this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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Hey I don’t have time to do a whole infodump style reply but off the dome Washington profited immensely from the revolutionary war because he was a land speculator and the us needed to get into ww2 so it could stop the empire of japan from taking control of all the island territories it chased Spain off of.
I wouldn’t personally call the first example imperialism because you gotta make a distinction between Byzantine and American somehow and the one from imperialism the highest stage of capitalism seems appropriate and answers a lot of questions but the second one is literally imperialism by any definition you wanna call it.
Also even if you fully reject Lenin’s work you gotta grapple with the historical facts that the eastern states didn’t really create a program of mass import of raw materials from the western expansion states and complete control over the western states government to the detriment of the people who lived in them to the extent that the nation they represented did to the Philippines for example. The distinction between imperialism and colonialism for the modern age helps with that and fits many other modern examples, most notably israel. Israel isnt doing imperialism to Palestinians, they are doing colonialism.
Regarding Americas western expansion I am compressing a million pages of history and some really powerful counterexamples into a did they didn’t they statement here and I know that.
Like I said I don’t have time to do the other two without referring to a bunch of books to get my claims perfectly exactly irrefutably correct on the (no offense intended) Redditor instance.
Most wars have economic causes and impacts, but that alone does not imperialism make. There are "unprovoked punching down" as well as interventionist components that I don't think describe America's intentions or entries into either World War.
Either way, the argument I'm trying to refute is that me, as a Western Liberal, view any kind of modern war as imperialist, and thus dilute the definition of the term. I think I've demonstrated that while I don't adhere to Lenin's more strict definition, I don't want to use the term lightly, either.
I'm also not trying to make an argument that the USA isn't imperialist, in any strictness of the term. Western Liberals aren't a monolith, my bud.
I don’t care about whatever argument you’re having. It’s extremely inaccurate to claim Americas entry into ww2 was diplomatically motivated when Japan was taking by military force islands that had been part of an extractive zone contested by them and America. It’s literally two imperial powers low key fighting over their periphery then one goes PISS NUKE INCOMING.
Again, I do not care about whatever argument you’re having. If anything I want you to be able to integrate more information into your understanding of imperialism. It’s really hard for us as westerners to do that when so much of the groundwork of our historical understanding is jingoism and great man and it’s good you’re interrogating your own ideas.
Also you should probably start with the Spanish American war as your American point of entry into imperialism (you say here “global interventionism” but idk wth that means.)
Right on, as I said, I'm here to learn too. And I agree that the education and milieu I got in Florida in the 80s is pretty poor. What recommendations would you make to find out about these subjects?
BTW what I meant by "global interventionism" is how the US Government really ramped up manipulating the internal affairs of countries across all over the world, both depth and breadth. Twilight Struggle is one of my favorite board games, because of how much history I learned from it.