American imperialism

American expansion ended in the late 19th century, with the exception of some Caribbean and Western Pacific islands. While the United States does not typically describe itself as an empire, some commentators, including Max Boot, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and Niall Ferguson, have characterized it as one.

Foreign interventions by the United States have been debated throughout its history. Opponents claimed that such actions were inconsistent with the country's beginnings as a colony that rebelled against an overseas king, as well as with American values of democracy, freedom, and independence.

Conversely, American presidents who intervened militarily—most notably William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft—cited American economic interests, such as trade and debt management; preventing European intervention (colonial or otherwise) in the Western Hemisphere, (under the 1823 Monroe Doctrine); and the benefits of keeping "good order". President Donald Trump has reintroduced these policies during his second term, but commentators have suggested that it is simply "standard U.S. foreign policy stripped of hypocrisy."

History

Following Columbus, the European and then American presence steadily expanded across what became the United States of America, dispossessing or eliminating various Native American communities by treaty or by force, including multiple wars. Many Native American settlements were depopulated by unwittingly imported diseases, such as smallpox. Native Americans became citizens in 1924 and experience a form of tribal sovereignty.

President James Monroe promulgated his Monroe Doctrine in 1823, in order to end European interventions in Latin America. Territorial expansion was explicit in the 19th century idea of manifest destiny. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase transferred 828,000 sq mi (2,140,000 km²) of territory claimed by France to the United States. Via the 1846–1848 Mexican–American War, the United States annexed 525,000 sq mi (1,360,000 km²) of Mexican territory. In 1867, the Andrew Johnson administration purchased Alaska's 665,384 sq mi (1,723,340 km²) from Russia.

American foreign policy pivoted to "containing" communism during the Cold War. In accordance with the Truman Doctrine and the Reagan Doctrine, the United States attempted to limit the Soviet Union and its allies. During the Vietnam War, the United States attempt to protect South Vietnam from its communist neighbor to the north and a domestic insurgency ended in failure at tremendous cost in American and Vietnamese lives and a Khmer Rouge-perpetrated genocide in neighboring Cambodia. US tactics included attempts at regime change in countries including Iran, Cuba, Panama, and Grenada, along with interference in other countries' elections.

US acquisitions on the North American continent became states, and their residents became citizens. Residents of Hawaii voted for statehood in 1959. Other island jurisdictions remain territories, namely Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands, but their residents are also citizens. The remainder of US territories eventually became independent, including three freely associated states that participate in US government programs in exchange for military basing rights, to Cuba, which severed diplomatic relations with the United States during the Cold War.

The United States was a public advocate of European decolonization after World War II (completing a ten-year independence transition for its Philippines territory in 1944). The United States often came in conflict with national liberation movements.

1700s–1800s: Manifest destiny

In 1786, then-private citizen George Washington described the new nation as an "infant empire". Then-Minister Plenipotentiary Thomas Jefferson asserted that year that the United States of America "must be viewed as the nest from which all America, North & South is to be peopled. [...] The navigation of the Mississippi we must have".

The notion of manifest destiny was a popular 19th century rationale for US expansion. Discontent with British rule came in part from the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which barred settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.

The Indian Wars featured British (initially) and later US militaries battling Native American sovereign groups. That sovereignty was repeatedly undermined by American state policy (usually involving unequal or broken treaties) and the ever-expanding settlements. Following the Dawes Act of 1887, Native American systems of land tenure ended in favor of private property. This resulted in the loss of some 100 million acres of land from 1887 to 1934.

In the 1786–1795 Northwest Indian War, the United States fought the Northwestern Confederacy over land around the Great Lakes. Treaties such as the Treaty of Greenville and the Treaty of Fort Wayne drove anti-American sentiment among Native Americans in the region, leading to Tecumseh's Confederacy, defeated during the War of 1812.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 culminated in the relocation of 60,000 Native Americans West of the Mississippi River in an event known as the Trail of Tears, killing 16,700.

In the 1846–1849 Mexican–American War, the United States conquered Mexican territory reaching from Texas to the Pacific coast.

Settlement of California accelerated, including the California genocide. Estimates of deaths vary from 2,000 to 100,000. The discovery of gold drew many miners and settlers who formed militias to kill and displace Native Americans. The California government supported expansion and settlement through the passage of the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians which legalized the forced indenture (effectively enslavement) of Native Americans. Some California towns offered and paid bounties for the killing of Native Americans.

American expansion in the Great Plains spurred conflict between many western tribes and the US. The 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie gave the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes territory from the North Platte River in present-day Wyoming and Nebraska southward to the Arkansas River in what became Colorado and Kansas. The land was initially not wanted by settlers, but following the discovery of gold in the region, settlers came in large numbers. In 1861, six chiefs of the Southern Cheyenne and four of the Arapaho signed the Treaty of Fort Wise, surrendering 90% of their land. The refusal of various warriors to recognize the treaty led settlers to expect war. The subsequent Colorado War included the Sand Creek Massacre in which up to 600 Cheyenne were killed, mostly children and women. On October 14, 1865, the chiefs of what remained of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapahos agreed to move south of the Arkansas, sharing land that belonged to the Kiowas, and thereby relinquished all claims in Colorado territory.

