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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction

Part 1, Chapters 1-4

Part 1, Chapters 5-8

Part 1, Chapters 9-12

Part 2, Chapters 13-16

Part 2, Chapters 17-20

Part 2, Chapters 21-22

Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Part 2, Chapters 21-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “The Pointillist Empire“

Part 2, Chapter 21 Summary: “Baselandia”

The proliferation of American military bases around the world presented a set of unique challenges and opportunities. Some of the American bases were on small islands in the Pacific, but others were in large urban environments like Liverpool in Britain. Officially, the US “offered protection and usually funds in exchange for the right to plan its outposts” (355). As a result, these bases also contributed to the local economy and “came into frequent contact with foreigners” (355). Not everyone supported them. The British public protested against “the logic of the Cold War” in 1958 at Trafalgar Square “in the heart of NATO country” (356).

Liverpool also gave birth to the Beatles. On the one hand, the city benefitted economically from this proximity while the US disseminated cultural hegemony like American artists’ records “that no one else had access to” (358). On the other, John Lennon criticized these bases and their nuclear armaments, with “Those who lived in the shadow of the bases both resent[ing] them and buil[ding] their lives around them, vacillating between protest and participation” (359).

Japan was in a similar situation by hosting American bases after its humiliation in WWII. Japan underwent an incredible postwar transformation economically and culturally. At first, the Japanese learned English and wanted to emulate the United States. At the same time, many did not feel independent even after the end of their formal occupation in 1952. One of the reasons was the fact that the US “continued to occupy parts of Japan outside of the main islands” (360), especially Okinawa. These American bases were also the sources of crime: “Killings, rapes, and assaults by the men on the bases were not uncommon” (360). Japan did not have jurisdiction over prosecuting most of them.

At the same time, the US was one of the key employers in Japan. During the Korean War (1950-1953), “Japanese firms took at least $300 million a year from US purchase orders” which the Bank of Japan referred to as “divine aid” (361). In addition to American patronage, Japan relied on “other factors spurring its growth, including a high rate of savings, market protections, an entrepreneurial culture” (362) and a government focused on development. Between 1945 and 1975, Japan’s economy grew fifty-five-fold.

For these reasons, Japan’s sentiment toward US bases was “profoundly complicated” (362). However, there were serious protests. Eisenhower once had to cancel his trip to Japan due to lacking safety guarantees. Like Liverpool, some of the Japanese protesters financially benefitted from the US bases, but, at the same time, suffered from US strikes during the war and from accidents caused by US personnel after it.

For the US, its formal and informal occupation of Japan “was sowing the seeds of its own deindustrialization” (364). One of the most striking examples was the establishment of Sony by Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka. The pair created a brand naming it after “sonny boy,” spelled out in Latin letters rather than Hiragana—a term pejoratively used by American GIs toward Japanese men (366). Sony manufactured smaller transistor radios suited for individual use, and their products became immensely popular. Japan began “selling more to the United States than it was buying” (369)—US media called it a “business invasion” (370). The company bought Columbia Records and catalogs of famous American artists like Bob Dylan. Overall, countries that hosted the most American bases after World War II became its greatest competitors, including South Korea, Japan, West Germany, and Britain.

Part 2, Chapter 22 Summary: “The War of Points”

After WWII, Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich Gulf state, focused on infrastructure, from roads to palaces. Dhahran, Saudi Arabia presented a problem for America’s pointillist empire. The Saudi royals did not want to display the US flag for religious reasons, so they “attached it to the side of the building to prevent its touching Saudi soil” (372). The US military left the base in 1962 due to local dissent about US imperialism.

Mohamed bin Laden, the Saudi royal builder, also “built classified projects for the US military, including air bases and garrisons around Saudi Arabia’s western coast” (373). His four sons were educated in Britain and the US. One of them, Osama bin Laden, worked in the family business “with special zeal” (373). However, his interest in religion made him believe that “there was a great conflict between Islam and Western empires” (373). Bin Laden became active in the Afghan insurgency, recruiting fighters between Afghanistan and Pakistan after the Soviet invasion in 1978. The United States sought to give the Soviet Union its own Vietnam. As a result, the US and the Saudis started funding the mujahideen insurgency. In 1988, bin Laden formed al-Qaeda, then a small organization, “to direct the jihad” (374).

