Nation Topics - America as Empire | The Nation

As the senior American diplomat in Baghdad during Desert Shield, I
advocated a muscular US response to Saddam's brutal annexation of Kuwait
in flagrant violation of the United Nations charter.

In my days as a student activist in the 1970s, the use of the term
"imperialism" to describe US policy was generally used only in the
antiwar and international solidarity movements, the writing

A Palestinian's view.

In the more trying period ahead, a modest internationalism would fare best.

In a book of interviews published a few years ago, Chronicles of Dissent, Noam Chomsky recounted a childhood incident that shaped his life.

The Soviet Union can no longer act as a brake on US.
expansion, and Western Europe cannot do so yet.
That is the bitter, bloody and understated lesson of
the current crisis.