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This essay attempts to assess the social costs of US imperialism borne by the American people themselves. It argues that when the cumulative effect of military spending is combined with the cumulative national debt, they show the diversion of trillions of dollars in capital from socially useful policies and the accruing of a debt whose annual interest payments provide further super profits for creditors in the US and abroad. It concludes that the cumulative effects of imperialist policies serves as a deterrent to the funding of programmes to raise the living standards and improve the quality of life for the American people, not to exporting death and destruction in the name of national security and defence throughout the world.
The ‘American Way’ of Imperialism
The terms ‘imperialism’ and ‘colonialism’ are often used interchangeably but they are not the same. Formal colonies based on direct control of...
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Selected Works
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Markowitz, N. (2020). The Social Costs of US Imperialism. In: Ness, I., Cope, Z. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_275-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_275-1
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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