Menace to empire: anticolonial solidarities and the transpacific origins of the US security state

Abstract

As the United States escalates its military presence in the Asia–Pacific to ‘contain’ an ascendant China, Menace to empire reminds us that earlier US imperial aspirations in the region had deadly consequences. Moon-Ho Jung explores how the US actually encouraged the growth of anti-colonial movements that it tried to counteract, and eventually provoked the Pacific War with Japan. The book includes an insightful discussion about how nativist immigration policies during the early twentieth century resulted largely from American efforts to keep out the political activists who were radicalized through their experiences of US and British imperialism. Building on Alfred W. McCoy's pioneering study, Policing America's empire (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), Jung details how the draconian surveillance methods adopted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during the Cold War had their origins in the US colonization of the Philippines at the turn of the twentieth century. At the time, US military intelligence set up an unprecedented surveillance state that was part of what Moon calls a ‘budding transpacific security apparatus’—encompassing the Philippine Constabulary, the Military Information Division, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Bureau of Investigation and Bureau of Immigration. Its racist intent was epitomized in the use of the term ‘gook’ [a euphemism for subhuman] to characterize the Filipinos. Moreover, the celebration of killing illustrated the extent of racist thinking. Constabulary officer Jack Daly wrote in his diary in August 1902: ‘It was such fun to shoot them [Filipinos] and kill them where they lay’ (p. 26).