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Twilight of Empire

Part of: Take Three: The Moon Landing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2018

Daniel Immerwahr
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Extract

“The whole world knows that we covet no territory,” announced Herbert Hoover. Or was it Dwight Eisenhower who said that? (“The United States does not covet a single acre of land that belongs to another.”) Or perhaps John F. Kennedy (“This nation does not covet the territory of any people”), Lyndon Johnson (“We threaten no regime and covet no territory”), Gerald Ford (“America covets no one else's land”), or Ronald Reagan (“We Americans covet no foreign territory”)? The disavowing of territorial ambitions is a hallowed, bipartisan presidential tradition, like pardoning a turkey at Thanksgiving or hosting the annual Easter egg roll.

Keywords

Post-1945Political CultureInternational ThoughtForeign RelationsEmpire and Imperialism
Type
Take Three: The Moon Landing
Information
Modern American History , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 129 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Cambridge University Press 

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References

1 Hoover, , Addresses upon the American Road (New York, 1941), 35Google Scholar; Eisenhower, Address before a Joint Session of the National Congress of Uruguay, March 2, 1960, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960–61 (Washington, DC, 1999), 267–271Google Scholar, here 268; Eisenhower and Kennedy, Joint Statement by the President and President-Elect Kennedy, Dec. 6, 1960, The American Presidency Project, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, www.presidency.ucsb.edu (hereafter APP); Johnson, Statement by the President on Vietnam, March 25, 1965. APP; Ford, Remarks in Indianapolis at the Annual Convention of the United States Jaycees, June 22, 1976, APP; Reagan, Remarks at the Annual Convention of the American Legion in Seattle, March 23, 1983, APP.

2 Williams, William Appleman, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, rev. ed. (New York, 1962), 17Google Scholar. See also Williams, William Appleman, Empire as a Way of Life (Oxford, 1980)Google Scholar.

3 Quoted in Go, Julian, Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present (Cambridge, 2011), 103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Immerwahr, Daniel, “The Greater United States: Territory and Empire in U.S. History,” Diplomatic History 40, no. 3 (2016): 373–391CrossRefGoogle Scholar (here 388).

5 Ibid., 389.

6 State of the Union, January 11, 1962. APP.

7 Quoted in Stead, W. T., ed., The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes (London: “Review of Reviews” Office, 1902), 190Google Scholar.

8 Radio and Newsreel Panel Discussion, Chicago, Oct. 22, 1958, APP.

9 Sullivan, Walter, “Proposal for Human Colonies in Space Is Hailed by Scientists as Feasible Now,” New York Times, May 13, 1974, 1Google Scholar, 23.

10 Gerard K. O'Neill, “The Colonization of Space,” Physics Today, Sept. 1974, 32–40 (here 32); O'Neill, Gerard K., The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space (New York, 1977), 17Google Scholar.

11 Johnson, Richard D. and Holbrow, Charles, eds., Space Settlements: A Design Study (Washington, DC, 1977), 1Google Scholar, 181.

12 Quoted in Brand, Stewart, ed., Space Colonies (New York, 1977), 146Google Scholar. The opinions of Sagan, Fuller, Margulis, Brand, and Cousteau are also reported in Space Colonies. A pre–moon landing assessment of space colonization, also optimistic, is Cole, Dandridge M. and Cox, Donald W., Islands in Space (Philadelphia, 1964)Google Scholar. An excellent overview is McCray, W. Patrick, The Visioneers: How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future (Princeton, NJ, 2012)Google Scholar. It should be noted that the most detailed visions for space colonization made use of the moon and its minerals but imagined actual settlement taking place on space stations or modified asteroids.

13 O'Neill, quoted in Sullivan, “Proposal for Human Colonies.”

14 Described in Anne M. Platoff, “Where No Flag Has Gone Before: Political and Technical Aspects of Placing a Flag on the Moon,” NASA Contractor Report 188251, http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/flag/flag.htm.

15 Ibid., 7n10.

16 Ibid., 6.

17 Remarks at a Reception at Government House, Bangkok, July 29, 1969, APP.

18 Remarks on Arrival in New Delhi, July 31, 1969, and Toasts of the President and Acting President Hidayatullah in New Delhi, July 31, 1969, APP.