Empire corrupts the republic, as it did in Rome. If the choice is between Empire and Republic, choose the latter, for what profit to conquer the world, when you have lost your soul.
I like the quote, but I think that America demonstrated its ability to expand without corrupting itself too deeply. We did take lots of land in the Span-Am war.
In another way, there's a kind of King Solomon style ruling where exactly because America wanted to give up its empire, it is qualified to keep it.
all of these possessions are poorer then the USA. They would likely take a lot of net tax dollars from the federal government.
To the extent they had political representation it would almost certainly be on the left. There is a reason the left is always pushing for PR statehood.
If you think adding large numbers of hard left leaning welfare states to America would have a bad effect on America that’s a strong reason to oppose.
I think it would be very hard to keep large foreign polities without representation, and grow only harder the more of them there are. It’s one thing that some random tiny island somewhere with not many people is a “territory”. It’s another if it’s a whole empire.
Even if you didn’t have representation, I have to think that you would get mass migration from these places to the mainland. Puerto Ricans have had profound effects where they have migrated to in America (they have the highest crime rate and the most leftist voting of Hispanic immigrants).
This all comes down to “will we make them more like us or will they make us more like them.” And which is more important.
I’m generally of the opinion that high functioning first world polities are super important and fragile. I don’t really think what happens in the third world matters much compared to that.
If we had annexed Cuba and Hispaniola, it wouldn't feel like an "empire". They are much closer to the continental US than Alaska or Hawaii, closer than Puerto Rico is. It would just feel like, well naturally we also control some of the nearby islands.
To me I wonder whether we could do a better job of integrating Puerto Rico. Yeah, it's richer than the surrounding islands, but it's far poorer than the US states. I feel like as long as most people there don't speak English, it's going to be hard for them to get the full benefit of being US citizens. And if we really find a formula for making Puerto Rico as well off as Miami, then yeah, I will wish that in retrospect we had done the same for Cuba and Hispaniola.
I grew up in Puerto Rico in the 60s and 70s. A large proportion of the population speaks at least some English, especially in the urban areas. I don't think we've given them a fair shake over the years, to be honest. How different things could have been.
Yeah, I'm not an expert, the language thing is just my guess. I feel like it would be a great investment, both morally and financially, for the US to push harder on bringing Puerto Rico up to the condition of the core states.
ChatGPT estimates 20% of the people there speak English, and obviously speaking English is going to be really good for your employment prospects as a US citizen, so it seems like one simple thing we could try to do is ensure that the education system there teaches everyone English. And in terms of "vibes" that feels like the sort of help-the-poor program that could get support from the right wing as well.
Not sure I ‘d call myself an expert, but I lived there for 8 years and still do business there.
You do need to understand a few things about PR to understand the topic.
First and foremost is that a minority of the island wants this. Politics there are divided between maintaining current status, becoming a US state, or independence. It breaks down roughly 40%, 40%, 20% respectively. Any variation you see from those numbers in plebiscites mostly has to do with one side or the other boycotting the vote to call it illegitimate. Independence has surged recently. Though most feel that without Uncle Sam looking over their shoulder they wouldn’t be able to hold it together.
Next, understand that the US has a horrendous history of treatment of PR (medical testing without consent, using PR troops as canon fodder, controlling sugar production, etc). So while some locals trust the US to keep an eye on their politicians pretty much no one really trusts Uncle Sam. With reason.
Language isn’t a dramatic driver. Many speak English, nearly everyone has some words at least. But, for example, English is not a litmus test for education, you’ll find English speakers sprinkled all over the island. It’s not the only cultural difference nor nearly the biggest. Legal tradition is dramatically different, with the basis of the legal system being Spanish, not English common law. Cultural differences abound. In more recent years that gap has closed with places like Miami, or Tampa, who have significant Caribbean Hispanic populations. Parts of Hialeah look like the middle of Bayamon. Some, though not all, of the foods are similar, etc.
