Naples, 17.03.2005
Fondazione Laboratorio Mediterraneo
Professor Michael Cox
Department of International Relations,
LSE <M.E.Cox@lse.ac.uk>
Professor Michael Cox is in the Department of International Relations at the LSE. He is the author, editor and co-editor of over dozen books including American Democracy Promotion (2000), Empires, Systems and States (2001), E.H.Carr: A Critical Appraisal (2004) and Beyond the Good Friday Agreement? From Long War to Long Peace in Northern Ireland (2005). He is also editor of the journal International Politics and chairs the United States Discussion group at Chatham House, London.
Introduction
One of the more remarkable features of American intellectual life since the end of the Second World War has been its preoccupation with the issue of power and whether or not the United States continued to possess enough of this vital commodity to underwrite stability in the wider international system. Nor should this obsession surprise us particularly. After all, if Americans have been serious about anything since 1945 it has been about the uses of power on the not entirely unreasonable grounds that if international history taught anything it was that order was impossible without the deployment of a great deal of power by a single conscious hegemon. What history also revealed, they argued, was that when great powers did not lead - as the British had been unable to do by 1914 and the United States manifestly failed to do in the inter-war period - then the inevitable outcome was chaos and disorder. The question of power therefore was not merely of academic interest but went to the heart of the central question in modern world politics: namely, under conditions of anarchy what policies would the United States have to pursue and what advantage of power would it have to possess in order to maintain the peace? Liberals no doubt might have found all this self-absorbed discussion about the capabilities of one particular state decidedly too realist for comfort, parochial even. A large number of Americans, not surprisingly, have not. Indeed what could be more vital, they felt, than trying to measure how much power the country actually had, and whether or not it was exercising it with sufficient determination so as to deter enemies and reassure allies in a world where it remained (according to its own heady rhetoric) the truly indispensable nation? [2]
The opening salvo in this debate was fired in the post-war period by a generation of writers obviously impressed by the new Rome sitting on the Potomac. And impressed many seemed to be. With its vast military machine, enormous material resources and ideological self-confidence, the United States, it was obvious, was like no other power on earth. Admittedly, it could not always get its own way; revolutions often upset its calculations; and there was always the obvious problem of the USSR and China, the only significant states with assets enough to limit its reach. Nonetheless, in spite of these various difficulties, the United States still went on to build a new kind of global peace, and did so in spite – some would even suggest because - of the threat posed by international communism. In fact, in a world of uneven strategic competition, where the United States faced a much overstated menace in the shape of that incomplete superpower known as the Soviet Union, Washington successfully managed to unite former enemies, mobilize its own people, contain the foreign policy ambitions of others, and pump-prime the larger world economy with regular injections of large scale military spending that kept a once less than convincing capitalist show on the road. Indeed, Pax Americana not only seemed to serve the narrower US interest, but led to the disbursement of a mass of public goods that appeared to help many other nations too. Hence what seemed good for the United States for twenty odd years, seemed good for most of the ‘free world’ as well.[3]
The next step in this discussion followed defeat in Vietnam but was provided with clearer academic shape by a number of influential American political economists writing in the 1970s. In their view the conditions of US hegemony no longer pertained - largely because of a declining competitive base and rising deficits - and over time this was bound to have implications for a global order whose very stability, they insisted, depended on a continued American capacity for underwriting the openness of the wider capitalist system.[4] This view, based largely on a liberal reading of world politics, was given sharper definition still a few years later by an English import of realist persuasion. Indeed, having conceded that the United States could be - indeed had to be - compared to other great powers of the past, Paul Kennedy went on to point out that the American era was most definitely over; and the sooner it adjusted to the fact the better. Challenged by what he famously termed ‘imperial overstretch’ (a concept Kennedy had used in earlier writings to explain the decline of the British Empire) the United States, he believed, really had no alternative but to pull in its horns. The nation that had brought us hegemonic stability was hegemonic no longer, and in a post-hegemonic era, it would have to do what all other great powers had been compelled to do before: that is, withdraw from some positions abroad, reduce expenditures on national security, and share the burdens of leadership with others. To act otherwise would be sheer folly. The age of Pax Americana was over. In reality, the United States was becoming, if it had not already become, an ordinary country. .[5]
