Walking with Softer Footprints: Imperialism

I created this chart to organize the major events within the imperialistic period at the turn of the 20th century. As I pointed out in many of the situations, I believe The United States was right to go in and help, but I definitely don't think they should have treated the people so poorly. I do not believe we should have become an imperialist nation.


Imperialism, as defined by the Merriam- Webster dictionary is:

the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas; broadly : the extension or imposition of power, authority, or influence

I believe that we should extend our resources to those countries in need, for example Haiti or Japan, when they should fall upon dire times. We should not however, invade other countries just because we can. Bringing a "better government" is not always the best solution because eventually it turns out in war or more enemies. If we can reform our ways, of taking control of foreign nations, i.e. Iraq/ Afghanistan , then we may be able to avoid future wars and therefore start to pull out of the major debt caused by the war.

While reading an article about the United States' foreign affairs, I came across a quote that really stuck out to me:
“The U.S. cannot shrug off the burden of global leadership, at least not without catastrophic cost to the entire world, but it can exercise its power more wisely than it did in Iraq over the past year.”
          -Max Boot, Los Angeles Times
As I was discussing earlier, the United States must be involved with other nations, but if we can learn when to interfere and when to let a nation figure it out on their own, we would be a lot better off. Our whole involvement in Iraq went on for way too many years stirring up unnecessary enemies in the middle east. Hopefully we can learn from Iraq, and withdraw from Afghanistan leaving less scars than we found them with.