The following podcast contains advertising.

To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast,

become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair.

That's patreon.com slash law fair.

Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings,

rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath.

I would say that the policy is a success exclusively in the sense that the ultimate objective of the United States was to keep European powers out and the policy effectively did that.

It was a failure in every other respect.

I mean, the United States was trying to stabilize and strengthen these states as a way of keeping Europe out and instead destabilize them and, you know, essentially ended up in situations where the United States was occupying the United States.

It was occupying many of them and in other ways much more involved in their affairs than it wanted to be.

I'm Jack Goldsmith and this is the LawFair podcast, June 28, 2023.

The United States in the early 21st century has been involved in a so-called forever war involving military threats, interventions, occupations, counterinsurgencies, and the like.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States engaged in an at least superficially analogous, many decades series of interventions in the Western hemisphere with the aim of achieving regional hegemony.

This earlier period is the topic of a new book by Sean Mirsky, an attorney at Arnold and Porter and a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The book is called We May Dominate the World, Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus.

I sat down with Sean to discuss what he describes as the United States Regional Rampage of Staggering Scope and Scale in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the aims and consequences of these military adventures, and the lessons they hold for today both for US foreign policy and for understanding the aims of rising powers like China.

It's the Lawfare Podcast June 28, Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus.

Sean, in the introduction to your book, you say, and I'm going to quote from the introduction that over the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States went on a regional rampage of staggering scope and scale.

There were coups and countercoups, protectors and annexations, invasions were followed by occupations and occupations by insurgencies and counterinsurgencies.

The result you say, with a trail of broken states and mangled nations, that's what the United States left behind.

So it's a really remarkable tale. Can you just kind of summarize what happened and why?

Absolutely. So the book covers the period from roughly the start of the Civil War to the dawn of the Cold War.

...