Reflections on the Psychohistory and Economics of American Imperialism

For several reasons, imperialism is a difficult phenomenon to speak and write about psychohistorically. First and foremost, it is hard because most thoughtful people have very strong feelings about and, normally, against it. These negative views result in either outrage against it, hardly a good state for psychological analysis, or denial of imperialism by many people. Let us trace some of the history of this denial. Certainly since the defeat of the naked imperialism of Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese in WWII, imperialism has overwhelmingly been seen as incompatible with democracy. Thus, American democrats such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, while determined to save Britain from the Nazis, also sought to thwart Churchill’s overt imperialist, Great Power expansionist ambitions. Some in the world looked to the U.S. as an anti-imperialist power. So, in 1945, the Vietnamese insurgent Ho Chi Minh vainly sought U.S. help against the French reoccupation of his country.

American post-WWII imperialism has been complicated by the issue of denial because most Americans do not want to see themselves as imperialists any more than as warlike. Just as the pacifistic Thomas Woodrow Wilson talked himself and America into entering WWI on the basis of it being “a war to end all wars,” so Americans incline to see our imperialism as steps in the liberation of peoples from the evils of European imperialism. Most Americans incline to see imperialism as the action of others. However, my American Heritage Dictionary defines imperialism not as the action of others, but as “the policy of extending a nation’s authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of political and economic hegemony over other nations” (1976, p. 660).

The psychology of the imperialists is akin to that of the parent over the toddler: the imperial power knows what is right and good for the politically, economically, and socially imperialized peoples. American imperial impulses and actions are often used or rejected by others according to their own needs and fantasies. Thus, France was eager to be liberated from the Nazis by American and English troops in 1944. In the 21st century, a number of Persian Gulf state rulers have opted to have American bases on their territory because the presence U.S. forces serves as a protection against foreign or domestic dangers. The rulers of Saudi Arabia ignored Osama bin Laden’s 1990 offer of saving his homeland from the Iraqi dictator who had just invaded Kuwait, choosing to rely on American military might rather than that of 5,000 or so mujahideen that the Saudi hero of Afghanistan could raise. Most Iraqis probably wanted to see the tyrant Saddam Hussein driven out of power earlier this year, but now many of the same people want our troops out of Iraq immediately. Iraqis may be as ambivalent about the current U.S. occupation of Iraq as are a growing number of Americans, though for different reasons.

One psychohistorical approach to this and other subjects is as a participant-observer. In this vein of introspection and self-revelation, I usually find myself frustrated when people say America is an imperial power, just as I find myself frustrated when people say America is not an imperial power. I am like many other Americans in being ambivalent about using the term imperialist in relation to the U.S. My main reason is that it is so emotion-laden that real exchange often stops rather than opens up when the term is used in public or even private discussion. I was reluctant to have this special issue on the psychology of imperialism. I feared that we might receive mostly screeds against imperialism, which fortunately has not been the case. I also insisted upon the question mark after “America as an Imperial Power” because I did not want to discourage those who were totally convinced America is not an imperial power. Furthermore, I have a revulsion as a democrat, with a small “d,” to the very idea of dominating other people. In my opinion, imperialistic behavior inclines to endanger the civil liberties and democracy of both the imperialized and those in the imperial country.

It is easy to declare that the U.S. is not im-

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perialist by definition. Many Americans think, “we liberated parts of Western Europe and East Asia in the 1940s without annexing Germany and Japan, therefore we cannot be an imperialist power!” To the contrary, from the America-as-imperialist perspective, establishing “economic hegemony over other nations” (American Heritage Dictionary) is sufficient proof of our imperialism. However, hegemony is a vague enough term for this point to be quite arguable. Clearly, the U.S. throws around its weight much less when dealing with countries we know better and respect, such as England and Germany, and more in dealing with weaker countries we know less about, such as Nicaragua under President Reagan and Iraq under the Bushes. The power of other nations to potentially hurt us also makes a difference. Powerful nuclear powers are treated with special care. It is no accident that when Bush first looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes, he had a sense of his “soul,” and felt the former KGB agent was a trustworthy and straightforward person, rather than feeling and expressing these thoughts upon looking into the eyes of the president of a minor European country with virtually no power to influence American policy.

