Review: 'How to Hide an Empire'

"The history of the United States is the history of empire." Many American readers will recoil from that conclusion -- we think of ourselves as Luke Skywalker, not the Death Star --  but Daniel Immerwahr makes a fair case. His book as a easy-reading primer on America's territorial expansionism, ranging from Daniel Boone through the occupation of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, all the way up to the military bases in Saudi Arabia that were a source of anger leading to the 9/11 attacks. (For me, reading about America's war against rebels in the Philippines during the early 20th century is always a source of shame and rage.) Even today, some four million people occupy territories governed or possessed by the U.S. At one point, that number was 19 million.

One of those territories is Guam. Immerwahr quotes a military analyst discussing how the Guam's people have no say in how the United States uses their territory as a military base:

People on Guam were forgetting that “they are a possession, and not an equal partner,” the analyst explained. “If California says they want to do this or that, it is like my wife saying that she wants to move here or there: I’ll have to respect her wish and at least discuss it with her. If Guam says they want to do this or that, it is as if this cup here,” he continued, pointing to his coffee mug, “expresses a wish: the answer will be, you belong to me and I can do with you as best I please.”

Immerwahr goes further, showing how technology has enabled the U.S. to mostly evolve away from a territorial empire into something more subtle: Globalization. America dominates the Internet, the setting of international industrial standards, and even the language that people around the world use to speak and write to each other. In so doing it has created what the author -- quoting Winston Churchill -- calls "empires of the mind."

That doesn't seem as obviously, immediately pernicious or racist as taking over a distant island and telling its people they have no say in how their collective futures. But knowing that might change the way Americans see themselves -- and how they might expect to be seen from the outside.  They can start by picking up Immerwahr's breezy, very readable short book.