But the most significant reason has little to do with PR and more to do with the US. There’s little reason for the US to take PR as a state. It would complicate
US politics, there’s really no one championing statehood, and the US wouldn’t get much from it. It’s possible that PR could have successfully pushed for it while Castro was alive, but since that time PR has little strategic leverage to ask it of the US. And, importantly, they’re not asking for it.
So no, language doesn’t touch the top 5 reasons. Less so now that you can comfortably live in parts of the US without speaking English as a Spanish speaker. People move back and forth between Miami, Orlando, NY, Houston, and San Juan all the time.
Not sure I ‘d call myself an expert, but I lived there for 8 years and still do business there.
You do need to understand a few things about PR to understand the topic.
First and foremost is that a minority of the island wants this. Politics there are divided between maintaining current status, becoming a US state, or independence. It breaks down roughly 40%, 40%, 20% respectively. Any variation you see from those numbers in plebiscites mostly has to do with one side or the other boycotting the vote to call it illegitimate. Independence has surged recently. Though most feel that without Uncle Sam looking over their shoulder they wouldn’t be able to hold it together.
Next, understand that the US has a horrendous history of treatment of PR (medical testing without consent, using PR troops as canon fodder, controlling sugar production, etc). So while some locals trust the US to keep an eye on their politicians pretty much no one really trusts Uncle Sam. With reason.
Language isn’t a dramatic driver. Many speak English, nearly everyone has some words at least. But, for example, English is not a litmus test for education, you’ll find English speakers sprinkled all over the island. It’s not the only cultural difference nor nearly the biggest. Legal tradition is dramatically different, with the basis of the legal system being Spanish, not English common law. Cultural differences abound. In more recent years that gap has closed with places like Miami, or Tampa, who have significant Caribbean Hispanic populations. Parts of Hialeah look like the middle of Bayamon. Some, though not all, of the foods are similar, etc.
But the most significant reason has little to do with PR and more to do with the US. There’s little reason for the US to take PR as a state. It would complicate
US politics, there’s really no one championing statehood, and the US wouldn’t get much from it. It’s possible that PR could have successfully pushed for it while Castro was alive, but since that time PR has little strategic leverage to ask it of the US. And, importantly, they’re not asking for it.
So no, language doesn’t touch the top 5 reasons. Less so now that you can comfortably live in parts of the US without speaking English as a Spanish speaker. People move back and forth between Miami, Orlando, NY, Houston, and San Juan all the time.
It doesn’t make much sense to blame Puerto Ricans for NYC being left wing when basically every single American city is left wing. No explanation is necessary for NYC leftiness!
I support any country that wants to (not just former colonies) joining the United States as a protectorate with American law, free trade, and defense from our military, but without free movement or political representation. I expect the result would be massive new investment, better public safety and rising GDP. If that goes well and both sides enjoy peaceful and harmonious co-operation, we could talk about free movement and citizenship in a generation or so.
"... in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area" cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass.
And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon.
And they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin', cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State.
So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.
I think the big historical fact that this analysis overlooks is the extent to which America's lack of overt empire helped it in the ideological battle of the Cold War. In isolation, the author makes an interesting case from a sort of EA-inflected view, but how badly would empire have hurt America's standing in the international arena vis-a-vis the Soviet Union? Not to mention that those colonies/protectorates would have been prime candidates for Communist agitation, which in turn would likely have required harsh crackdowns. At that point, does the US criticism of e.g. Hungary 1956 carry any weight?
Tbf, I am suggesting a lot of second order effects, which is always a dangerous game. But it does seem too confident to assert relatively friendly relations in the interwar years, then assume that would continue to be the case as anti-colonial movements swept the globe post-WWII.
I think you're conditioning on information only available with hindsight: That US institutions would stay durable and beneficial for US nationals, relative to counterfactual local institutions. If you're willing to forecast in advance that US institutions are predictably more beneficial, that sounds a bit like the nativist position that there's something special about "us", at which point the nativist will ask if that special something might be diminished by integrating "them".
I also think your analysis implicitly favors a prescriptive flavor of hedonic utilitarianism over preference utilitarianism. 20,000 Filipinos died fighting for Filipino independence. You don't see 20,000 Filipinos dying to be annexed by the USA.
