Bingowings said:

It's as much an Empire as the Soviet Union was.

This is pretty ignorant. As much as nations voluntarily provide us with overseas military bases (in a mutually advantageous relationship, as we are paying rent), or perhaps adopt our culture (not forcibly, but simply the nature of being an influential culture), or even looking at our historical conquests (every nation on earth owns territory once owned by another people but obtained during some historical conquest), I don't think it's fair to label the US as an empire. The Soviet Union forcibly held several republics as part of what was truly the Russian Empire, particularly the Caucuses or Baltic republics, and even the central Asian republics. The most willing collaborators were Belarus and Ukraine. But beyond the USSR's own borders, it forcibly maintained communist governments in Hungary and the rest of Eastern Europe. This went beyond what some might compare in the US's actions. Several proxy wars took place in countries like Afghanistan, African or East Asian nations, or South America. These were wars where the US and USSR were promoting their ideal political/economic systems but were not directly involved. But when one of the Soviet Union's satellite states attempt to liberalize on its own accord, the Soviets moved in and crushed the governments' efforts and replaced those politicians with their own brand. The US has never acted so aggressively to promote its style of government or economic system. How freely we have allowed nations we have liberated to hate us and insult us, such as Afghanistan and Iraq. If we were truly an empire, those nations would be paying us oil through the nose to reimburse us for our efforts.