The declinist thesis so-called came under attack from two important sources: first, from writers like Susan Strange who pointed to America’s still unique structural position within the larger society of states, [6] and second from what Harold Macmillan once famously described as ‘events dear boy, events’. And it was to be a very important succession of events – beginning with the unexpected collapse of the communist systems in Europe, continuing with the equally significant collapse of the Japanese economic miracle, and concluding with one of the longest booms in American economic history - that not only undercut the intellectual case for decline, but compelled critics to face and ask perhaps the most revisionist kind of question: namely, that if the United States was not in fact going the way of all other great imperiums, should we not accept that there was something very special indeed about the American system; and that much as one might have resisted the idea before, should we not concede that the United States was the exception to the golden rule of great power decline? [7] The answer for some at least answer appeared to be self-evident. As one of the new triumphalists noted in a tough attack on the pessimists of old, those who had earlier anticipated, and in some cases looked forward to, US decline had been proved completely wrong. [8] The country had recovered its nerve, proved its economic mettle, increased its military lead over others, and so entered the new millennium in fine shape. Another ‘American Century’ beckoned. A new Rome stood on the Potomac and there was no necessary reason to assume it would not endure for ever.[9] As one American scholar put it, American hegemony was ‘here to stay’ and the sooner we adjusted to this brute fact the better.[10]
The fourth moment in this ongoing discussion came about because of September 11 and the dramatic impact this then had on the US outlook. Indeed, having been elected on a foreign policy platform that was decidedly cautious (though essentially hegemonist) in nature, Bush unveiled a controversial strategy that not only saw America going to war twice in as many years, but also witnessed a major expansion of US interests, to the point where there seemed to be no place on earth – from East Africa to the Philippines, Uzbekistan to Ukraine - where it did not have a direct stake. The turn to muscular globalism was a most remarkable one. So too was the rather interesting debate it now provoked amongst supporters and critics alike. [11] For if, as it now seemed, the United States was embarking on an international ‘crusade’ to defeat transnational terrororism, and was doing so with its own very impressive set of capabilities (even Kennedy now talked glowingly about an American eagle resurgent), should Americans not perhaps begin to think the unthinkable: namely, that in an era of unchallenged US military supremacy where its reach was becoming more extensive than ever, the nation was either becoming, or in fact had already become, something more than just another great power: to wit, an Empire? Admittedly, it was an Empire with very special American characteristics. One writer even referred to it as ‘virtual’ and another ‘inadvertent.’[12] However, that did not make it any the less of an imperial power with all the essential features of an Empire, including the capacity to punish transgressors and set the larger rules of the game.[13] Indeed, what else should it be known as? As one of the more celebrated (non-American) theorists of the modern era was to remark - in some frustration - what word other than Empire better described this extensive system that was the American international order with its host of dependent allies, its vast intelligence networks, its five global military commands, its more than one million men and women at arms on five continents, its carrier battle groups on watch in every ocean, and its 30% control of the world’s economic product? None at least that he could think of. [14]
The ‘imperial turn’ in the age of Bush was perhaps less of a surprise than the fact that some people were now prepared to use the word Empire to describe what America was, should be, or ought to become. By any stretch of the imagination this was a most remarkable phenomenon, particularly in a country where ‘one of the central themes of American historiography’ was that whatever else one might call the United States, the last thing Americans were likely to call it was Empire.[15] It not only sounded odd: it sounded decidedly un-American too. As another American academic remarked, one year into the Bush term, ‘a decade ago, certainly two’, the very idea of Empire would have caused ‘righteous indignation’ amongst most US observers. But not any longer.[16] As Ronald Wright noted, ‘how recently we believed the age of empire was dead’, but how popular the idea had now become - at least in some circles.