US overseas bases extend an ancient imperial strategy of encircling domination
Evidence
In the nineteenth century, various European nations set up centers for the study of the Orient from which there emerged a huge body of Orientalist scholarship integrally tied to imperialism and colonization. In this chapter, and throughout the book generally, I focus mainly on the Middle East and North Africa, because it was these regions, due to their proximity to Europe, that largely informed the development of an elite Western vocabulary about “Islam.” After World War II, the United States took over from France and England, both literally and metaphorically. It began to exercise its hegemony in the region through the borrowed language of Orientalism, but also through the vocabulary of capitalist modernization, which was better suited to the new form of imperialism initiated by the United States. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 28 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The United States retains overseas territories primarily for military power projection.; Okinawa bases lock Japan into a subordinate client-state role under U.S. control; Overseas bases can increase global danger rather than security (+20 more)
Related
- US post-war hegemony repurposed Orientalism and modernization theory to justify empire. (similarity 0.87)
- European Orientalism was normalized into a coherent US scholarly consensus (similarity 0.84)
- Oriental studies were reconceived as instruments of national policy toward postcolonial nations (similarity 0.81)
- American Orientalism persists fragmentarily but ideologically coherently (similarity 0.81)
- Empires justify themselves by claiming superiority over prior empires (similarity 0.81)
- Postwar US planners saw the war as empire-building and fused national with global security (similarity 0.80)
- Postwar US empire was legitimated through modernization theory and Orientalism (similarity 0.79)
- Postwar decolonization forced the military to maintain colonies under new guises via bases (similarity 0.79)
- American empire inherited and reformulated European Orientalism after World War II (similarity 0.79)
- Empire shifting to the US carried Orientalist scholars across the Atlantic with it (similarity 0.79)
- Foreign military bases have underpinned imperial control since antiquity. (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- U.S. leaders have increasingly embraced imperial ambitions in an era of unprecedented military strength
#corroborates(0.45) - US post-war hegemony repurposed Orientalism and modernization theory to justify empire.
#corroborates(0.40) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 28