. I've realized that I have little to no interest in reading about most presidents, but especially not the ones before 1900. I liked the chapter on the Indigenous populations in the US and the chapter on the US involvement in the Philippines.
July 26, 2018
This book chronicles the America hidden from most of us by our cultural mythology. It is well worth the read as it provides a glimpse into the forces that shaped our rise and subsequent decline. Filled with detailed accounts of how the interests of the rich and powerful dominated over the interests of the people, it suggests quite a different storyline than the one we all learned in school. At times it is difficult to read and heart wrenching in its sanguine tale of human suffering.
May 8, 2021
Recommended by no less a luminary than Studs Terkel, Sidney Lens’s The Forging of the American Empire is a critically important work, and everyone who feels concerned about the inherent cognitive dissonance at the heart of American ideology under the spotlight of historicity should read it. It is a work devastating to the nationalistic propaganda that even now flows freely from Washington DC through the channels of MSM (even when it pretends to critique).
April 4, 2024
Meant for armchair historians instead of the academic or layperson; Lens' citation and writing style leave something to be desired. While the book is clearly a leftist/activist work (haymarket/pluto) it still manages to be a compelling telling of U.S. empire to the early 1970s.
April 14, 2021
Such a great, and detailed book.
Want to read
August 2, 2023E183.7 L45 1971 Memorial and Historical Society libraries
March 25, 2012
Lens draws on American economic and diplomatic history in making a compelling case for the US as an imperialist country since the days of the Founding Fathers through to the quagmire of Vietnam. If he sere still alive, I can only imagine what he would have to say about Panama, Afghanistan, Irag, and Kosovo.
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