Julian Go’s Patterns of Empire arrives on the cusp of the United States’ withdrawal from Iraq, a conflict that has done much to revive the debate over whether or not US foreign policy can be considered “imperialistic.” Go, an associate professor of Sociology at Boston University, challenges the belief that the United States has been a liberal and self-constrained geopolitical actor throughout its history. This “exceptionalist” paradigm holds that U.S. foreign policy reflects values such as respect for individual liberty and democratic participation. Even those commentators and politicians criticizing US policy frequently utilize exceptionalist depictions of the United States as a contrast to the policy being critiqued.
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