[Holt]

What nations do you consider to be imperialist powers?

[NoRapture]

U.S.A., Great Britain, Israel, Saudi Arabia, possibly "communist"(fascist) China.

[Dan]

Depends on what you mean by powers?

A short list of imperialist countries (there's probably more, but this is all I feel like writing):
USA, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, Russia, Italy, Turkey, Iraq, China, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel.

[Falx]

Why no Iran on anyones list, it is/has been much more of a power than Saudi Arabia or Iraq in the region.

[Boondock Saint]

Why no Iran on anyones list, it is/has been much more of a power than Saudi Arabia or Iraq in the region.

If one considers Iran to be the modern day manifestation of the Persian Empire then Iran has done nothing but lost imperial domain ... so I wouldnt really consider them imperialist in nature.

The USA, European nations (perhaps not all but the majority), China and Russia are the imperialists of todays world.

I guess we could go back to the old days of Mongolia and the Aztecs but ... not really called for.

[Thomas Merton]

No specific country; but most definitely a political/religious/proselytising creed with its blasphemous bellicose philosophy and army of maniacs hell-bent on a Jihad to create a global Islam.

[Attila The Nun]

The US, most European nations, Russia, China and other smaller countries whos imperialism is much more limited.

[jaakko]

Depends on which concept of 'imperialism' is used. I normally use the Leninist concept popularised by the communist movement.

Modern imperialism has basically three centres: America, W-Europe and Japan. China appears to be an emerging fourth one (maybe in future in some sort of combination with Russia), which could very well be one too many before an all-out interimperialist crisis. Certain individual imperialist countries/nations may vacillate between a couple of them, such as has been the case with Italy where the monopoly bourgeoisie is often clearly divided between the US and the EU orientated sections.

So anyway the imperialist countries would atleast include USA, Canada, England, Australia & New Zealand, Japan, Germany & France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Finland is questionable however, as the qualitative changes in Finland's imperialist course of development are rather recent. For example, Finland only became a net exporter of capital by the mid 90's after the recession. Since then the number of workers employed by Finnish industrial capitalists abroad has increased almost exactly at the same rate as it has decreased inside the country. These are some clear indicators which point to Finland being an imperialist country as a part of the W-European bloc. What makes it a little complicated is that a lot of the exported "Finnish" capital is actually foreign owned. Thus Finland shouldn't be considered an imperialist country "in/for itself" but in symbiosis with the bloc of W-European monopoly capital embodied in the EU.

In addition to the actual imperialist countries there are a large number of dependent countries which are deeply penetrated by imperialism and closely allied to it politically, such as several of the Eastern European countries which have even sent their troops to fight in far away countries in which their own bourgeoisie don't have much interests except for the bribes they expect for this servitude.

[KurtFF8]

Iran is more of a regional power than a world imperialist power.

[jaakko]

Iran is more of a regional power than a world imperialist power.

Unless you define an imperialist country as any that's "bad to others IMO".

[Theimmortal1]

The Islamic Extremist movement is currently the worlds biggest imperialistic power.

[Theodore]

No, it isn't. It isn't unified, it has no central authority, nor does it really have colonial ambitions.

And I agree that Iran is at most a regional hegemonistic power, but then again so is Saudi Arabia and Israel isn't imperialistic in any sense.

[Boondock Saint]

and Israel isn't imperialistic in any sense.

I think that depends ...

I consider any nation which owes its very existance directly to imperialism as imperialistic ...

Without direct imperialism, Israel would not exist. The same is true with the USA ... certainly one could say that without imperialism that Russia would be no where near as large as it is ... thus I also consider Russia to be imperialist.

The same goes for many other nations ...

[Attila The Nun]

Israel isn't imperialist in the sense it is not even entirely it's own country. I would count Israel's imperialism towards US imperialism.

[KurtFF8]

Unless you define an imperialist country as any that's "bad to others IMO".

True, but that of course would be a faulty definition.

[wonder cow]

imperialism is degenerate.

US is not an empire.

[myshka]

I think that depends ...

I consider any nation which owes its very existance directly to imperialism as imperialistic ...

Without direct imperialism, Israel would not exist. The same is true with the USA ... certainly one could say that without imperialism that Russia would be no where near as large as it is ... thus I also consider Russia to be imperialist.

The same goes for many other nations ...

I totally agree.

I think of Imperialist country as every country with an ambition to control other than its own terrotory and/or other than its own population by any means in order to gain either money, resources, etc. Through this perspective, majority of all nations are Imperialist... The ones that actually took particular 'action' in that direction are also many: Britain, USA, France, Denmark, Japan, China....in other words: the entire 'West' and (as Chomsky puts it) 'honorary west' like Japan and China (I'm the one calling China the honorary wester power, after all they've f***** their 'communism' raw and are basically a capitalist society with totalitarian flavour)... The countries that haven't been able to take 'the action', but I'm sure ALL of them were profusely salivating after it, are just sucker-ups... they suck up or HAVE to suck up to Imperialist nations like the USA and Britain to either 'get some' or to basically (simplistically put, even though sometimes it's more reality-based than not) survive.

For example, Czech Republic is by far not an Imperialist country, however, if it could, it would be and so it either chose or was in some way (usualy economical) pushed to have to suck up to the US and the European Union.

When it comes to Israel - hell yea, they're Imperialists flesh and bones.

What I'm saying doesn't, of course, mostly apply to populations of these nations because many are ignorant of their governments' ambitions, especially when it comes to international affairs and such.

[soron]

An Imperialist power as I understand it is a major power who's capable of projecting their power.
That would mean the US, China, Russia to some extend, EU if the get their act together, Japan to some extend through their economy.
The individual European countries' Imperial impulses are rather restricted by EU legislature. France would be the most likely candidate for such ambitions, and Britain as far as the Commonwealth is concerned.

[Boondock Saint]

An Imperialist power as I understand it is a major power who's capable of projecting their power.

Simply being capable of projecting power does not make one an imperialist. Choosing to project that power for self promotion or selfish gains does ...

I should note, I am not anti-imperialism.

[Theodore]

Boon, are you a realistic imperialist, or are you just trying to steal CWAS's shtick?