[17] Yet, something interesting and strange had happened along the way. For whereas in the 1960s the term had been the monopoly of a radical left keen to attack American power in the world, (and in the hands of some writers, remained so),[18] in the post-9/11 era, it was fast becoming all the rage on the neo-conservative right. Moreover, what many of them seemed to be suggesting sounded as if America was no longer the exception to the historical rule. In fact, what some of the new cohort appeared to be saying was that that under conditions of international anarchy, where order remained the highest moral purpose, the United States still had much to learn from others. Indeed, according to one of the more outspoken neo-cons – not to mention the school’s best known British advocate[19] – it could do a lot worse than turn to the chroniclers of the Greek, Roman and British empires ‘for helpful hints about how to run American foreign policy’. [20] Of course, politicians might not want to use the term; and no doubt President Bush would repeat the old mantra that ‘America’ had no ‘Empire to extend’. [21] But that is precisely what the United States would have to do now. Other existing methods had been tried and found wanting. Now, in a new era, where old forms of deterrence and traditional assumptions about threats no longer held, it was up to America to impose its own form of ‘peace’ on a disorderly world: to fight the savage war of peace (to quote one of the new theorists of Empire) so as to protect and enlarge the empire of liberty. [22] As another writer more critical of the new imperial turn remarked, in an age of unparalleled US dominance and global terror it looked as if the United States had now arrogated to itself the international role of setting standards, determining threats, using force and meting out justice. [23] Define it as unilateralism. Call it the necessary response to new threats. It still looked like imperialism and Empire by any other name. The idea that had ‘dared not speak its name’ for at least a generation had been thrust back on to the agenda. [24]
In what follows I want to argue two apparently contradictory points. The first is that one does not have to be a neo-con, an apologist for Empires in general, or the Bush Doctrine in particular, to take the notion of an American Empire seriously.[25] Indeed, I want to suggest that the concept has much to recommend it. Admittedly, as applied to the United States, it has its limits, like any concept.[26] But as the new radical conservatives have been quick (and right) to point out, the idea as such - ambiguous warts and all - does have its uses as a comparative tool of analysis, one which has not been fully exploited in the past: partly for methodological reasons, partly because it goes against the American grain, and partly because it has for so long been associated with a radical critique of American foreign policy. [27] Not only has this limited the uses to which the idea has been put hitherto, it has in effect made it almost impossible for commentators to employ the concept at all. My argument here is that it is now time to rescue the idea and put it back where it belongs at the centre of the discussion of what in fact has become the most extensive international system in history. [28]
The second point I want to make however concerns the problematic future of this entity. Here I argue for empirical and historical balance. It is obviously premature to speak as some have done in the past of a rapid decline of American power. [29] On the other hand, as Michael Mann has shown, the American Empire is already in deep trouble. [30] The most immediate reason for this is Iraq, a classic example of where dangerous myths about inconsequential threats can easily lead great powers into dangerous quagmires.[31] However, a much larger issue concerns what Andrew J Bacevich and Niall Ferguson have defined separately as imperial denial. [32] As Michael Ignatieff has pointed out, though the United States has huge assets and an international reach without equal, in the last analysis it has no real ‘consciousness of itself’ as a world power.[33] In denial about what it is, and thus lacking an ideology for what it is seeking to achieve globally, it is hardly surprising that Americans have, in the main, been unwilling to pay the price or go anywhere to build what some see as a new world order under US tutelage.. Not only that. The Bush strategy of throwing off the shackles imposed on it by the ‘real world’– normally referred to in the modern literature as American unilateralism - was always a highly risky approach, one that has already cost the United States dear since he assumed office. The American Empire obviously retains many obvious assets.[34] And Bush did manage to get himself re-elected in 2004. However, the US confronts some very serious challenges; and as we shall see, these are more likely to increase rather than diminish in the years that lie ahead. The Empire might be in better shape than some of its critics suggest. These should not blind us however to the problems it is bound to face as time passes. In some larger sense, we are perhaps at the beginning of the end of a very long American era. [35]
Talking Empire
The term Empire is one that has provoked a good deal of heat but rather less light, particularly in the case of the United States and this in spite of the fact that the Founding Fathers themselves actually thought they were building an ‘Empire of Liberty’ that would stretch from sea to shining sea. Indeed, one of the more obvious objections to the idea of a specific American Empire is that unlike other ‘real’ Empires in the past the United States has not acquired and does not seek to acquire the territory of others. This in turn has been allied to another obvious objection to the notion of Empire: that the US has often championed the cause of political freedom in the world, as it now claims it is doing in Iraq. Thus how can one talk of Empire when one of the United States’ obvious impulses abroad has been to advance the cause of national democracy and self-determination? Finally, the point is frequently made that the modern world is either too complex, diverse or out of control for it to be controlled from one single centre. As two of the more radical critics of the contemporary world have argued, the international system in some bigger sense might be defined as an ‘Empire’ but it would be quite wrong to think of the United States being able to rule this entity.