Following Red Cloud's victory in Red Cloud's War, the Treaty of Fort Laramie was signed. This treaty led to the creation of the Great Sioux Reservation. However, the discovery of gold in the Black Hills resulted in a settlement surge. The gold rush was profitable for settlers and the government: the Black Hill Mine produced $500 million in gold. Attempts to purchase the land failed, triggering the Great Sioux War. Despite initial success by Native American forces, most notably the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the government won and carved the reservation into smaller tracts.

In the southwest, settlers waged war against native tribes. By 1871, Tucson had a population of three thousand, including "saloon-keepers, traders and contractors who had profited during the Civil War". In the Camp Grant Massacre of 1871, up to 144 Apache were killed, mostly women and children. Up to 27 Apache children were captured and sold by Christianized Papago Indians into slavery in Mexico. In the 1860s, the Navajo faced deportation, which became known as the Long Walk of the Navajo. The journey started in spring 1864. Navajo led by the US Army were relocated from eastern Arizona Territory and western New Mexico Territory to Fort Sumner. Around 200 died during the walk. New Mexican slavers, assisted by Utes, attacked isolated bands, killing the men, taking the women and children, and capturing horses and livestock. As part of these raids, Navajo were sold throughout the region.

In 1820, the private American Colonization Society began subsidizing free black Americans to colonize the west coast of Africa. In 1822, it established the colony of Liberia, which became independent in 1847. By 1857, Liberia had merged with colonies formed by other societies, including the Republic of Maryland, Mississippi-in-Africa, and Kentucky in Africa.

In older historiography mercenary William Walker's attempts to create private colonies epitomized antebellum American imperialism. His brief seizure of Nicaragua in 1855 followed his attempt to expand slavery into Central America and establish colonies in Mexico. Walker failed in his escapades and never had US backing. Historian Michel Gobat claimed that Walker was invited by Nicaraguan liberals seeking modernization and liberalism. Walker's government included those liberals, as well as Yankee colonizers and European radicals.

1890s–1900s: New Imperialism

In the late 19th century, Great Britain, France, Germany and Belgium rapidly expanded their territorial possessions, particularly in Africa. The US expanded also, annexing Pacific Islands such as Hawaii.

As Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in preparing for the Spanish–American War and was an enthusiastic proponent of testing the US military in battle, at one point stating "I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one." Roosevelt rejected imperialism, but embraced expansionism. Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem "The White Man's Burden" for Roosevelt, who told colleagues that it was "rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view". Roosevelt proclaimed what became the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (in turn replaced by Herbert Hoover's endorsement of the Clark Memorandum).

One causal factor was racism, evidenced by philosopher Fiske's belief in "Anglo-Saxon" racial superiority and clergyman Strong's call to "civilize and Christianize" other peoples. The concepts were related to Social Darwinism in some schools of American thought.

Industry and trade were other justifications. American intervention in Latin America and Hawaii supported investments, including sugar, pineapple, and bananas. When the US annexed a territory, it achieved trade access there. In 1898, Senator Albert Beveridge claimed that market expansion was necessary, writing "American factories are making more than the American people can use; American soil is producing more than they can consume. Fate has written our policy for us; the trade of the world must and shall be ours."

Cuba

The US claimed to intervene in Cuba in the name of freedom: "We are coming, Cuba, coming; we are bound to set you free! We are coming from the mountains, from the plains and inland sea! We are coming with the wrath of God to make the Spaniards flee! "(lyrics to "Cuba Libre", 1898). Cuba became independent in 1898 following the Spanish–American War. However, from 1898 until the Cuban revolution, the US directly influenced the Cuban economy. By 1906, up to 15% of Cuba was owned by Americans.

The 1901 Platt Amendment prevented Cuba from entering into agreements with foreign nations and granted the US the right to build naval stations on Cuban soil.

Philippines

In 1899, Filipino revolutionary General Emilio Aguinaldo remarked: "The Filipinos fighting for Liberty, the American people fighting them to give them liberty. The two peoples are fighting on parallel lines for the same object." American rule of ceded Spanish territory was first contested in the Philippine–American War, ultimately resulting in the end of the short-lived Philippine Republic.

Following Philippine independence, the US continued to exert influence over the country through Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives such as Edward Lansdale, who heavily managed the political rise and 1953 presidential campaign of Ramon Magsaysay. While some popular accounts allege that Lansdale physically struck Magsaysay over a drafted speech, declassified documents instead highlight covert political operations to undermine President Elpidio Quirino and discussions by Manila-based CIA agents to poison Senator Claro Recto. Filipino historian Roland G. Simbulan called the CIA "US imperialism's clandestine apparatus in the Philippines".

