Is it an empire?

No, Americans are the good guys. They are trying to get rid of divisive things like nationalism and unite the world.

A novel form of. The Spectacle is a good way of refering to it

It's got all the shitty aspects of an empire but none of the perks

Romans kept the senate around hundreds of years after Caesar.
Imperial era has already begun.

Americans are the most nationalistic people in the western world. It's civic nationalism but still nationalism

An empire of good men.

>An empire of good men.
Well that sure as fuck wasn't one of them.

I wish we'd stop beating around the push already and go full imperialist already

>ywn be a US Imperial Marine taking territory and punishing savages for the Stars and Bars

>Stars and Bars
That's the CSA flag

And?

>US Marine
>US

It's bush, to beat around the bush

Ehh, not really. The influence from the nation is undeniably large however. If we were to be defined as an empire, it would be an empire of monetary influence.

yes but it is very discreet empire.

the oligarchs have molded the nation into empire over the past 30 years accumulating in trump.

whoever comes next will be less discreet about seizing power by military and finance force,

No, only retarded leftwing teenagers and the people who indoctrinate them think it's an empire

>I wish we'd stop beating around the push already and go full imperialist already
But you're on your deathbed. USA is declining hard due to racemixing and cultural subversion.

this.

*Overlooks your elections via military intervention*
I'll show you how to elect good men

Hegemony doesn't equal empire

CSA nigger btfo

Empires require an emperor, the US is like Carthage: bunch of rich traders in an oligarchy paying a shit load of money for a small, elite army to fight for their interests abroad.

carthage sounds more like the rich fucks who prop up muslim fundamentalists abroad, I'd say the usa sounds more like rome, in that example

both feel pretty wrong though, america takes largely its worst citizens and then gives them insane technological advantages to go fight poor fucks abroad, weird dynamic

The problem with Rome comparisons is that we don’t have individuals with as much strength as their Roman counterparts. Even as early as the second Punic war, the Roman army was practically a private entity under Scipio and it only got more independent as the years went on, individuals in Rome had a lot more military power than individuals in the US, one man in Rome could raise his own army, the US army answers only to the constitution, and their orders are to hold the constitution above any leader and request court martial if you believe your leader is going against the constitution. In that way, our armies don’t have private allegiance to individuals like they did in Rome, and intentionally do. They were thinking about scipio and Marius and Sulla and Caesar and so forth when they were designing the army, fear of a military strongman ala Rome was the primary influence on how the US army is organized, which is why a coup on the scale of Sulla or Caesar cannot happen in the US, our military won’t follow a dictator.

No! It is not! It is the most unimperial great power in human history.

Definitely, but do you think any of that makes the US sound any closer to Carthage by comparison?

I would in that Hannibal was bound by his oligarchy whereas Scipio was far more capable of being a dictator and acting on his own accord. Hannibal constantly needed to argue with Carthage to get supplies and there was no unified war strategy, kinda like the US. Rome just went full imperator very easily because it’s right there in their laws to go full dictator when facing the destruction of your civilization, that’s not true of Carthage or Rome, whose power remains decentralized throughout wars. Scipio didn’t really need the Senate because Roman society was organized in a way that he could do it himself. Carthaginian society is organized in a way where it’s always a committee effort and they always had power over Hannibal when it came down to it, I see a lot of parallels between Hannibal’s campaign and Vietnam: the army keeps winning but the support from home isn’t there and so eventually the momentum just tuckers out.

*Carthage or America

I wouldn't call the continental US an empire, but Alaska, Hawaii, and the territories for sure.

p.s. Canada is literally an empire imo; most of it's landmass is effectively a colony of the 'core', with essentially no say in their government.

Empires aren’t the only entities that annex territory, the Roman republic annexed more territory than the Roman Empire ever did.

But Scipio wasn't a dictator

In all but name he was, he got less support from his Senate than Hannibal did, most of his army was volunteers and he won the war basically on his own against the wishes of the senate, they didn’t hop on his bandwagon until he was already winning. Scipio started the trend of dictator-like figures in Rome, because it was a time when where senate failed the people of Rome one and time again but a private citizen proved to be a match, forever undermining the authority of the senate. Never again would Rome rely on consuls, governors would start raising their own armies, power shifted from senators to military strongmen, it all started with Scipio.

>tell anti-Americans that it isn't an empire
>"What! they are imperialist as all hell and are barely even a democracy!"

