Imperialism

The U.S. planned "an integrated policy to achieve military and economic supremacy for the United States".
- Memorandum of the War and Peace Studies Project of the Council on Foreign Relations, with State Department participation, 19 October 1940




The measure of our victory will be the measure of our domination after victory...(The US must secure areas) strategically necessary for world control.
- Isaiah Bowman, Council on Foreign Relations, 1942




[W]e have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.

...We should dispense with the aspiration to "be liked" or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and--for the Far East--unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
- George Kennan, Former Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff, February 1948




The U.S. "must cultivate a mental view toward world settlement after this war which will enable us to impose our own terms, amounting perhaps to a Pax Americana." - General George V. Strong, "Petroleum Policy of the United States,"
-Memorandum of U.S. Department of State, April 11, 1944, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1944, Vol. V



The right to first-class citizenship entails the right to what is called 'self-government': it rules out imperialism. An unfashionable view which is nevertheless sometimes expressed is that people have a right to be governed well, but that, granted that they are governed well, they can have no legitimate objection to whoever it is that governs them.... The mere fact that authority resides in aclass of foreigners suffices to humiliate all those subject to that authority by making them feel themselves to be second-class citizens in their own lands.
- Michael Dummett, On Immigration and Refugees, p. 11



[Ronald] Reagan ... was most definitely a global empire builder, a servant of the corporatocracy... He would cater to the men who shuttled back and forth from corporate CEO offices to bank boards and into the halls of government. He would serve the men who appeared to serve him but who in fact ran the government - men like Vice President George H. W. Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Richard Cheney, Richard Helms, and Robert McNamara. He would advocate what those men wanted: an America that controlled the world and all its resources, a world that answered to the commands of that America, a U.S. military that would enforce the rules as they were written by America, and an international trade and banking system that supported America as CEO of the global empire."
- John Perkins

But we didn't come this far because we are made of sugar candy. Once upon a time we uh, elbowed our way onto and into this continent by giving smallpox infected blankets to Native Americans. Yes, that was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever and we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves.
- Paul Harvey, "radio legend"