ABSTRACT
The first decade of the twenty-first century marked a new iteration of debate about ‘American Empire’. The 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, the promulgation of the so-called Bush Doctrine, and the debate preceding the invasion of Iraq drove interest in the idea that the United States was, or was becoming, an imperial power. The proposition was not new: critics of American foreign policy had long criticized its putatively imperialist nature. However, this time many defenders of the US role in the world embraced the notion of American Empire.