The US established dozens of military bases, including some that were large. Philippine independence was gated by American legislation. For example, the Bell Trade Act provided a mechanism whereby US import quotas could be established on Philippine goods that competed with US products. It further required US citizens and corporations be granted equal access to Philippine natural resources. In 1946, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs William L. Clayton described the law as "clearly inconsistent with the basic foreign economic policy of this country" and "clearly inconsistent with our promise to grant the Philippines genuine independence." Philippine independence came on July 4, 1946.

Hawaii

In the 1800s the US became concerned that Great Britain or France might have colonial ambitions for the Hawaiian Kingdom. In 1849 the US and the Kingdom signed a friendship treaty. In 1885, King David Kalākaua, Hawaii's last king, signed a treaty with the US allowing tariff-free sugar exports to the US mainland. On July 6, 1887, the Hawaiian League, an illegal secret society, threatened the king and forced him to enact a new constitution that stripped him of much of his power. King Kalākaua died in 1891 and was succeeded by his sister Queen Lili'uokalani. In 1893 with support from marines from the USS Boston, the Queen was deposed in a bloodless coup. Hawaii became a US territory and later became the 50th US state in 1959.

Congress' procedure for annexing territory was explained in an 1898 report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the context of Hawaii: "If, in the judgment of Congress, such a measure is supported by a safe and wise policy, or is based upon a natural duty that we owe to the people of Hawaii, or is necessary for our national development and security, that is enough to justify annexation, with the consent of the recognized government of the country to be annexed."

1912–1920: Wilson's interventions

President Woodrow Wilson launched seven overseas armed interventions (Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Panama, Mexico and Honduras), more than any other president. General Smedley Butler, the most-decorated Marine of that era, considered virtually all of the operations to have been economically motivated. In a 1933 speech he averred:

I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it...I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street ... Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

The US invaded Haiti on July 28, 1915, and administered it until 1934. Haiti had been independent before the intervention. The Haitian government agreed to US terms, including American oversight.

1920s–1930s

By the 1930s, Standard Oil of California (SOCAL) had made a series of acquisitions, which achieved decades-long control over Saudi oil.

1941–1945: World War II

At the start of World War II, the US administered multiple Pacific territories. The majority of these territories hosted military bases, such as Midway, Guam, Wake Island, and Hawaii. Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor brought the US into the war. Japan occupied Guam, Wake Island, and other American territories. By early 1942 Japan had conquered the Philippines. Many battles were needed to retake allied territory and other Japanese-occupied territories. The US liberated the Philippines; Japanese troops surrendered in August 1945. The maximum extension of American direct control came after the war, and included the occupations of Germany and Austria in May and Japan and Korea in September 1945.

Grand Area concept

The US began planning for the post-war world at the war's outset. This vision originated in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an economic organization that worked closely with government leaders. CFR's War and Peace Studies group offered its services to the State Department in 1939 and a secret partnership developed. CFR leaders Hamilton Fish Armstrong and Walter H. Mallory saw World War II as a "grand opportunity" for the US to emerge as "the premier power in the world".

In an October 1940 report to President Roosevelt, geographer Isaiah Bowman, a key liaison between the CFR and the State Department, wrote, "...the US government is interested in any solution anywhere in the world that affects American trade. In a wide sense, commerce is the mother of all wars." In 1942 this economic globalism was articulated as the "Grand Area" concept in secret documents. Under that policy the US would have sought control over the "Western Hemisphere, Continental Europe and Mediterranean Basin (excluding Russia), the Pacific Area and the Far East, and the British Empire (excluding Canada)." The Grand Area encompassed all known major oil-bearing areas outside the Soviet Union.

Bowman's "American economic Lebensraum" (lebensraum is a German word advanced by the Nazis as one reason for conquering Europe):

Better than the American Century or the Pax Americana, the notion of an American Lebensraum captures the specific and global historical geography of U.S. ascension to power. After World War II, global power would no longer be measured in terms of colonized land or power over territory. Rather, global power was measured in directly economic terms. Trade and markets now figured as the economic nexuses of global power, a shift confirmed in the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, which not only inaugurated an international currency system but also established two central banking institutions—the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—to oversee the global economy. These represented the first planks of the economic infrastructure of the postwar American Lebensraum.

— Isaiah Bowman

Cold War

While its economic ascent began in the early 20th century, World War II established the U.S. as the dominant force in global capitalism, rivaled only by the Soviet-led bloc. Political economist Adam Hanieh states that the devastation of Western Europe and the collapse of colonial empires allowed the U.S. to architect a new post-war order, centered on a dollar-anchored financial system. By the mid-1950s, this hegemony was evidenced by the U.S. controlling 60% of world manufacturing and 25% of global GDP, while housing 42 of the world's 50 largest industrial corporations.