Maybe we should take these revealed preferences for independence seriously, and even consider the possibility that people get a lot of utility out of self-determination. We don't normally think of Lee Kuan Yew as woke, but he does a really interesting steelman of some woke precepts in the following video, warning about the risk of ethnically Chinese Singaporeans becoming "deculturalized" and losing self-esteem through excess Western influence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlewPrqoYK0
Good point, but what if — instead of a choice between annexation or independence - Filipinos were asked to vote on federation with the US or independence?
This is way different than the first scenario, and it would bring the benefits of empire to the forefront while avoiding those old costs associated with imperialism. Different trade offs would arise, of course, but they’d be non-violent and unoppressive: a far cry from 19th century imperial practices.
This is great (might be unpopular but great)! It makes me think about how beneficial stuff like a schengen would be between the US and commonwealth countries or between the US and our former colonies (Cuba, Philippines, Haiti). Both back then and now.
Not that this would be politically possible… but we missed out on the chance for some real mutually beneficial migration and blending of values.
It's facile to assume that these territories would simply develop along with the rest of the country at the counterfactual rate if they had been retained. There is a lot of endogeneity here. At the very least, there needs to be much more careful argumentation for each case, rather than a broad assumption.
All of these territories were arguably lost causes, and they were let go (or not taken) because that was recognized at the time at some level. There is no secret American sauce that could have just erased the violent histories and ethnic strife of these places, especially over such a short period as a century or two. I can easily see a counterfactual American Haiti still being overrun with gangs and about as poor as the real one, because being in America does not by itself fix Haiti's deep seated problems.
America's strong growth was partly because it was wise enough to timely let go of worthless possessions. That was wise management of Empire. The British were less wise, and it cost them heavily. The French have been even less wise and still pay the price of Empire to this day.
I suspect you are underplaying the role of white supremacist ideology in the decision making process around these conquests and protectorates. If the peoples of the places you list had become US citizens it would have diluted the whiteness of the US population to a degree that the extremely, blatantly racist elite opinion of that time would have found unacceptable. If they had not become citizens, the resulting oppression-- likely leading to colonial wars along the lines of what the French did in Algeria-- would have dramatically undermined the benefits of US control.
all of these possessions are poorer then the USA. They would likely take a lot of net tax dollars from the federal government.
To the extent they had political representation it would almost certainly be on the left. There is a reason the left is always pushing for PR statehood.
If you think adding large numbers of hard left leaning welfare states to America would have a bad effect on America that’s a strong reason to oppose.
I think it would be very hard to keep large foreign polities without representation, and grow only harder the more of them there are. It’s one thing that some random tiny island somewhere with not many people is a “territory”. It’s another if it’s a whole empire.
Even if you didn’t have representation, I have to think that you would get mass migration from these places to the mainland. Puerto Ricans have had profound effects where they have migrated to in America (they have the highest crime rate and the most leftist voting of Hispanic immigrants).
This all comes down to “will we make them more like us or will they make us more like them.” And which is more important.
I’m generally of the opinion that high functioning first world polities are super important and fragile. I don’t really think what happens in the third world matters much compared to that.
Taking counterfactuals more seriously: without Hawaii and the acquisitions of the Spanish-American War, there wouldn't be targets for Japan to attack in WW2.
There are too many other things that would have to have been different to make keeping the Philippines something that could be considered as a "what if?" political decision - a United States that was still the colonial ruler of the Philippines in 1960 would not have been even close to the United States of our universe.
And the progress made by the Philippines after 1902 would not have been possible unless there had been a large degree of self-government, which would inevitably have led to either independence (as actually happened) or large-scale repression with disastrous consequences - you mention the relatively small number of American and Filipino combatants who died in the war of 1898-1902 after the American invasion, but not the 250,000-1,000,000 Filipino total deaths caused by the invasion. The progress made by the Philippines after 1912 happened after a credible plan for independence had actually been put forward by the US government, which was then passed into law in 1916.