>tell anti-Americans that it is an empire
"What! America doesn't have the military and cultural clout to claim to be an empire, quit insulting my intelligence!"

the territory incorporated into the US was empty wilderness. not greek colonies and civilized cities already in existence, unless you count regions that broke with mexico (which itself broke from spain) and joined the USA

America can crush each and every country on this planet. Kill the men, rape the women, burn the cities. We just don't because you guys are our good friends.

Right?

NATO is basically the Persian empire.

this.
America would literally win an all against nothing war, if it were so motivated to fight one.
(except and atomic war, which no one would win). We don't do that though, because that would be mean.
Stop poking us.

>civic nationalism but still nationalism
disgust.jpg

yeah but in order for your analogy to hold, we'd still need a Caesar.
I don't think Trump is a Caesar, despite all the God-Emperor memes.

>the oligarchs have molded the nation into empire over the past 30 years accumulating in trump
but the oligarch's choice in the last election was clearly clinton, ya dunce. She was heavily favored and supported by the entire establishment of both political parties and the media. This means we don't live in a republic completely controlled by an oligarchy, even if it takes a literal billionaire to win without their support.

underrated post

the only difference is that our super-powerful politician oligarchs aren't also generals with direct command of the armies.
>our military won’t follow a dictator
exactly. until something serious happens to change that, America will not become a dictatorship.

If I were to guess on what hypothetically might change that, I would say we're already seeing the seeds of a politicized military. Anyone who's been in the military or knows the stats for how active-duty soldiers and veterans vote, already knows that it goes almost unanimously Republican. If there was going to be a dictator with the support of the military, he would come from the right wing in America.

>U.S. imperialism has been the greatest force for good in the world during the past century. It has defeated the monstrous evils of communism and Nazism and lesser evils such as the Taliban and Serbian ethnic cleansing. Along the way, it has helped spread liberal institutions to countries as diverse as South Korea and Panama.

>Yet, while generally successful as imperialists, Americans have been loath to confirm that's what they were doing. That's OK. Given the historical baggage that "imperialism" carries, there's no need for the U.S. government to embrace the term. But it should definitely embrace the practice.

>If we want Iraq to avoid becoming a Somalia on steroids, we'd better get used to U.S. troops being deployed there for years, possibly decades, to come. If that raises hackles about American imperialism, so be it. We're going to be called an empire whatever we do. We might as well be a successful empire.

>tfw he's actually a well respected foreign policy figure
We should ban foreign policy elites from using retarded appeals to morality like good and bad. Or at least brainwash them with a heavy dose of post modernism

>Nazism
>Serbian ethnic cleansing
>evil
>(((The Washington Post)))

The United States annexed plenty of territory from civilized rivals. See: the Spanish American war, the Mexican-American war, multiple “interventions” into South America that left America with pseudo dictatorships in control of the country’s shipping and therefore their economy, there’s plenty of conquest in American history

The Mexican-American War saw the united states gaining territory that was only Mexico relinquishing former Spanish claims to barren frontier as far north as Colorado, and what little there was of California likewise broke off from Mexico.

You’re just shifting the goalpost again, first it’s “they didn’t annex civilized territory” now it’s “they didn’t annex the most civilized parts of civilized territory.” Stop avoiding the point which is that America is a republic that conquers, and that empires are not the only political entities that conquer territory, that there have been many forms of government and they all conquer, that the US has gone to war with civilized rivals and taken their territory, your standards for what constitutes annexation just get stricter and stricter, this is why we call it shifting the goalpost. Thanks for offering everyone a good example of that, education into logicial fallacies is an important and often-ignored aspect of education.
Don’t sleep in English class kids.

when a landmass is open country, there is nothing to do but fill it

No, but it should be.

You don’t get to change the definition of “annex” in order to win a debate on the internet, go take a break and collect your thoughts and present the point you were trying to make in a better context next time. You can argue their is a unique spin on American annexation by nature of their unique geopolitical position but this is not a difference of intentions on their part to annex territory, merely a difference of conveniences, and your posts are just semantics drivel to avoid admitting you were wrong, I wish people would just take the L and move on but of course that never happens

Seriously, these threads are so hollow that I start to miss the /pol/|/leftypol/ raids

>what is Imperium

Please, America won out over weaker powers holding dubious land claims they stole from colonial powers, cry me a river.

Ok then whatever just keep doing what you’re doing.
Board is hopeless

I like the idea. Think about it. You can't have wars between nations if there's only one nation.

This. If anything, the last election was proof that America still has a functioning democracy.

When you're trying to call a federated republic an empire, an you're basing that on past frontier struggles against hostile dictatorships, yeah, I'm not going to respect you opinions.

>run out of enemies
>fight yourself
>become own worst enemy

McDonald's could be one.