Hanieh writes that, in the post-WWII era, the global capitalist system was destabilized by a wave of decolonization movements that swept through Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Political scientist Michael Parenti argues that the U.S. launched a global "counter-revolution" to suppress the rise of revolutionary nationalist governments in the Third World, involving direct military interventions, coups, funding opposition movements, and the training of military forces. Historian Dov H. Levin notes that, between 1946 and 2000, the U.S. interfered in the elections of 81 countries. Furthermore, the U.S. and the U.K. actively backed fundamentalist Islamist movements throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Central and South Asia. These movements were seen as a strategic buffer against Soviet influence and a counterforce to nationalist and socialist movements. This policy was formalized at the highest levels: in 1957, President Eisenhower approved a policy to "do everything possible to stress the 'holy war' aspect". Decades later, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman acknowledged this cold-war policy, noting in 2018 that Saudi Arabia's International propagation of the Wahhabi/Salafi movement was "rooted in the Cold War, when allies asked Saudi Arabia to use its resources to prevent inroads in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union."

A 1949 U.S. National Security Council study stated that the U.S. should find ways of "exerting economic pressures" on countries that do not accept their assigned role as suppliers of "strategic commodities and other basic materials". Linguist Noam Chomsky argued in Middle East Illusions (2003) that, following World War II, the U.S. sought to reestablish the former colonized world as a service appendage to the global capitalist system where each region was allocated a specific "function" for the "welfare of the global capitalist system". Chomsky states that policy documents framed the main danger as "economic nationalism"—also labeled "radical" or "ultra-nationalism". According to Chomsky, such developments were viewed as unacceptable by the U.S. and had to be curbed and instead the principal beneficiaries must be U.S. investors and their international partners, who seek an investment-friendly environment offering favorable terms and unrestricted access to labor and raw materials. William Blum argues that US interventions were primarily driven by economic interests. According to Blum, in almost all U.S. interventions in the Third World since World War II, the target was overthrowing "a policy of 'self-determination': the desire, born of perceived need and principle, to pursue a path of development independent of US foreign policy objectives." Thomas L. Friedman argued in a 1999 op ed that the "hidden hand" of the market requires a "hidden fist" to function, noting that "McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas" and that the global success of Silicon Valley is ultimately secured by the "US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."

According to Sociologist Christopher Doran of the University of Indiana, following the quadrupling of oil prices as a result of the 1973 oil crisis, the massive surge of petrodollars into the U.S. financial system provided the capital for a wave of international lending. Many developing countries required these loans to cover trade deficits caused by the very same spike of oil prices that had generated the petrodollar surplus. This cycle led to a debt-driven explosion; according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the foreign debt of 100 non-oil-exporting developing nations surged by 150% between 1973 and 1977. This indebtedness turned into a full-scale crisis following the 1979 "Volcker shock," when high U.S. interest rates made repayments unsustainable. These debts were owed to the World Bank, the IMF, and major New York banks, which had recently been deregulated following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. To avoid total bankruptcy, according to Doran, these developing countries accepted "bailout" packages, called structural adjustment programs, conditioned on neoliberal reforms, including privatization, deregulation, and drastic cuts to public spending. The forced sale of state assets allowed U.S. and other Western corporations to acquire resources at deeply discounted prices, leading to immediate gains for their shareholders. Ultimately, these structural adjustment programs served as a primary mechanism for American dominance over a global economy transitioning toward neoliberalism. The scale of this wealth transfer was immense: by 2004, the world's poorest countries had paid an estimated $4.6 trillion in debt service to the wealthiest nations, particularly the U.S.

Europe

Prior to his death in 1945, President Roosevelt was planning to withdraw all US forces from Europe. Soviet actions in Poland and Czechoslovakia led his successor Harry Truman to reconsider. Heavily influenced by George Kennan, Washington policymakers decided that the Soviet Union was an expansionary dictatorship that threatened the free world. In their view, Moscow's weakness was that it had to keep expanding to survive; and that, by containing or stopping its growth, European stability could be achieved. The result was the Truman Doctrine (1947). Initially regarding only Greece and Turkey, NSC-68 (1951) extended it to the entire non-Communist world. Thus, the Truman Doctrine was described as globalizing the Monroe Doctrine.

A second consideration was the need to restore the world economy, which required rebuilding Europe and Japan. This was the main rationale for the 1948 Marshall Plan.

Europe's requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products... are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character.

— George C. Marshall

A third factor was the acceptance, especially by Britain and Benelux, that American military involvement was needed to contain the USSR.

Latin America

American involvement in Panama began as a result of its interest in building a canal there, and led to its support for Panamanian independence (from Colombia) in 1903. The US funded the construction and maintained ownership of the Panama Canal Zone until President Carter ceded it to Panama as of the end of 1999. After an attack on the US Embassy in mid-1987, the indictment of Panama's dictator Manuel Noriega on drug charges, and Noriega's annulment of the 1989 election (alleging US fraud), the US invaded and deposed and arrested him, withdrawing its forces the following month. Some of the ports on either end of the canal were then purchased by Chinese company Hutchison Whampoa, before Black Rock purchased the rights following President Trump's objections to its continued ownership.

