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ca RE: COUNTERORIENTATION WEEN before. The difference in American post-war foreign policy, however, arises I think from this fact. The United States emerged clearly from the Second World War as the leading capitalist super-power. It was confrorted at the same time by an increase in the powerful rival, the Soviet Unicn. This emergence of the United States as a super-power, as 1.h« leading undisputed capitalist power naturally had a profoun! impact on the practice of American policy, but this practice wis in large part guided by premises that had already been developed. Now, I mentioned American imperialism. What do we mean exactly by imperialicn? Now, most people, I suppose, assume that imperialitm involves the holding of some kind of formal empire, of colonies, of Cinect political control over areas and people outside of the metrope isan area of the people involved. This cerkaily is ~ne of the traditional carceptions of imperialism. On this greuna, based cn this definition of imperialism, certaily — the United States coiled not be classified as an imperialist power. Mwt imperialism, I would argue, is something more than the exercise cf formal political contrgi.. It's something more than the type of imperialisir, say, that was represented by the British Empire. Imperialisir, it seems to me, implies a policy which attempts to create in cther parts of the world a situation that is conducive to the interests, economic, political, and otherwise of the particular power involved. This does not necessarily have to mean direct political control. Modern imperialism is something that developed toward ‘the end of the last. century, beginning about 1870, which involves a scramble for c:) nies among competing Eurcpean powers ultimately culminating in the First: World War. Now Britain, which acquired most of her fcrma] political empire during this period, had already been en imperialist power before this time. However, before the latter part of the n‘neteenth century, with some exceptions, Britain practiced a kind of informal imperialism which in many ways is analogous to the kind of imperialism that the United States practices today. Some authorities have called this kind of imperialism Britain practiced in the nineteenth 129 en ee