Around the time the Iraq War commenced, the word â??empireâ?? was frequently employed. Niall Fergusonâ??s 2003 work Empire was the bestselling book on the subject. But there was also his sequel, Colossus: The Price of Americaâ??s Empire, as well as Charles Maierâ??s Among Empires, Cullen Murphyâ??s Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America and Andrew Bacevichâ??s American Empire, among others. In fact, in 2003, the publishing house Henry Holt created The American Empire Project, an entire line of books looking at the matter of empire.
Now that the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are dissolving, discussions of empire seem to have receded from view. But the United States possessed more than 1,000 military installations outside of the United States as of 2012, according to an estimate by American University professor David Vine. American troops are deployed in about 150 countries. Approximately $250 billion is spent annually to burnish these assets. If the United States was an empire in 2003, it remains one today.
Oxford University historian John Darwinâ??s erudite new book on the British Empire shows the continuing relevance of imperialism to our foreign-policy dilemmas. Darwin is probably the worldâ??s senior expert on Britainâ??s empire, the author of several well-regarded books on the subject. In Unfinished Empire, he provides an overview of arguably the most influential empire in world history. â??No less than one quarter of todayâ??s sovereign states were hewn from its fabric,â? writes Darwin.
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