Let us deal firstly with the issue of territory. It is obviously the case that most Empires in the past, from the Greek to the Spanish, the Ottoman to the Russian, have been defined as such because they brought vast swathes of land belonging to other people under their control. It is equally true that the United States in the main has not practiced such forms of annexation
beyond its current boundaries. And to some therefore this is proof that the United States is not an Empire in any meaningful sense of that word. This is a fair point even though it might be considered a rather narrow definitional base upon which to discuss and compare all Empires. But even if we were prepared to - just for the moment - this still ignores one rather important historical fact: that America has indeed done more than its fair share of land grabbing. In fact, those who would claim that the United States is not an Empire because it has never acquired other people’s territory seem to forget that the nation we now call the United States of America only became the United States of America because it annexed a great deal during the 19th century: from France and Russia (through purchase), Spain and Mexico (by military conquest), from Britain (by agreement) and, most savagely, from those three million native Americans who were nearly all eliminated in the process. Admittedly, this tells us little about how it then used its massive geographical power base in the global arena. Nor can we assume that what it did in the process of conquering the American interior, it would do, or would want to do, to the rest of the world. But it does at least hint at the possibility that ruthlessness and ambition in the pursuit of power and the American experience are not quite so alien to each other as some would have us believe. [36]
Then there is the small matter of Latin and Central America. Admittedly, neither were ever formally colonized by the US. But should that preclude us from thinking of the US relationship with its immediate South in imperial terms? Perhaps so, if you are an American from the United States. But that is not the way most Latin Americans look upon their own problematic connection with their very large and extraordinarily powerful neighbour to the North. Nor to be blunt do many North Americans. As even the more uncritical of them would readily concede, the whole purpose of the famous Monroe Doctrine was not to limit American influence in the region but to embed it. Moreover, the story thereafter is not one of US disengagement from the region but the latter’s more complete integration into an American-led system - one which presupposed a definite hierarchy of power, was sometimes brutally exploitative in character, and was constructed around some fairly typical racial stereotypes of the ‘other’. More than that. It was built on the good old-fashioned ideology - much beloved by European colonials - which assumed that certain areas should, of right, fall within the sphere of influence of one of the great powers. In fact, it was precisely because the Americans thought in such terms that policy-makers in Washington (even more liberal ones) rarely felt any compunction in intervening in the region whenever and wherever they saw fit. If this was not imperialism by any other name, then it is difficult to think what might be.[37]
However, there still remains the more general question about territory and the degree to which America’s overall lack of territorial ambition means we should either not use the term or only do so in the most qualified fashion possible. There is no unambiguously straightforward answer. In the end it very much depends on whether or not territory, and territory alone, constitutes the basis of Empire. Many would insist that it does. Dominc Lieven, for example, has argued that ‘there has to be some sort of direct rule over the dominion for a power to be classified as an empire’.[38] Others however would point to the complex forms which all Empires have taken through time; indeed, a study of the most developed would indicate that they have invariably combined different forms of rule, none more successfully than America’s presumed predecessor, Great Britain. As the famous Gallagher and Robinson team showed in their justly celebrated work, British imperialism entertained both formal annexation and informal domination, direct political rule and indirect economic control. The real issue for the British therefore was not the means they employed to secure the outcomes they wanted, but the outcomes themselves.