Control sits at the heart of imperial projects, whether they be colonial, settler colonial, or free trade. How, imperial architects ask, should populations behave, economies be organized, systems of government operate, land be distributed, and workers be managed? These are key questions for global elites interested in building orderly societies for capitalist extraction and investment. The imperial architects are usually not deterred when they invariably find that their prognostications fail to be as frictionless as they had imagined to be. Instead, they pivot in ways that have often heightened rather than reduced social harms. . The papers in this panel explore ways that US policymakers developed and implemented plans to reshape overseas societies whole cloth based on fantasies of control informed by US needs, experiences, and notions of racial difference. Anne Foster examines how the United States projected a felt need for stateside drug control first onto the Philippines and then to Mexico. Karen Miller explains how US colonial officials promoted--with some elite Filipino collaboration--enclosures to provide the private property and labor needed for capitalist endeavors. Naoko Shibusawa looks at the role of American historians in imagining systems of international control.