American Nationalism and Asian Wars

Mark Selden

Department of Sociology

Binghamton University

A seminal moment in the birth of modern nationalism was the revolutionary war that gave rise to the first "new nation", the United States of America and enshrined powerful myths and convictions of American exceptionalism, leading colonists to distinguish themselves both from the peoples of old Europe and from the original inhabitants of the new world that they claimed as their own. From its inception, nationalism, war and conquest were imbricated in the American consciousness with notions of liberty and rights that explicitly rested on foundations that included the deracination, disenfranchisement, and frequently the slaughter, of others. It is this Siamese twin, two dimensions of American war-inflected nationalism joined at the hip, that concerns us: the promise of democracy and prosperity for 'the people' at every stage hinges on the placing of boundaries that define the 'Other' . . . those who ostensibly threaten American liberty and prosperity and must be defeated, even annihilated. This paper will examine the ways in which American nationalism has been shaped by close encounters with Asia, notably Asian wars across the long twentieth century and postwar experiences with claims to promote democracy and development.

More than any other nation, throughout the twentieth century, the United States has defined itself as a nation, and eventually as the global superpower and hegemon, in significant part through its protracted involvement in Asian and Pacific wars: landmark events are bracketed by the Philippines colonial war of 1898-1902 and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars of conquest and occupation of 2002 and 2003. They include the Asia-Pacific War of 1941-45, the Korean War of 1950-present and the Indochina Wars of 1960-75. As Chalmers Johnson has well documented, the footprint of these wars remains in the form of the "American empire of bases" that emerged full blown out of World War II, and has been most dramatically expanded following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the events of September 11, 2001.

In contrast to World War II outcomes enabling the United States to construct a hegemonic world order, the Vietnam War, more than any other war in its history, deeply divided Americans over whether they were conquerors or liberators, over the meaning of patriotism, and the U.S. global role. More generally, the wars that the U.S. has fought in the Asia-Pacific provide revealing insight into questions of state terror and extermination of the 'Other', which in turn shed light on the nature of American nationalism. Here landmark events include extermination of Filipinos in the years 1898-1902, the firebombing of Japanese cities that paved the way for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the annihilation of civilians in Korea and Vietnam (including the bombing of dikes, the uses of napalm, the application of defoliants that destroyed vast areas of habitat as well as human and animal life), the use of depleted uranium weapons whose impact extends to soldiers and civilians living in contaminated areas, and the use of cluster bombs and other weapons that particularly target civilians in the Gulf War and the Afghan and Iraq Wars.

In sum, I propose to examine how American wars in Asia and the Pacific, and the military and base structures that were among their most important consequences, have defined and redefined American conceptions of nationalism, internationalism, and national identity. As with many other war-based nationalisms, Americans have paid close attention to the blood shed by their own forces, and little or none to the massive casualties sustained by the militaries, and particularly the civilian populations, of their Asian adversaries.

I plan to focus the discussion on the US-Japan War, Korean War and Vietnam War as the longest lasting wars, with brief mention of the Philippines, Gulf and Iraq Wars to highlight their implications for the changing character of American nationalism and for the discourse of war, peace and terror. Toward this end I plan to navigate the terrain between official statements at the highest level of American power and the records of diaries and other writings by GIs in the field for clues to popular images of the 'other' to understand how concepts of 'Gook' or 'Jap' facilitated exterminism and frequently undermined the claims of a liberating nation.