Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World’s Dispossessed by Stephen R. Porter

Excerpt

Stephen Porter examines U.S. international relief efforts and domestic resettlement programs for dispossessed foreign populations in Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World’s Dispossessed. The work is primarily a series of case studies examining U.S. responses to key events requiring relief or resettlement efforts, beginning with World War I and ending with Cubans fleeing Castro’s regime in the 1960s. The book contains an epilogue that briefly covers a few more recent cases and makes some observations about U.S. policies through 9/11, but mostly it centers on American policy in the country’s first half-century as a global power. Porter shows how U.S. policies for the dispossessed (later named refugees) developed independently and, at times, how they were at odds with broader immigration policies. Through the cases, he stresses the interconnections of motives and actors between international relief programs delivered near refugees’ home countries and resettlement programs that integrated refugees into U.S. society. He demonstrates that the programs relied on “associational governing techniques,”, also referred to as “hybrid” governance, that divided responsibilities between U.S. governmental actors and a range of private philanthropic, religious, ethnic, and humanitarian organizations. While the balance of responsibilities shifted over time, Porter shows that the government initiatives could never have succeeded without the private groups’ resources and skilled workers. Finally, he argues that U.S. policies aiding the vulnerable were an important part of establishing and justifying the United States as a Great Power. Through these policies, the U.S. established itself as a “benevolent empire” that sought to aid the world’s people even as it pursued its own foreign policy interests. …