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Archive 1986 - 2017
Jan Oberg

The U.S. Empire – what future, what end? Features collected by TFF • November 1, 2004

“A country’s violence, Hannah Arendt said, can destroy its power. The United States is moving quickly down this path. Do American leaders imagine that the people of the world, having overthrown the territorial empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are ready to bend the knee to an American overlord in the twenty-frist? Do they imagine that allies are willing to become subordinates? Have they forgotten that people hate to be dominated by force? History of packed with surprises. The leaders of the totalitarian Soviet empire miraculously had the good sense to yield up their power without unleashing the tremendous violence that was at their fingertips. Could it be the destiny of the American republic, unable to resist the allure of an imperial delusion, to flare out in a blaze of pointless mass destruction?“

– Jonathan Schell, The Unconquerable World, p. 346-347Related Feature Collections

The US Empire – what future, what end? – November 1, 2004

General – Wikipedia

Imperialism & Hegemony

Pax Americana

Bush Doctrine

Project for a New American Century

Military aspects

The White House
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (September 2002)

Encarta Encyclopedia
The Bush Doctrine and the US Military

Anup Shah, Global Issues
The Bush Doctrine of Pre-Emptive Strikes; A Global Pax Americana

CDI – Center for Defense Information, Washington
The Bush National Security Strategy: A First Step

Mel Goodman, Foreign Policy in Focus
The Militarization of US Foreign Policy

Brad Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor
Nuclear-weapons challenge rise
Bush and Pentagon call for new kinds of nukes – and a missile defense system – as bombs’ toxic legacy lingers.

Fred Kaplan, Slate.com
Our hidden WMD program. Why Bush is spending so much on nuclear weapons

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – NAPF
US Presidential Candidates’ Report Card. Turn the tide in US nuclear policy

William Blum
A brief history of US interventions: from 1945 to 1999 & Killing Hope – interventions

Global Policy Forum
Empire?
Many dimensions and issues…

Politics – slide toward fascism?

Richard Falk, TFF Asscoate
Will the Empire be fascist?

Brian Rainey, CounterPunch
Bush’ Motives: Increase US Global Dominance

Thom Hartmann, Common Dreams
The Ghost of Vicec President Wallace Warns: “It can happen here”

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Robert J. Lifton, TFF Associate, Nation Books
Superpower Syndrome: America’s Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World

Henry A. Wallace, The New Times in 1944
The Danger of American Fascism
This story ran in the New York Times in 1944.  Draw your own conclusions and compare Henry Wallace’s analysis to the situation we find ourselves in today.

Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times
Militant Christianity versus Militant Islam

Ivan Eland, AntiWar.com
American Exceptionalism

Tony Judt, New York Review of Books
Dreams of Empire – Reviews of books on the empire

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
A conversation with Walther Cronkite

Paul Craig Roberts, AntiWar.com
The brownshirting of America

Richard Falk, TFF Associate
Impending constitutional crisis: the rush to war

Jane Lampman, Common Dreams and Christian Science Monitor
A Crusade after all?

Helen Thomas, Common Dreams
Bush win would mean dark times

Manuel Valenzuela, Information Clearing House
“The Ghost of Orwell is upon us”

Richard Falk, TFF Associate in The Nation
The New Bush Doctrine

Economics – the costs of empire

Robert Higgs, The Independent Institute
Benefits and costs of the US government’s warmaking

Robert Higgs, The Independent Institute
Bush’ Iraq war: An Offer You Could Have Refused

New York Times editorial
The rising costs of war

Coming decline and fall – general theory and the United States

Immanuel Wallerstein
The Eagle has crashlanded
” The United States’ success as a hegemonic power in the postwar period created the conditions of the nation’s hegemonic demise. This process is captured in four symbols: the war in Vietnam, the revolutions of 1968, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the terrorist attacks of September 2001. Each symbol built upon the prior one, culminating in the situation in which the United States currently finds itself&emdash;a lone superpower that lacks true power, a world leader nobody follows and few respect, and a nation drifting dangerously amidst a global chaos it cannot control.”

Richard B. Du Boff, Monthly Review
U.S. Hegemony: Continuing decline, enduring danger

Alan Woods, marxist.com
The decline and fall of the American Empire – About Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

John Bellamy Foster & Robert W. McChesney, Monthly Review
Pax Americana or Pox Americana?

Mahmoud Awad, World Crisis Web
When Empires speak

John Pilger, Hidden Agendas
Will there be a war against the world after November 2?

Richard Falk, TFF Associate
“The Unconquerable World.” Book Review

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