There are many colonies, and not just American ones, which would plausibly have been better off in the short or medium term if they had not gained independence. There are even some colonies, with insignificant populations compared to the metropole, which have benefited from retaining their colonial status. But the sort of country that would have maintained a significant colonial empire would not have been the benevolent overlord you seem to imagine. As is evident from the two colonial powers that have retained their empires to the current day, Russia and China.
"The Cuban republic that followed never stabilized. Fulgencio Batista’s 1952 coup undermined constitutional rule, and the 1959 revolution brought nationalization, dictatorship, and stagnation."
No word on the fact that the stagnation in Cuba is caused by the decades long embargo imposed by the US.
This article makes a reasonable case that at least some of these nations might have been better off if they had been colonized by the United States. Leaving aside the fact that this position is quite courageous to hold in this day and age, the bigger question is whether the citizens of the core United States would have been better off as a result.
Great Britain's experience argues otherwise. Britain, which arguably had been the world's most successful colonial nation, offshored much of its agricultural and raw material production to the colonies to concentrate on manufacturing, no doubt making Ricardo's followers happy. However, when manufacturing collapsed in the 1980s, there was nothing else except financial services on which the British economy could stand, and financial services proved a hollow support.
Britain today is a shadow of her former self, and woke bureaucrats are only partly to blame. I would argue that it was the very colonies that once made her great that ultimately proved to be her ruin.
Empire corrupts the republic, as it did in Rome. If the choice is between Empire and Republic, choose the latter, for what profit to conquer the world, when you have lost your soul.
I like the quote, but I think that America demonstrated its ability to expand without corrupting itself too deeply. We did take lots of land in the Span-Am war.
In another way, there's a kind of King Solomon style ruling where exactly because America wanted to give up its empire, it is qualified to keep it.
I do think one sign of “American exceptionalism” is their ability or willingness to simply drop their conquests like so many hot potatoes.
all of these possessions are poorer then the USA. They would likely take a lot of net tax dollars from the federal government.
To the extent they had political representation it would almost certainly be on the left. There is a reason the left is always pushing for PR statehood.
If you think adding large numbers of hard left leaning welfare states to America would have a bad effect on America that’s a strong reason to oppose.
I think it would be very hard to keep large foreign polities without representation, and grow only harder the more of them there are. It’s one thing that some random tiny island somewhere with not many people is a “territory”. It’s another if it’s a whole empire.
Even if you didn’t have representation, I have to think that you would get mass migration from these places to the mainland. Puerto Ricans have had profound effects where they have migrated to in America (they have the highest crime rate and the most leftist voting of Hispanic immigrants).
This all comes down to “will we make them more like us or will they make us more like them.” And which is more important.
I’m generally of the opinion that high functioning first world polities are super important and fragile. I don’t really think what happens in the third world matters much compared to that.
Anakin: We should have kept American empire.
Padme: Yes, to improve democratic outcomes in these other countries.
Anakin:
Padme: To improve democratic outcomes right?
If we had annexed Cuba and Hispaniola, it wouldn't feel like an "empire". They are much closer to the continental US than Alaska or Hawaii, closer than Puerto Rico is. It would just feel like, well naturally we also control some of the nearby islands.
To me I wonder whether we could do a better job of integrating Puerto Rico. Yeah, it's richer than the surrounding islands, but it's far poorer than the US states. I feel like as long as most people there don't speak English, it's going to be hard for them to get the full benefit of being US citizens. And if we really find a formula for making Puerto Rico as well off as Miami, then yeah, I will wish that in retrospect we had done the same for Cuba and Hispaniola.
I grew up in Puerto Rico in the 60s and 70s. A large proportion of the population speaks at least some English, especially in the urban areas. I don't think we've given them a fair shake over the years, to be honest. How different things could have been.
Yeah, I'm not an expert, the language thing is just my guess. I feel like it would be a great investment, both morally and financially, for the US to push harder on bringing Puerto Rico up to the condition of the core states.