[39] Thus if one could create a sytem overall that guaranteed the right results - which for Britain meant a stable international space within which its goods could find a market and its capital a profitable home - then that was perfectly fine. And what was fine for the British, it could be argued, has been equally fine for the Americans. In fact, not only did they adopt a similar set of criteria after 1945 by which to measure success, many of its more able leaders like Dean Acheson were great admirers of the British Empire. The British, he felt, had done a very good job in the 19th century defending the world trade system by pumping their surplus capital into other countries; and there was no reason why the United States with it vast wealth and enormous power after World War II should not do the same. In many ways, it had no real alternative in his view. For as he argued at the time, global order presupposed power, power resided with states, and it was up the strongest state - the hegemon to use the jargon - to pay the bills and enforce the rules of the game. And if it did not do so (as it had failed to do in the inter-war period) then the international system was doomed.[40]
Of course, nobody would be so foolish as to suggest that the United States achieved total control of the whole world as a result. Nor did it always get its own way, even with the most dependent of its allies.[41] Nonetheless, it still achieved a very great deal and did so in a quite conscious fashion. Indeed, in a relatively space of time, following what amounted to a thirty year crisis, it managed to construct the basis for a new international order within which others - old enemies and traditional rivals alike - could successfully operate. But not only did they manage to operate; the international economy as a whole flourished, to such an extent that between 1947 and 2000 there was a 20 fold increase in the volume of world trade and 700% rise in gross world product. And the US achieved all this under the most testing of political conditions with all sorts of ideological ‘barbarians’ constantly trying to pull down what it was attempting to build. [42] So successful was it in fact, that after several years of costly stand-off it even began to push its various rivals back - initially in the contested and unstable Third World, then in Eastern Europe, and finally in the enemy’s heartland itself. Not for it therefore the Roman fate of being overrun by the Mongol Hordes or the British experience of lowering the flag in one costly dependency after another. On the contrary, by the beginning of the 1990s, the American Empire faced neither disintegration nor imperial overstretch, but found itself gazing forth upon a more open, seemingly less dangerous world in which nearly all the main actors (with the exception of a few rogue states) were now prepared to accept its terms and come under its umbrella. Clearly, there was to be no ‘fall’ for this particular Empire.[43]
But this still leaves open the problem of how we can legitimately talk of an American Empire when one of the United States’ primary objectives in the twentieth century has involved support for the right of self-determination. The objection is a perfectly reasonable one and obviously points to a very different kind of Empire to those which have existed in the past. But there is a legitimate answer to this particular question - that if and when the US did support the creation of new nations in the 20th century, it did not do so out of pure idealism but because it realistically calculated that the break-up of other Empires was likely to decrease the power of rivals while increasing its own weight in a reformed world system. As the great American historian William Appleman Williams noted many years ago, when and where the US has combatted colonialism - both traditional and communist - it did so for the highest possible motive. But the fact remains that it only acted in this fashion (and then not always consistently) in the full knowledge that it would win a host of new and potentially dependent allies as a result. [44] Imperialism, as others have pointed out, can sometimes wear a grimace and sometimes a smile; and in the American case nothing was more likely to bring a smile to its face than the thought that while it was winning friends amongst the new states, it was doing do at the expense firstly of its European rivals (which is why so many of Europe’s leaders disliked Wilson and feared FDR) and then after 1989, of the USSR.[45]
This brings us then to the issue of influence and the capacity of the United States to fashion outcomes to its own liking under contemporary conditions. The problem revolves as much around our understanding of what empires have managed to do in the past, as it does about what we mean by influence now. Let us deal with both issues briefly - beginning with the first question about influence.
