state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas. Because it always involves the use of power, whether military force or some subtler form, imperialism has often been considered morally reprehensible and the term is frequently employed in international propaganda to denounce and discredit an opponent's foreign policy.

Russia, Italy, Germany, the United States, and Japan were added as newcomers among the imperialistic states and indirect, especially financial, control became a preferred form of imperialism. For a decade after World War I the great expectations for a better world inspired by the League of Nations put the problem of imperialism once more in abeyance. Then Japan renewed its empire building with an attack in 1931 upon China, and under the leadership of the totalitarian states, Japan, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, a new period of imperialism was inaugurated in the 1930s and 1940s.

In their modern form, arguments about the causes and value of imperialism can be classified into four main groups. The first group contains economic arguments and often turns around the question of whether or not imperialism pays. Those who argue that it does point to the human and material resources and the outlets for goods, investment capital, and surplus population provided by an empire. Their opponents, among them Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and J.A. Hobson, often admit that imperialism may benefit a small, favoured group but never the nation as a whole. Marxist theoreticians interpret imperialism as a late stage of capitalism when the national capitalist economy has become monopolistic and is forced to conquer outlets for its overproduction and surplus capital in competition with other capitalist states. This is the view held, for instance, by Vladimir Lenin and N.I. Bukharin, to whom capitalism and imperialism are identical. The weakness in that view is that historical evidence does not support it and that it fails to explain precapitalist imperialism and Communist imperialism.

A second group of arguments relates imperialism to the nature of human beings and human groups, such as the state. Such different personalities as Machiavelli, Sir Francis Bacon, Ludwig Gumplowicz, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini, reasoning on different grounds, nevertheless arrived at similar conclusions. Imperialism to them is part of the natural struggle for survival. Those endowed with superior qualities are destined to rule all others.

The third group of arguments has to do with strategy and security. Nations are urged, proponents of this viewpoint say, to obtain bases, strategic materials, buffer states, “natural” frontiers, control of communication lines for reasons of security, or to prevent other states from obtaining them. Those who deny the value of imperialism for these purposes point out that security is not achieved. Expansion of a state's control over territories and peoples beyond its borders is likely to lead to friction, hence insecurity, because the safety zones and spheres of influence of competing nations are bound to overlap sooner or later. Related to the security argument is the argument that nations are imperialistic in the search for power and prestige for their own sake.

The fourth group of arguments is based on moral grounds, sometimes with strong missionary implications. Imperialism is excused as the means of liberating peoples from tyrannical rule or of bringing them the blessings of a superior way of life. Imperialism results from a complex of causes in which in varying degrees economic pressures, human aggressiveness and greed, search for security, drive for power and prestige, nationalist emotions, humanitarianism, and many other factors are effective. This mixture of motivations makes it difficult to eliminate imperialism but also easy for states considering themselves potential victims to suspect it in policies not intended to be imperialistic. Some states of the Third World have accused the former colonial powers and other nations of neocolonialism. Their fear is that the granting of aid or the supply of skilled personnel for economic and technical development might be an imperialist guise.

Under international organizations, attempts have been made to satisfy by peaceful means the legitimate aspirations of nations and to contain their illegitimate ones. Among the measures for these purposes are collective security arrangements, the mandate and the trusteeship system for dependent areas, the stimulation of cultural relations between nations, aid to developing countries, and the improvement of health and welfare everywhere. See also colonialism (colonialism, Western).