ChatGPT estimates 20% of the people there speak English, and obviously speaking English is going to be really good for your employment prospects as a US citizen, so it seems like one simple thing we could try to do is ensure that the education system there teaches everyone English. And in terms of "vibes" that feels like the sort of help-the-poor program that could get support from the right wing as well.
Not sure I ‘d call myself an expert, but I lived there for 8 years and still do business there.
You do need to understand a few things about PR to understand the topic.
First and foremost is that a minority of the island wants this. Politics there are divided between maintaining current status, becoming a US state, or independence. It breaks down roughly 40%, 40%, 20% respectively. Any variation you see from those numbers in plebiscites mostly has to do with one side or the other boycotting the vote to call it illegitimate. Independence has surged recently. Though most feel that without Uncle Sam looking over their shoulder they wouldn’t be able to hold it together.
Next, understand that the US has a horrendous history of treatment of PR (medical testing without consent, using PR troops as canon fodder, controlling sugar production, etc). So while some locals trust the US to keep an eye on their politicians pretty much no one really trusts Uncle Sam. With reason.
Language isn’t a dramatic driver. Many speak English, nearly everyone has some words at least. But, for example, English is not a litmus test for education, you’ll find English speakers sprinkled all over the island. It’s not the only cultural difference nor nearly the biggest. Legal tradition is dramatically different, with the basis of the legal system being Spanish, not English common law. Cultural differences abound. In more recent years that gap has closed with places like Miami, or Tampa, who have significant Caribbean Hispanic populations. Parts of Hialeah look like the middle of Bayamon. Some, though not all, of the foods are similar, etc.
But the most significant reason has little to do with PR and more to do with the US. There’s little reason for the US to take PR as a state. It would complicate
US politics, there’s really no one championing statehood, and the US wouldn’t get much from it. It’s possible that PR could have successfully pushed for it while Castro was alive, but since that time PR has little strategic leverage to ask it of the US. And, importantly, they’re not asking for it.
So no, language doesn’t touch the top 5 reasons. Less so now that you can comfortably live in parts of the US without speaking English as a Spanish speaker. People move back and forth between Miami, Orlando, NY, Houston, and San Juan all the time.
Not sure I ‘d call myself an expert, but I lived there for 8 years and still do business there.
You do need to understand a few things about PR to understand the topic.
First and foremost is that a minority of the island wants this. Politics there are divided between maintaining current status, becoming a US state, or independence. It breaks down roughly 40%, 40%, 20% respectively. Any variation you see from those numbers in plebiscites mostly has to do with one side or the other boycotting the vote to call it illegitimate. Independence has surged recently. Though most feel that without Uncle Sam looking over their shoulder they wouldn’t be able to hold it together.
Next, understand that the US has a horrendous history of treatment of PR (medical testing without consent, using PR troops as canon fodder, controlling sugar production, etc). So while some locals trust the US to keep an eye on their politicians pretty much no one really trusts Uncle Sam. With reason.
Language isn’t a dramatic driver. Many speak English, nearly everyone has some words at least. But, for example, English is not a litmus test for education, you’ll find English speakers sprinkled all over the island. It’s not the only cultural difference nor nearly the biggest. Legal tradition is dramatically different, with the basis of the legal system being Spanish, not English common law. Cultural differences abound. In more recent years that gap has closed with places like Miami, or Tampa, who have significant Caribbean Hispanic populations. Parts of Hialeah look like the middle of Bayamon. Some, though not all, of the foods are similar, etc.
But the most significant reason has little to do with PR and more to do with the US. There’s little reason for the US to take PR as a state. It would complicate
US politics, there’s really no one championing statehood, and the US wouldn’t get much from it. It’s possible that PR could have successfully pushed for it while Castro was alive, but since that time PR has little strategic leverage to ask it of the US. And, importantly, they’re not asking for it.
So no, language doesn’t touch the top 5 reasons. Less so now that you can comfortably live in parts of the US without speaking English as a Spanish speaker. People move back and forth between Miami, Orlando, NY, Houston, and San Juan all the time.
Cubans are right wing. When your island is socialist, the capitalist flee.
Puerto Ricans are left wing. They are a big part of why the nyc metro is now a one party democratic state.