Returning to the question of psychological approaches to imperialism, when undergraduate students are unsure as to how to make a paper psychohistorical, I tell them it is usually easiest to do this by making it specific and psychobiographical, rather than keeping it general. I just read an interesting paper by a student discussing the imperialistic policies of Theodore Roosevelt and George W. Bush. Roosevelt’s imperialism was related to his overcoming his weakness as an asthmatic child and Bush’s to his struggle to measure up to a high achieving father he lived in the shadow of for most of his life. Had my student more time to work on his paper, I would have told him to think and write more about the unconscious motivations and mechanisms of defense of each of them.

For example, despite his dyslexia and malapropisms, George W. Bush is an intelligent man who was educated at the finest prep schools and then Yale and Harvard. However, though he was a history major at Yale, he concentrated more on the activities of his DKE fraternity and the Skull and Bones Society than on the world around him (Bill Minutaglio, First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty, 2000). His leadership as a cheerleader at Andover was excellent preparation for politics. A lack of curiosity had made it easy for neo-conservatives to influence his policies in ways that are not very good for the country. Like his father, he considers oil to be extremely important and is able to convince others that it makes sense to invest American lives and wealth in the oil-rich Middle East. His personal reasons for the war, which he was empowered to start because of the trauma of 9/11, relate to wanting to punish a man he though had tried to have his father assassinated in Kuwait in 1993, to measure up to the first President Bush as a war leader, and to exceed his father’s accomplishments by actually getting rid of Saddam Hussein.

Imperialism is such an emotion-laden term that there are many misconceptions about it. Through the years I have always had a substantial number of students and colleagues who have argued that imperialism is primarily caused by economic motivations, yet I have never been presented with convincing evidence that imperialism and the wars that it generates are normally financially profitable. Imperialism does not pay, although like all human endeavors, there are some people who make money from it. If one adds up the cost of imperial adventures, including the cost of the lost lives (using insurance charts) and payments to orphans and widows, it is seldom possible to justify imperialism economically. One might make an economic case for poverty-stricken Mongols coming off the Steppes of Central Asia into the rich cities of China or for the Bedouins coming out of the deserts of Arabia into the cities and granaries of North Africa and the Near East, but these are more the exception than the rule. American society as a whole has not benefited from imperial expansion in areas not contiguous to the U.S. Yes, individuals and industries may benefit, in the same way as when anyone dies coffin makers, florists, gravediggers, and newspapers make some money on the misfortune of the dead. So also, certain arms makers, the Halliburton Company, and various other special interests are benefiting from the current war in Iraq. The average American taxpayer and those who are coming home in body bags are certainly the losers. Over the long run Iraqis may even benefit from having Saddam Hussein out of power, but that is another issue! Personally, I opposed the 2003 Gulf War for a variety of reasons, including its being a distraction from the War on Terrorism. My sentiments lie much more with the long term interests of the average American than with the special interests who benefit from war and preparations for it. Above and beyond all else, I dislike seeing people dying.

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It is certainly true that there are special interests who benefit from imperialism, provided they are able to keep the imperialism from causing large scale wars, which end up taking their wealth and lives, along with those of their countrymen. Economically, however, in a world of relatively unrestricted trade, why go through the expense of war and occupation of a country to get its goods when you can buy them on the open market? This was also true in the period of “New Imperialism” from 1870 to 1900, which was one of the reasons why the imperial victors after WWII generally relinquished their colonies without a fight, when there were few of the “mother” country’s nationals living in them, as was generally the case.

In conclusion, strong emotions and numerous myths about imperialism make it a difficult subject to examine psychohistorically. Nevertheless, Jeffrey Engel, Ted Goertzel, Jackie Hogan, J. Donald Hughes, John Knapp, Dan McAdams, Lincoln Paine, Charles Strozier, Nancy Unger, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown have made some progress in this process through their varied articles. Though much more work is yet to be done, I hope the reader finds these contributions to be of value. Furthermore, as a citizen of the sole superpower in today’s world, I also hope that my country will quickly learn and accept the limits of its power without it costing too many of our lives or those of the citizens of other countries.

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