Following the Guatemalan Revolution, Guatemala expanded labor rights and land reforms that granted property to landless peasants. Lobbying by the United Fruit Company, whose profits were damaged by these policies, as well as fear of Communist influence, culminated in US support for Operation PBFortune to overthrow Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1952. The US provided weapons to exiled Guatemalan military officer Carlos Castillo Armas, who was to lead an invasion from Nicaragua. This culminated in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état. The subsequent military junta assumed dictatorial powers, banned opposition parties and reversed the social reforms. After the coup, American influence grew in the country, in the government and the economy. The US continued to support Guatemala throughout the Cold War, including during the Guatemalan genocide in which up to 200,000 people were killed.

Middle East

According to political scientist Dore Gold, in the Middle East and North Africa, socialist Arab nationalism—headlined by Nasserism in Egypt and competing Ba’athist factions in Syria and Iraq—exerted a profound ideological influence across the Arab World. The movement for pan-Arab unity under Nasser's leadership intensified, reaching its zenith with the formation of the United Arab Republic—a political union with Syria that lasted from 1958 to 1961. According to Adam Hanieh, Arab nationalists frequently collided with imperialist agendas, most notably through the toppling of colonial-backed monarchies and the nationalization of the Suez Canal. These acts of defiance, alongside regional confrontations with Israel, fostered intense pride and solidarity across the Arab World. According to historian Victor McFarland, the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration feared Nasser’s Arab nationalism would spark uprisings against conservative regimes in the Middle East and jeopardize Western oil access. Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal and his call to use oil against Israel and the West sparked concerns over future oil nationalization. Intervening militarily to support Lebanon’s conservative regime, Eisenhower told Nixon that Nasser threatened “vitally needed petroleum supplies” and, by controlling the region's oil, would hold “the income and the power to destroy the Western world.” Consequently, Chomsky identifies Israel as "a crucial part of the elaborate U.S. base and backup system for the Rapid Deployment Force [the precursor to CENTCOM] ringing the Middle East oil producing regions."

According to a 1956 State Department Memorandum of a Conference, Eisenhower believed that "we should work toward building up King Saud as a major figure in the Middle Eastern area." John Foster Dulles, U.S. secretary of state under Eisenhower, viewed King Saud of Saudi Arabia as "the only figure in the area with sufficient presence and potential assets to serve as a counterpoise to Nasser." An internal U.S. State Department memo reporting a meeting between Eisenhower, Dulles and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1957 stated the following:

The President said he thought we should do everything possible to stress the "holy war" aspect. Mr. Dulles commented that if the Arabs have a "holy war" they would want it to be against Israel. The President recalled, however, that Saud, after his visit here, had called on all Arabs to oppose Communism.

The U.S.-backed, Saudi-led conservative monarchies established an alliance to suppress the influence of the Egypt-led secular socialist Arab nationalist republics through both direct and indirect means. This regional ideological and political rivalry, dubbed the Arab Cold War by political scientist Malcolm H. Kerr, was militarized through proxy warfare which pitted the conservative monarchies against the revolutionary republics in a violent contest for regional dominance.

Rashid Khalidi observes that the Arab nationalist wave "seemed to place the United States and its allies in a highly unfavorable position. To this apparently unbalanced situation, Saudi Arabia brought the powerful ideological weapon of Islam." In 2018, Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, said that Saudi Arabia's international propagation of Wahhabism campaign was "rooted in the Cold War, when allies asked Saudi Arabia to use its resources to prevent inroads in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union."

While ideological efforts were ongoing, it was military might that ultimately broke the back of the Arab nationalist movement. The 1967 Six-Day War, initiated with Israeli surprise airstrikes against Egyptian airfields, dealt a fatal blow to secular Arab nationalism, as the humiliating defeat of Egypt and its allies shattered Nasser’s revolutionary legitimacy.

Saudi Arabia

A U.S. State Department analysis concluded that Saudi Arabia's oil resources "constitute a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history". In 1943, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated that "the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States." In 1980, President Carter told a joint session of Congress that "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America."

Samir Amin observes that the strategic importance of Middle Eastern oil has historically been viewed as a critical source of global geopolitical leverage. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski contended that given the dependence of Western Europe and East Asia on Middle Eastern oil, Soviet domination of the region would have enabled the Soviets to "blackmail" both regions, forcing them into diplomatic accommodations on favorable terms. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) intelligence analyst Kenneth M. Pollack echoed this position, stating that the U.S. seeks more than just the continuous flow of Persian Gulf oil; it also aims to prevent any hostile actor from dominating the region's resources to build a power base or exert global "blackmail." In 1990, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that anyone controlling the flow of Middle Eastern oil would possess a "stranglehold" over the U.S. economy, as well as "on that of most of the other nations of the world as well". Chomsky argued that by controlling Middle Eastern oil, the U.S. gains a strategic stranglehold that allows it to effectively "blackmail" industrial rivals; he identifies this strategy of keeping Europe and East Asia dependent on corporate America as "one of the main reasons the United States has been so interested in Middle Eastern oil." He added, "We didn't need the oil for ourselves;" until the early 1970s "North America led the world in oil production. But we do want to keep our hands on this lever of world power," further, a secondary objective is to ensure that "the flow of petrodollars should be largely funnelled to the U.S. through military purchases, construction projects, bank deposits, investment in Treasury securities, etc."