It doesn’t make much sense to blame Puerto Ricans for NYC being left wing when basically every single American city is left wing. No explanation is necessary for NYC leftiness!
The only American cities that are right wing are in Florida and have a bunch of Cubans! All the white hispanic capitalist exiles.
Moreover, this is just literally true if you know NYC. I grew up there. I literally organized a Puerto Rican day parade as an intern in high school.
Puerto Ricans have had the longest exposure to the US welfare state and thus are the most assimilated to US welfare class norms.
I support any country that wants to (not just former colonies) joining the United States as a protectorate with American law, free trade, and defense from our military, but without free movement or political representation. I expect the result would be massive new investment, better public safety and rising GDP. If that goes well and both sides enjoy peaceful and harmonious co-operation, we could talk about free movement and citizenship in a generation or so.
From GoodWill Hunting
"... in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area" cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass.
And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon.
And they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin', cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State.
So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.
I think the big historical fact that this analysis overlooks is the extent to which America's lack of overt empire helped it in the ideological battle of the Cold War. In isolation, the author makes an interesting case from a sort of EA-inflected view, but how badly would empire have hurt America's standing in the international arena vis-a-vis the Soviet Union? Not to mention that those colonies/protectorates would have been prime candidates for Communist agitation, which in turn would likely have required harsh crackdowns. At that point, does the US criticism of e.g. Hungary 1956 carry any weight?
Tbf, I am suggesting a lot of second order effects, which is always a dangerous game. But it does seem too confident to assert relatively friendly relations in the interwar years, then assume that would continue to be the case as anti-colonial movements swept the globe post-WWII.
I think you're conditioning on information only available with hindsight: That US institutions would stay durable and beneficial for US nationals, relative to counterfactual local institutions. If you're willing to forecast in advance that US institutions are predictably more beneficial, that sounds a bit like the nativist position that there's something special about "us", at which point the nativist will ask if that special something might be diminished by integrating "them".
I also think your analysis implicitly favors a prescriptive flavor of hedonic utilitarianism over preference utilitarianism. 20,000 Filipinos died fighting for Filipino independence. You don't see 20,000 Filipinos dying to be annexed by the USA.
Maybe we should take these revealed preferences for independence seriously, and even consider the possibility that people get a lot of utility out of self-determination. We don't normally think of Lee Kuan Yew as woke, but he does a really interesting steelman of some woke precepts in the following video, warning about the risk of ethnically Chinese Singaporeans becoming "deculturalized" and losing self-esteem through excess Western influence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlewPrqoYK0
Good point, but what if — instead of a choice between annexation or independence - Filipinos were asked to vote on federation with the US or independence?
This is way different than the first scenario, and it would bring the benefits of empire to the forefront while avoiding those old costs associated with imperialism. Different trade offs would arise, of course, but they’d be non-violent and unoppressive: a far cry from 19th century imperial practices.
Heh. Now do the British Empire.
Bro,
Have you checked out libertarian interstate federalism yet? Here’s a blog post — https://notesonliberty.com/2019/07/09/introducing-the-federation-of-free-states-an-ongoing-thought-experiment/ - but basically there’s a libertarian argument to be made that the US and other federations could make the world much better off simply by adding “states” to their unions.
This gets around the conundrum of “empires bad, republics good” by giving polities representation in Congress and responsibilities in governance…
This is great (might be unpopular but great)! It makes me think about how beneficial stuff like a schengen would be between the US and commonwealth countries or between the US and our former colonies (Cuba, Philippines, Haiti). Both back then and now.
Not that this would be politically possible… but we missed out on the chance for some real mutually beneficial migration and blending of values.
It's facile to assume that these territories would simply develop along with the rest of the country at the counterfactual rate if they had been retained. There is a lot of endogeneity here. At the very least, there needs to be much more careful argumentation for each case, rather than a broad assumption.
