Would you consider America to be an empire?

Can an empire be in place minus an emperor?

An empire is a type of state or government. Specifically, it is a collection of separate nations ruled over by a single sovereign (aka the emperor). Imperialism, on the other hand, is an approach to foreign policy that uses force or the threat thereof to extend a nation’s influence and/or territory. Since the United States is a single nation, it cannot—by definition—be an empire. Whether or not the United States regularly engages in imperialism, however, is a whole other question.

While I can agree with @SavoirFaire definition of an actual empire I think the fact that the US has over 1000 MILITARY bases in, what, 74 countries around the world would tend to kick us into the Empire status.

@SergeantQueen I would point out that there is no need to “own” something if you have the ability to control it and determine its actions. We are talking an “economic” empire here. And, while I focused on the military above we do tend to use the military to enforce economic warfare or threats of such to gain economic control over others.
Look at it this way, if we took physical control of Mexico we would be responsible for the populace. If we place them in an economic stranglehold all we have to do is pay off a few hundred wealthy, well placed individuals and let their own government worry about how to feed their own people.
And it is not just the military, We also control the IMF and the WTO. Your country want a loan you have to do what we want. You want favorable trade deals? We control that too. We will let you have a pittance if you let us have control.

Whether the United States is an empire or not may be open for debate, but there is little question that our behavior is often more than consistent with imperial ambitions. Cheney for one, came right out and said it. He made the claim that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we were the modern equivalent of Rome. He then proceeded to duplicate the Roman feat of securing Egyptian wheat as the “breadbasket” of the empire, by designating the Middle East our empire’s filling station. The catastrophe in Iraq and the arrival of fracking put an end to that particular analogy, and our recent slide into the era of our first “mad” emperor would appear to place our imperial destiny in question. There are other parallels to the classical period with the increasingly vapid populace of the empire being distracted from matters of gravity through the dual sops of “bread and circuses” as the senate plummets in status as a governing institution and morphs toward its primary function as the preferred occupation for self aggrandizement.

^^love it. Accurate too.

An evil empire with a mad emperor.

America isn’t an empire in the formal sense but on the other hand it considers its area of strategic interest to be the whole world and if it feels its economic or political power is threatened it often resorts to force.

@Savoirfaire . Would the fact that the US has 50 states,that have similar powers of small nations not bring it closet to the definition?

Trump’s approach to leadership is “Emperor like.”

Ifthe USA isn’t an empire, it’s pretty close….

An empire needn’t directly control or administer its territories so long as it has the allegiance of those who do.

@SavoirFaire Are there any actual empires left today? The Brittish are barely a shadow of what they once were, so I’m guessing the USSR was the closest thing until it ended.

Also I’d like to stand corrected, but The States aren’t as much as a superpower as they used to be. Being able to influence or change things overnight is something an empire should be able to do, even outside its rule, and these days a lot of countries are wary of America, while other countries are growing stronger in things that make a superpower country.

Definitely. I think it meets the criteria. We were well on our way after gaining important coaling stations and territories around the world after the Spanish American War, and Teddy Roosevelt’s policies certainly had Imperial intentions. He, his administration, and the financial powers of the US had decided it was high time that America take her place among the superpowers.

Our stubborn isolationism after the holocaust of WWI kept us from an early, impulsive entry into WWII to help defend our allies from Hitler and Tojo. This saved us from the massive destruction experienced by most other combatant nations. Along with Canada, our ally to our north, we ended up being the last large industrial nation standing and, by default, we were the ones to call the shots when it came time to rebuild the world. It was Empire by default.

But unlike the empires before us, we chose not to enslave the defeated nations. Instead, we rebuilt them in our own image and made them partners within our own system of economics, and until about 1950, we promoted democracy within those nations.

Mao Tse Tung took mainland China and our allies, the former leadership of mainland China, took refuge on the small island of Taiwan in 1948. The Soviet Union successfully tested their first atom bomb in 1949—which meant that no longer were we the only country with the weapon that could either end all war, or destroy our enemies at will. Then Mao sent a million PRC troops into South Korea. We were at war once again.

I believe our government became terrified and our foreign policy began to rapidly change, but our language and literature didn’t. We were able to ride on our post WWII reputation until about he time of the Tet Offensive in 1968, and the world decided that it was time to tell the emperor that he had no clothes. It was time to call bullshit on us. Within three years, we were off the gold standard and had become a debtor nation.