From Mexico to Vietnam, from Nicaragua to Lebanon, and more recently to Kosovo, East Timor and Iraq, the United States has intervened in the affairs of other nations. Yet American leaders continue to promote the myth that America is benevolent and peace-loving, and involves itself in conflicts only to defend the rights of others; excesses and cruelties, though sometimes admitted, usually are regarded as momentary aberrations. This is a comprehensive history of American imperialism. Author Sidney Lens shows how the US, from the time it gained its own independence, has used every available means - political, economic and military - to dominate other nations. Lens presents a powerful argument to prove that imperialism is an inevitable consequence of the US economic system. Surveying the pressures, external and internal, on the United States today, he concludes that like any other empire, the reign of the US will end - and he examines how this time of reckoning may come about.