All of these territories were arguably lost causes, and they were let go (or not taken) because that was recognized at the time at some level. There is no secret American sauce that could have just erased the violent histories and ethnic strife of these places, especially over such a short period as a century or two. I can easily see a counterfactual American Haiti still being overrun with gangs and about as poor as the real one, because being in America does not by itself fix Haiti's deep seated problems.
America's strong growth was partly because it was wise enough to timely let go of worthless possessions. That was wise management of Empire. The British were less wise, and it cost them heavily. The French have been even less wise and still pay the price of Empire to this day.
I suspect you are underplaying the role of white supremacist ideology in the decision making process around these conquests and protectorates. If the peoples of the places you list had become US citizens it would have diluted the whiteness of the US population to a degree that the extremely, blatantly racist elite opinion of that time would have found unacceptable. If they had not become citizens, the resulting oppression-- likely leading to colonial wars along the lines of what the French did in Algeria-- would have dramatically undermined the benefits of US control.
all of these possessions are poorer then the USA. They would likely take a lot of net tax dollars from the federal government.
To the extent they had political representation it would almost certainly be on the left. There is a reason the left is always pushing for PR statehood.
If you think adding large numbers of hard left leaning welfare states to America would have a bad effect on America that’s a strong reason to oppose.
I think it would be very hard to keep large foreign polities without representation, and grow only harder the more of them there are. It’s one thing that some random tiny island somewhere with not many people is a “territory”. It’s another if it’s a whole empire.
Even if you didn’t have representation, I have to think that you would get mass migration from these places to the mainland. Puerto Ricans have had profound effects where they have migrated to in America (they have the highest crime rate and the most leftist voting of Hispanic immigrants).
This all comes down to “will we make them more like us or will they make us more like them.” And which is more important.
I’m generally of the opinion that high functioning first world polities are super important and fragile. I don’t really think what happens in the third world matters much compared to that.
> No one seriously considers giving up any of the pieces of our imperial history that we kept.
I do. So do many Puerto Rican nationalists.
Taking counterfactuals more seriously: without Hawaii and the acquisitions of the Spanish-American War, there wouldn't be targets for Japan to attack in WW2.
There are too many other things that would have to have been different to make keeping the Philippines something that could be considered as a "what if?" political decision - a United States that was still the colonial ruler of the Philippines in 1960 would not have been even close to the United States of our universe.
And the progress made by the Philippines after 1902 would not have been possible unless there had been a large degree of self-government, which would inevitably have led to either independence (as actually happened) or large-scale repression with disastrous consequences - you mention the relatively small number of American and Filipino combatants who died in the war of 1898-1902 after the American invasion, but not the 250,000-1,000,000 Filipino total deaths caused by the invasion. The progress made by the Philippines after 1912 happened after a credible plan for independence had actually been put forward by the US government, which was then passed into law in 1916.
There are many colonies, and not just American ones, which would plausibly have been better off in the short or medium term if they had not gained independence. There are even some colonies, with insignificant populations compared to the metropole, which have benefited from retaining their colonial status. But the sort of country that would have maintained a significant colonial empire would not have been the benevolent overlord you seem to imagine. As is evident from the two colonial powers that have retained their empires to the current day, Russia and China.
"The Cuban republic that followed never stabilized. Fulgencio Batista’s 1952 coup undermined constitutional rule, and the 1959 revolution brought nationalization, dictatorship, and stagnation."
No word on the fact that the stagnation in Cuba is caused by the decades long embargo imposed by the US.
This article makes a reasonable case that at least some of these nations might have been better off if they had been colonized by the United States. Leaving aside the fact that this position is quite courageous to hold in this day and age, the bigger question is whether the citizens of the core United States would have been better off as a result.
Great Britain's experience argues otherwise. Britain, which arguably had been the world's most successful colonial nation, offshored much of its agricultural and raw material production to the colonies to concentrate on manufacturing, no doubt making Ricardo's followers happy. However, when manufacturing collapsed in the 1980s, there was nothing else except financial services on which the British economy could stand, and financial services proved a hollow support.
Britain today is a shadow of her former self, and woke bureaucrats are only partly to blame. I would argue that it was the very colonies that once made her great that ultimately proved to be her ruin.