Yes, for example they own 40 percent of Okinawa, have Puerto Rico subjugated and have a bunch of 'associate states' in the pacific. Oh and then you have the Native American reservations and a whole bunch of states that they have military hegemony over. Even by the traditional definition they are an empire. They're just also a ridiculously huge nation state.

What the fuck are you on about? You’re the one trying to say that America is an empire, I’m the one proving that you can be a republic and still annex territory, fuck you’d think all that French dick would have taught the world that but I guess not, whatever. Your response to that is to undermine the definition of “annex” and trying to claim that America’s conquest wasn’t a “conquest” at all but some other categorization, which is inherently a pointless semantics distinction in the first place in order to save your sorry-ass argument from fallacy hell, keep doubling down this board is fucking nonsense filled with stubborn retards like you.

No? I do not believe America is an empire in the least.

So take your terrible reading comprehension and kindly fuck off to some other conversation where you can proceed to be unreasonably stubborn with somebody else

I think maybe we could both stand to do so.

this faggot should be reminded that the saying goes "the ends justify the means" not "the ends dignify the means"

It's absolutely an empire. Implying that Vietnam and Iraq wars are anything but empire building is delusional. Also there were natives who the US conquered and subjugated in the first place. They didn't willingly give up their land and move to Indian reservations.

Please, those natives had about as much use of that land as any other wildlife.

Hegemony would be the better term I think. I'll let you decide if that counts

How much more does the US need to do to be an empire?

“Empire” is a definition which requires certain perimeters, not least of which a damn emperor, which the US doesn’t have. Emperors are not the only entities which conquer and project power. Republics are just as capable of conquest, as seen by Republican Rome, Republican Venice, Republican France, and Republican US. Conquest=/=Empire

Most Definitely. What do you think early 19th century expansionism was about? What do you think was the purpose of the invasion of Vietnam? What about the Gulf Wars? They were all attempts to gain influence, resources, or both.

That doesn’t mean they’re an empire.

it would need to not be present in those countries as part of ongoing defensive/ operational agreements with every nation in question

Alexander didn't title himself emperor but he still *built and empire*. Same thing with Great Britain, they have never had an emperor but are still known around the world as *The British Empire."

The main point is this: a sphere of influence or control built through conquest is in effect an empire. The way the US built theirs was via industrial capitalism.

An even better question is whether or not the Warsaw Pact and countries within the soviet sphere of influence constituted an empire. If you admit to that then surely the US fits the bill. Personally I don't think it did but many anti soviets will make the claim that the USSR was an empire.

The US didn't invade and install puppet governments within the section of Europe the allies were able to liberate. Nor did it ever invade any of them and put down peoples that rebelled against said puppet governments.

Wow, had to go a ways down for the right answer

Umm it set up NATO, which more or less acts by extension of foreign policy. All of the countries within it are basically US protectorates which get their economic directives from international banking institutions based in the US.

Alexander was a king, the terms “king” and “prince” and “emperor” are interchangeable, it means one man is sovereign, the British had their king but the US does not, neither did France-at first-nor Venice, nor Rome, nor Athens.

no, but it did help to form NATO, of that you are at least not wrong

The word emperor didn't exist in the sense we use it for until the Romans appropriated the old concept of imperatorship and adapted it to post-principiate. It's innapropriate to apply it to Alexander. He aspired to be king of Asia.

>Same thing with Great Britain, they have never had an emperor but are still known around the world as *The British Empire."

Actually, Queen Victoria also had the title Emperor of India. Regardless that it was a meme empire that collapsed a century later, it still technically qualifies.

youd get nuked in a day

amerisharts deserve a couple of nukes tbqh

return thee to int

They're a commercial empire. Anyone who doesn't want to work with them, and by extension the rest of the world, is isolated and becomes a poor shithole (Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea).

No one will ever challenge them militarily because it's prohibitively expensive to even try, and to do so would mean you're cut out of the international trade community (and therefore you become a poor shithole).

>we
Send this guy to the front

venezuela is a poor shithole for other reasons you tosspot, like having one industry (nationalizes), and spending all the money earned on that industry instead of saving it into a trust, with no way to recover from the price changes of that industry

No, America is anti-authoritarian, it's only an empire in that it fights against dictatorships and liberates oppressed peoples worldwide.

Napoleon tho?

kinda

It's an oligarchy

Oh, what was that?
I couldn't hear you over the sound of a dozen South American democracies, being overthrown by military dictatorships, funded by the CIA, because the voters voted for communism, instead of capitalism.

I think that was the joke he was making.