Then came the Gulf War (1990-1991) when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein entered Kuwait. The Saudis allowed the Americans to reopen the Dhahran base. The US was apprehensive, recalling Vietnam. Nonetheless, Operation Desert Storm used bombers along with Tomahawk missiles launched from ships sitting in the Persian Gulf: “Ten minutes into the attack, much of Iraq’s infrastructural network, including the Baghdad power grid, had been disabled” (378). The strikes made a ground counterpart almost unnecessary, which seemed to point to the fact “that technology was changing the face of war” (378). Military analysts like Russia’s Vladimir Slipchenko suggested that concepts like flank and rear would be less important instead of precision strikes, while the battlefield would focus on “targets and non-targets” (379). As a result, territorial control would lose its significance because war was “about points” (379).

American servicemen and women at the Saudi base dressed conservatively, but “no amount of precaution could change the basic fact that one country was stationing its troops in another’s land” (379). As a result, a furious bin Laden began his campaign of terror starting with a 1995 car-bombing in Riyadh next to a US training facility. Then came another bomb in Dhahran. Bin Laden issued his “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” in 1996 (380). In 1998, he coordinated the bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. President Bill Clinton’s Tomahawk missile strike at al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan embarrassingly failed by killing low-ranking members and destroying a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant. Bin Laden justified his attacks by arguing that the US bases are everywhere. In the 9/11 attacks, “Bin Laden’s motives were neither unknowable nor obscure”—they were a “retaliation against the United States of its empire of bases” (382).

George W. Bush launched a war on terror, entering Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq two years later. The invasions were initially successful. However, this conflict was different because it targeted non-state actors and networks. Drones, for example, “carried the pointillist warfare to its logical endpoint” (384). This warfare focused on GPS coordinates rather than countries. The US even used drone strikes in “friendly” countries like Pakistan and Somalia. However, the Americans did not plan for a postwar transition well.

Military installations and “black sites” also allowed Americans to use extrajudicial interrogation means, including torture. However, a Supreme Court ruling in 2004 stated that, despite the nebulous status of the US-controlled Guantanamo prison in Cuba, prisoners “could seek justice in federal courts” (389). Meanwhile, multiple countries were expelling US military bases: Saudi Arabia, once again, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. Japanese protests over US bases continued in Okinawa.

Part 2, Chapters 21-22 Analysis

The final two chapters focus on the paradox of the technologically advanced, informal empire that the US is. The US relies on soft power, economic domination (neo-colonialism), as well as the presence of military bases to derive the necessary benefits for itself without territorial control. Whereas the direct, formal control of large territories is less important, the small points—whether the uninhabited islands or the military bases in foreign countries—gain additional significance. The book begins with guano islands with seemingly no other benefit than fertilizer and concludes with refurbishing these islands into airfields, radio transmission points, or nuclear testing tying it all together. Thus, despite the significant transformation that the United States underwent between the late 19th and early 21st centuries, this trajectory is one of the consistent aspects of the American Empire. This consistency also underscores the character of the United States as a maritime power like Britain, per the classic geopolitical work of Alfred Thayer Mahan and Halford Mackinder, with the navy and the air force being its strongest military features. Points also gained importance in the technologization of warfare and using drones to target specific individuals even in nominally friendly countries. The theme Geography Is Destiny: The Pointillist Empire discusses this issue further.

The military bases in foreign countries have acted as silent enforces of the American way, bringing the paradox of American economic benefits with sociocultural hegemony. At worst, the establishment of such bases requires the installation of a more amicable government through pressure or regime change. In this context, NGOs, such as USAID and NED, have played a significant role as the unofficial extension of American imperial power. Another paradox of America’s informal empire is that “the international order that the United States built around itself after 1945 redounded to its benefit, but not permanently” (369). The author shows that most American-dominated countries, such as Japan and Germany, came to emulate and challenge the US with their own economic and technological prowess within the framework of globalization. Indeed, the story of Albizu and the extreme case of the terrorist Osama bin Laden, demonstrate the paradox of growing up in the shadow of American power, emulating it, and then becoming disillusioned and radicalized against it.