Energy analysts Edward L. Morse and James Richard identify Saudi Arabia's oil spare capacity as a fundamental pillar of the U.S.–Saudi partnership. This was demonstrated most clearly during the Cold War. In the mid-1980s, according to Christopher M. Davidson, just as the Soviet oil industry sought to expand, Saudi Arabia utilized its spare capacity, at the request of CIA Director William J. Casey, to crash global oil prices to $10 a barrel—a drop of more than 50%. This Saudi-engineered price collapse led to the implosion of the Soviet oil industry, which in turn accelerated the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union. A former CIA chief of staff later characterized the maneuver as "body blow to the Soviets. It was the equivalent of stepping on their oxygen tube." Morse and Richard describe Saudi oil spare capacity as "the energy equivalent of nuclear weapons", serving as the bedrock of American oil policy.

Immanuel Ness argues that, by manipulating prices—a tactic seen as early as President Richard Nixon's management of the 1973 oil crisis—the U.S. can exert deleterious economic pressure on any oil import-dependent nation. Ultimately, managing world oil prices through the dominance of the global currency allows the U.S. to maintain a level of control over the economies of Europe, China, Russia, and any other potential challengers to its hegemony. A cornerstone of the global financial system is the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Gulf monarchies, particularly Saudi Arabia. In exchange for security guarantees, Saudi Arabia agreed to price oil exclusively in U.S. dollars—displacing British sterling and establishing the dollar as the primary international reserve currency. This "petrodollar" arrangement required all nations to maintain significant dollar holdings for energy imports, granting the U.S. "exorbitant privilege": the ability to finance persistent deficits with minimal inflationary pressure, while providing geopolitical leverage through the power to impose financial sanctions and exclude rivals from the dollar-based clearing system. A critical mechanism of this structure is the "recycling" of petrodollar wealth back into American financial markets. Through a series of bilateral agreements, Saudi oil revenues were channeled into U.S. Treasury securities. Additionally, the Gulf region became a primary market for U.S. military exports, establishing a durable economic and military dependency that persists today.

Israel

U.S. officials and military leaders have long characterized Israel an indispensable strategic asset for maintaining regional dominance. A 1958 National security council memorandum, since declassified, observed that "if we choose to combat radical Arab nationalism and to hold Persian Gulf oil by force if necessary, a logical corollary would be to support Israel as the only strong pro-West power left in the Near East." In 1986, then-Senator Joe Biden asserted that Israel "is the best $3 billion investment we make. If there weren't an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region." General George J. Keegan Jr., a former chief of US Air Force Intelligence, was quoted by the journalist Wolf Blitzer in 1985 as valuing the Israeli intelligence provided to the United States at "five CIAs".

Chomsky contends that the U.S. views Israel as a strategic asset vital for securing its interests in the Middle East—chiefly the control of oil and petrodollar flows, while also protecting U.S.-backed autocratic Arab regimes and simultaneously acting as a constant deterrent to them to ensure these regimes remain aligned with U.S. policy.

Iran

On March 15, 1951, the Iranian parliament passed legislation proposed by Mohammad Mosaddegh to nationalize the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, whose revenues from Iranian oil were greater than the Iranian government budget. Mosaddegh was elected Prime Minister by the Majlis. Mosadeggh's support by the Tudeh as well as a boycott by various businesses against the nationalized industry produced fears in the UK and the US that Iran would turn to Communism. America officially remained neutral, but the CIA covertly supported various candidates in the 1952 Iranian legislative election.

In late 1952, with Mosaddegh in power, the CIA launched a coup via Operation Ajax with UK support. The coup increased the monarchy's power. In the aftermath of the coup, Shah Reza Pahlavi replaced the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company with a consortium of BP and eight European and American oil companies. In 1979, the Iranian Revolution ended the rule of the Shah and American influence in the country. In August 2013, the US formally acknowledged its role in the coup, including bribing Iranian politicians, security, and army officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda.

1945–1970: Asia-Pacific

Japan

The US occupied Japan after WWII until 1952, and maintained control of Okinawa Prefecture until 1972, before returning control to Japan.

Korea

After Japan surrendered the land they had ruled since 1910, the US and the USSR divided the Korean peninsula along the 38th parallel, with the Southern end occupied by the US and the Northern end by the USSR. The United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) banned strikes on December 8 and outlawed the PRK Revolutionary Government and People's Committees on December 12. Following further unrest, the USAMGIK declared martial law.

