How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

Saipan, a small island next to Guam, part of the commonwealth of the US, was important to the clothing-manufacturing industry starting in the 1990s. The garments were sold in the US but were made by Chinese workers brought to Saipan. Some US laws applied to the island, along with the rest of the Northern Marianas, whereas others did not, as was the case with Puerto Rico. As a result of the legal loophole, foreigners could work there for unfair wages (not part of labor laws), while the clothing sported the coveted “made in the US” label (part of trade laws).

The American empire found other expressions. The 2008 election, for instance, raised the question of citizenship for Presidential candidate John McCain, his VP Sarah Palin, and the future President Barack Obama. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, a territory that was subject to US jurisdiction like Guantanamo. As a result, he was not a child born to citizens outside the limits of US jurisdiction. In 1937, a law making those born in the Canal Zone citizens was passed in 1937—a year after McCain’s birth. In turn, Sarah Palin’s husband, part Indigenous Alaskan Todd Palin, was a member of the Alaska Independence Party which negated the process by which Alaska became a state: non-English-speaking Indigenous Alaskans could not vote. Ultimately, both McCain and Palin were white, so they “weren’t much impeded by their colonial entanglements” (396). Obama, in contrast, was born in Hawaii after it became a state, but this fact, along with his time spent in Indonesia, was seen as a weakness by some. “Americanness” was equated with being a mainlander.

The disregard for Puerto Rico after the 2017 Hurricane Maria, which damaged the power grid and water system, “exposed the parlous state of affairs in the United States’ largest remaining colony” (398). Empire is not a thing of the past, “a price paid for yesterday’s excesses” (398) but a geopolitical entity that remains relevant. The term “empire” is both pejorative and a “way of describing a country that, for good or bad, has outposts and colonies” (400). The US not only has its overseas territories, but around 800 military bases around the world in contrast to approximately 30 owned by all other countries combined. Many countries host American military bases and installations, and “[t]hose that refuse are nevertheless surrounded by them” (399). After all, “[t]he history of the United States is the history of empire,” and its colonialism “hovers in the background of politics at the highest level” (400).