Arc of Empire by America long since broken by Asians

Lee Park Kong
   Michael Hunt has written a book along with Steven Levine looking at America's recent wars on Asians since the Philippine insurrection. the authors rightfully see these four separate wars as one war of American regional dominance in asia and the empires arc of expansion into these lands, Their book called "Arc Of Empire" looks at the seventy five year period of Americas imperial legacy in Asia and the everlasting effect we see to this day of our presence and attempts to alter the scene for countries like Vietnam,Korea, and the Philippines, Without a doubt our involvement in these places ha been shameful and is really not a topic many historians examine as these two do and Hut does a good job of writing this book through the perspectives of both North Americans and the Asians resisting this political expansion.  The Philippines war is really an egregious example of American colonial arrogance where we felt that they were totally unfit to run a country and the oppressive nature and brutality of this war is maximized in his first chapter. Hunt goes on to point out how the majority of top officers of the Philippine war were Western Indian fighters and their attitude over those who were different was easily transferred across the ocean, Aguinaldo was a freedom fighter who ranks among the most greatest of any leader resisting American empire and Westward expansion. the next chapter recalls the growing Japanese and American rivalry as Japan's empire was reaching great lengths and taking land in China which the United States coveted in their regional plans. The Japanese had long decide to modernize quickly after seeing their ports forced open by an aggressive American navy in the mid nineteenth century forcing japan to open its doors to unequal trade.The pressing need for japan for resources to keep their empire on par with the Americans untimely lead to war where the Japanese were totally destroyed and marked the high tide of American Asian domination as the United States shifted japan into a new Western image.

  as quickly as it appeared that America would dominate Asia though the next two wars brought reality and a new future where America would be handed defeat after defeat. thanks to china's communists winning the Chinese civil war Korea would not be another easy victory. The stalemate US forces saw opened way for the new polarity in Asia as the cold war heated up in the Korean peninsula and South East Asia. No amount of bombings and military expenditure could avoid the fact that the North Koreans and Vietnamese were willing to be American stooges and puppets as the Filipinoes will forever be remembered. The Soviet union showed their support to these Asians in their battles for independence against American power and without the might of the Soviet industry these last two wars in korea and Japan would of proved more difficult to the resisters of expanding capitalism. As the authors point out the unpopularity in America of these two wars also spelled doom to the military's plans of expansion and destruction of the Korean and Vietnamese resistance. More and more Americans questioned the legitimacy of this war and their governments insistence of continuing it and slaughtering millions of peasants who just wanted to be left alone form foreign domination. it is foreign domination that motivated the early pioneers of our expansion into Asia which really had no long term chances of surviving as its promotion of continuing poverty and lack of reform inspired so many millions of Asians to take arms against the American Asian thrust of the nineteenth and twentieth century.