The UN decided to hold an election to create an independent Korea. However, the Soviets and Korean Communists refused to participate due to concerns about division caused by an election without North Korea's participation, many South Korean politicians boycotted it., the Communist North invaded the South in June 1950, launching the bloody Korean War. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union, while South Korea was supported by the United Nations led by the United States under the auspices of the United Nations Command (UNC). The conflict was one of the first major proxy wars of the Cold War and one of its deadliest conflicts on noncombatants, as it is estimated that 1.5 to 3 million civilians were killed during the war. Based on National Security Council document 68, the US adopted a policy of "rollback" against Communism in Asia.

Vietnam

The US initially supported France's counterinsurgency program, but not its continued rule. US support was in response to China's support for Vietnam's communists. After Điện Biên Phủ, the US pressured France to free the pro-French government. The US assumed military and financial support for South Vietnam following France's defeat in the First Indochina War. The US and South Vietnam refused to sign agreements at the 1954 Geneva Conference arguing that fair elections weren't possible in North Vietnam. Beginning in 1965, the US sent forces to protect the South from invasions by the North and local insurgencies. In part the Vietnam War was a proxy war between the USSR and the US. The Paris Peace accords triggered the departure of US troops by March 1973, while 150,000-200,000 Northern soldiers remained in the South in violation of the accords. Peace continued until the US slashed aid to the South by 70% in 1974. The North launched its final offensive in March 1975, and Saigon fell on April 30.

Indonesia

After the murder of six Indonesian Army generals, which Suharto blamed on the Communist Party of Indonesia and a failed coup attempt by the 30 September Movement, he began an anti-communist purge, ultimately killing up to one million. Ethnic Chinese, trade unionists, teachers, activists, artists, ethnic Javanese Abangan, ethnic Chinese, atheists, so-called "unbelievers", and alleged leftists were targeted. Historians and journalists have documented that the US, UK, and their allies, were essential in facilitating and encouraging the campaign. The campaign purged the Communist Party, and shifted Indonesia towards the West. American trade expanded. By 1967, companies such as Freeport Sulphur (see Grasberg mine), Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, General Electric, American Express, Caterpillar Inc., StarKist, Raytheon Technologies and Lockheed Martin, began to explore business opportunities. Declassified documents released in October 2017 stated that the US government had detailed knowledge of the massacres. Commenting on the documents, historian Bradley Simpson said these previously secret cables, telegrams, letters, and reports "contain damning details that the U.S. was willfully and gleefully pushing for the mass murder of innocent people."

1970s–1980s: Latin American regime change

From 1968 through 1989, the US supported attempts to defeat left-wing insurgencies and governments. It supported political repression and state terrorism including intelligence operations, coup d'états, and assassinations as part of Operation Condor. It began in November 1975, led by the dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.

Post-Cold War

According to Eric Toussaint of the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) serve as the primary agents in auditing and reshaping the internal economic landscapes of the Global South. Marxist geographer David Harvey sees that the systematic seizure of wealth, or accumulation by dispossession, is executed by the IMF and WTO through the forced liberalization of world markets as part of what he calls a “new imperialism”. These institutions, he says, exert the necessary pressure to dismantle economic barriers, a process consistently reinforced by U.S. interventions. Sociologist and activist Walden Bello contends that neoliberalism promoted by the U.S., the World Bank, and the IMF in the Third World aims to weaken producers by removing protectionist barriers to Western imports, eliminating regulations on foreign investment, eroding labor protections, and integrating the local economies into a Western-dominated global system. In 2000, the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights declared that the WTO's rules are fundamentally unfair and predicated on a false premise of equality between trading partners. By ignoring the dominance of powerful multinational enterprises, it said, the system serves to reinforce existing corporatist monopolies.American sociologist and activist Christopher Doran, writing in 2012, argued that the U.S. has promoted neoliberalism domestically and internationally "to restore the class power to the uber-wealthy and take back the gains they had lost under Keynesianism and its government-focused policies of wealth distribution." Richard Peet observes that the Washington Consensus promoted by the 'Unholy Trinity'—IMF, World Bank and WTO—has:

[E]stablished, protected and reinforced a neoliberal policy regime that served to deregulate the world economy (in terms of national state intervention), freeing the way for global, and particularly US, corporations, the trading of industrial commodities without interference, and the movement of capital assets across national boundaries that have been reduced in significance.

Gulf War

In 1991 the US and allies invaded Iraq to force it to withdraw from Kuwait, which Iraq had conquered the year before. The Gulf War lasted 9 days before the two parties accepted a ceasefire and Iraq withdrew its forces. The Bush Administration noted that possession of Kuwait would give Iraq control of 45% of global oil production. While the US gained no direct control of territory or (oil or other) assets, it strengthened relations with Kuwait and neighboring countries (save for Iran). The US established no-fly zones over Iraq following the conflict, with the announced purpose of protecting Iraqi Kurds in the north and Shia Muslims in the south.

Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)

In the post-9/11 era, during the Global War on Terrorism, the US adopted the doctrine of "homeland security" as a policy to promote its national interests globally. The US has made use of drone strikes in pursuit of its objectives.

Todd Miller has argued that the US has developed a global network of partnerships, funding, and technology to support its national interests.

Iraq War

The US invaded Iraq again in 2003 in the aftermath of 9/11. One outcome of Iraq's rapid defeat was Order 39, which privatized the Iraqi economy and permitted 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi assets. According Sociologist Christopher Doran of the University of Indiana, Order 39 granted foreign investors the right to sue the Iraqi government in international arbitration tribunals over profit-related disputes. It also abolished import tariffs and taxes, exposing local industries and agricultural producers to competition from cheap foreign imports. Additionally, the order allowed foreign entities to obtain full ownership of domestic banks, establish private banking institutions, and secure land leases for up to 40 years. Order 49 replaced Iraq's progressive income tax—which previously peaked at 45 percent—with a 15 percent flat tax applied equally to individuals and corporations. International oil companies from the US, Europe, and China secured technical service contracts (but not ownership of reserves) starting in 2009, and invested billions of dollars that increased production from ~1.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2003 to ~4.6 mb/d by 2023. 75%+ of the resulting revenues went to the Iraqi National Oil Company.

According to UK international relations and geography scholars Simon Mabon and Stephen Royle, models of imperialist governance were continued in Iraq through the Sunni awakening or Sahawah, spearheaded by US General David Petraeus to defeat AQI in al-Anbar by providing hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to tribal fighters and figures, thereby followed the principles of imperialist counter-insurgency through "tribal renting."

Trump administration

Throughout both of his presidencies, U.S. president Donald Trump has expressed a desire to expand the United States' territory and influence through both land purchases and military means.

Trump first stated his desire to annex Greenland during his first presidency; he has pursued a campaign to acquire Greenland during his second presidency. He has also suggested annexation or taking control of Canada, Mexico, the Panama Canal, the Gaza Strip, and Cuba. After proposing an invasion of Venezuela, Trump's second administration removed President Nicolás Maduro as part of Operation Absolute Resolve and stated the U.S. would "run" Venezuela; the Venezuelan government, led by acting president Delcy Rodríguez, remains in place but is far more amicable to American interests than it was under Maduro. Amid the 2026 Iran war, Trump lauded about invading and seizing control of both the Strait of Hormuz and Kharg Island from Iran.

Trump's determination to treat the Western Hemisphere as a U.S. sphere of influence has been characterized as a revival of the Monroe Doctrine in what has become known as the Donroe Doctrine. On his orders, U.S. federal agencies adopted new names for shared international waters, renaming the Gulf of Mexico as "Gulf of America" in 2025 and Lake Ontario as "Lake America" in 2026. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the second Trump administration's foreign policy as a matter of operating as a superpower nation and for national security purposes. Numerous politicians outside the U.S. have criticized Trump's annexation comments. The Democratic Party has introduced bills to prevent the Trump administration from invading countries without the approval of Congress.

On January 3, 2026, the United States launched Operation Absolute Resolve, a strike on Venezuela. After bombing military installations there, US Special Forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, charging them with narco-terrorism. Trump said that the US would temporarily "run" Venezuela and exploit its oil resources, which are among the world's largest. Critics and experts described the attack as illegal and as "resource imperialism". The New York Times editorial board called it an act of "latter-day imperialism" which lacked "any semblance of international legitimacy".

Numerous critics and analysts identified the 2026 US-Israel attacks on Iran with a more open embrace of expansionism and imperialism by the Trump administration. The US–Israeli attack is widely considered a "war of choice" and has been compared to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Saeed Shah wrote that many in the Global South do not view the war as having the moral purpose that the US and many of its allies asserted, and that they instead see the war as a failure of diplomacy, and an act of aggression against a weaker nation. Rami Khouri called the war "the digital reconfiguration of Western colonial, imperialistic militarism" and identified the inability of autocratic governments in the Arab world to "mount a cohesive diplomatic or military response" to US and Israeli interventions as a factor that contributed to the outbreak of war. Steve Tsang of the SOAS China institute said China will argue that the war was another example of "western hypocrisy and western talk of the liberal international order". Gilbert Achcar said that the US was practicing a modernized version of gunboat diplomacy. Gokay and Hamourtziadou connected the attack on Iran with a longstanding pattern of US interventions in the region, saying that the war is "largely unrelated to the idiosyncrasies of Donald Trump, who is simply implementing a longstanding project aimed at establishing complete US dominance over the energy-rich regions of the Middle East". They also connected the attack on Iran in the midst of negotiations to the history of United States treaty-breaking during westward expansion.{

According to Jeet Heer, American imperialism under Donald Trump is killing people abroad and domestically.