"The daiquiri rose to prominence as a direct result of the American imperial project in the Caribbean during the burgeoning classic cocktail age from 1860 to 1920."
"I desperately wanted to believe that spreading freedom could solve the security dilemmas confronting the United States—that by doing good in the world, it could also serve its national security interests."
Controversies about recent books about the history and legacy of colonialism raise questions about what it means to assign – or refuse to – a book for students to read, discuss, and potentially critique, and how provocation works in the liberal model of inquiry.
One foreign policy historian argues that the decision to invade Iraq was made out of genuine concern for thwarting attacks on Americans and preserving the United States' ability to use military power in the Middle East.
It's past time to finish the halting progress made a century ago to rally international cooperation against imperial aggression. The stakes are too high to leave peace in the hands of individual nations.
If the US is following behind Great Britain in experiencing the strains of a collapsing empire, can Americans, their leaders, and their thinkers learn any lessons from the comparison and make a post-imperial society that is more humane and less nasty?
Even students who are able to overcome the cognitive dissonance provoked by learning about American imperialism struggle to imagine how knowledge can support work for a more just and democratic world order.
The experience of left-wing Japanese Americans, who rejected Japanese imperialism while being oppressed by American nationalism, shows that war forces an artificial binary of national allegiance.
The embrace of the belief that nations are entitled to reclaim their past dominance underlies Russia's invasion of Ukraine but also is influencing the politics of Britain, France, China, and the United States. A renewed commitment to international cooperation is needed to thwart this dangerous turn.
Historic empires have all ultimately faced a moment of reckoning when the reality of their fading power overcomes triumphal myths. The next phase of fighting in Ukraine will determine if that moment has come for Putin's Russia.
Since the Philippine-American war in the 1890s, the sexual exploitation of Asian women has gone hand in hand with American militarism in the Pacific. It's foolish to pretend that this history has nothing to do with attacks on Asian American women today.
Far from encouraging critical thinking, the "balance sheet" approach to teaching historical atrocities like slavery or imperialism flatters the mythologies created by the powerful to excuse violence against others, says a historian of empire and parent of a high school student.
No American observers should use the term "unprecedented" to describe Putin's claim to support self-determination as a justification for invading another country. It's part of the toolkit of empire.
Despite their ideological incompatibility, Putin's nationalism depends on the cult of fear and repressive apparatus of the Stalinist era, which was never comprehensively demolished after the fall of Communism.
Putin's actions belie the argument that Russia was provoked by NATO expansion; Russian imperialism is driving neighbors toward the western alliance, not the other way around.
