ABSTRACT
Hopkins’s American Empire is quite illuminating in his comparative analysis and detailed account of the dependent territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific. He convincingly demonstrates that the American empire was not exceptional, though distinct, and that it shared more commonalities than differences with other Western colonial powers. This essay attempts to shed light on some other aspects that Hopkins’s analysis of the ‘insular empire’ did not fully cover in his work. It employs the term ‘informal empire’ rather than hegemony to grasp the distinct characteristics of American empire-building and highlights the dialectical process of interaction between America’s anti-colonial tradition, on the one hand, and the imperial impulses, on the other. In contrast with Hopkins’s portrayal of the United States as ‘an aspiring hegemon,’ it argues that the interwar years were a transitional stage of U.S. empire-building that subsequently transformed itself into a fully-fledged informal empire during the Cold War years. The article shows that the Cold War order was hierarchical and coercive, and similar to the old imperial order embodied by the European colonial powers. It shares Hopkins’s view that the first signs of the decline of U.S. power appeared in the 1970s but disagrees about the rate the trend developed. It contends that the decline was rather gradual and winding, though cumulative, and that the United States managed to remain an informal empire for some time after the ending of the Cold War.
