any kind of power grab. Any discussion of examples, such as those mentioned above in Poland, Vietnam, and India, is incomplete without mentioning the negative impacts of imperialism. Militaristic behaviors are never clean, and deaths do happen. Destruction of private and public property is inevitable in any type of take over, whether it be from war or from resistance riots. Also, oftentimes people are subjected to the ruling powers of the country that is doing the taking over, which is oppressive, cruel, and dehumanizing. Customs, cultures, and religious beliefs of the victims are usually ignored and even offended.

Overall, imperialism has hurt the world in terms of net impact. There are much healthier and beneficial ways to increase wealth and power of nations, such as by free and fair trade, tourism, production, and governmental programs. Imperialism is viewed negatively in general nowadays, such as when a politician accuses another politician of being an imperialist in a campaign. Imperialism is not an ideal that civilized and developed nations value in general.

"Imperialism" is a loaded and problematic term, notably due to the fact that some critics of American foreign policy use it to describe many American actions around the world since the late nineteenth century. Others use the term globalization, for example, as another term for American economic imperialism. Still, some scholars use "imperialism" to refer only to a isolated period in time—the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—while others would point to the American conquest of North America, which entailed the destruction of Native peoples and war with Mexico, as the epitome of imperialism.

Broadly defined, imperialism has played a major role in American economic expansion as American goods and investment flowed into countries around the world. Some might also argue that American imperialism has fostered the spread of democratic governments around the world, though this is a more contentious claim. There is no doubt, however, that these advances have come at a huge cost. In the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the enhanced global role that began with explicitly imperialist policies has brought the nation into nearly constant warfare in various locations around the world. However, perhaps the most important legacy of imperialism in the long run has been the fact that it is, indisputably, a direct contrast to stated American ideology. The United States was founded in an anti-imperial struggle, and its imperialist actions around the world—perhaps most notably in the Philippines in the early twentieth century—have made it the imperial power, denying autonomy to peoples who looked to the Declaration of Independence, and other assertions of human liberties, as inspiration for their own freedom.