A quick (dated) survey of the debate over how to be the American Empire

New York Times - American Empire, not 'If' but 'What Kind'

This piece written (in 2003) by two senior fellows at the Brookings Institution takes a quick survey of well-known pundits and policymakers who already assume that the US is a global empire. The only people quoted who deny it are those whose job it is to do so: President GW Bush (and, famously, Donald Rumsfeld), plus a Bush-friendly national security strategist (Zelikow) who doesn't appreciate the moniker but now seems to counsel toward imperious behavior. The substantive discussions are about whether the US should continue to be an empire (Buchanan and Chomsky say no), and since it is one, how much of one it should be (Kristol and Boot). The article continues by giving a history of US empire, but also, fascinatingly (given out current condition), to talk about how easy it is for the US to dominate the globe. US military spending dwarfs the rest of the world and yet it simultaneously accounts for a smaller portion of US GDP than during "the height of the cold war", hence the conclusion that empire comes "on the cheap". The article finishes with a discussion of attempts to manage the downsides of empire, most especially the resentment that it breeds from other nations.