As any historian of previous empires knows, no Empire worth the name has ever been able to determine all outcomes at all times within its own imperium. All Empires in other words have had their limits. Even the Roman, to take the most cited example, was based on the recognition that there were certain things it could and could not do, including by the way pushing the outer boundaries of its rule too far.[46] Britain too was well aware that if it wanted to maintain influence it had to make concessions here and compromises there in order not to provoke what some analysts would now refer to as ‘blowback’. [47] How otherwise could it have run India for the better part of two hundred years with only fifty thousand soldiers and a few thousand administrators? Much the same could be said about the way in which the United States has generally preferred to rule its Empire. Thus like the British it has not always imposed its own form of government on other countries; it has often tolerated a good deal of acceptable dissent; and it has been careful, though not always, not to undermine the authority of friendly local elites. In fact, the more formally independent they were, the more legitimate its own hegemony was perceived to be. There was only one thing the United States asked in return: that those who were members of the club and wished to benefit from membership, had to abide by the club’s rules and behave like gentlemen. A little unruliness here and some disagreement there was fine; so long as it was within accepted bounds. In fact, the argument could be made - and has been - that the United States was at its most influential abroad not when it shouted loudest or tried to impose its will on others, but when it permitted others a good deal of slack. It has been more secure still when it has been invited in by those whose fate ultimately lay in its hands. Indeed, in much the same way as the wiser Roman governors and the more successful of the British Viceroys conceded when concessions were necessary, so too have the great American empire builders of the post-war era. Far easier, they reasoned, to cut bargains and do deals with those over whom they ultimately had huge leverage rather than upset local sensitivities. It was only when the locals transgressed, as they did on occasion by acting badly abroad or outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour at home, that the US put its foot down firmly to show who was really in charge. [48]
Yet the sceptics still make a good point. Under modern conditions, it is extraordinarily difficult for any single state to exercise preponderant influence at all times, a point made with great force in both a recent radical attempt to theorize the notion of Empire[49] and a liberal effort to rubbish it.[50] The argument is well made. In fact it is obvious: under conditions of globalization where money moves with extraordinary speed in an apparently borderless world, it is very difficult indeed for any state - even one as powerful as the United States - to exercise complete control over all international relations. There is also the question of its own economic capabilities. The United States might have a huge military capacity. However, in the purely material realm it is far less powerful than it was say twenty years ago - before Europe and China became more serious economic actors - or immediately after the war when it controlled 70% of the world’s financial resources. All this much is self-evident and any honest analysis of the ‘new’ American empire would have to take this on board. But one should not push the point too far. After all, the US economy continues to account for nearly 30% of world product, it is roughly 40% bigger than any of its nearest rivals, the dollar still remains mighty, and Wall Street is still located at the heart of the international financial system. Furthermore, as the better literature on modern globalization shows, the world economic system is not completely out of control; governments still have a key role to play; and the enormous resources at the American government’s disposal not only gives it a very large role in shaping the material environment within which we all happen live, but also provides it with huge influence within those bodies whose function it is to manage the world economy. America’s control of these might not be complete, and the outcomes might not always be to its liking. But they get their way more often than not. As one insider rather bluntly put it, ‘IMF programmes are typically dictated from Washington’.[51] Furthermore, as Robert Wade has convincingly shown, by mere virtue of its ability to regulate the sources and supply routes of the vital energy and raw material needs of even its most successful economic competitors, the US quite literally holds the fate of the world in its hands. This in the end is why the war in Iraq will prove to be so important, not just because it will allow the world to enjoy lower oil prices - though it should - but because it will prove once again that the United States alone has the ability to determine the fate of the region, and by so doing reinforce its central role in the wider world system. [52]
Finally, any assessment as to whether or not the United States is, or is not an Empire, has to address the problem of perception, or more concretely of how US leaders view America’s role and how the world in turn looks upon the United States. It is difficult to make easy generalizations. Nonetheless, it would not be a million miles away from the truth to suggest that most members of the Washington foreign policy elite do tend to see themselves as masters of a larger universe in which the United States has a very special part to play by virtue of its unique history, its huge capabilities and accumulated experience running the world for the last fifty years. At times they may tire of performing this onerous task. Occasionally they falter. However, if it was ever suggested that they give up that role, they would no doubt throw up their hands in horror. Being number one does have its advantages after all. It also generates its own kind of imperial outlook in which other states are invariably regarded as problems to be managed, while the United States is perceived as having an indispensable role to perform, one of such vital importance that there is no reason why it should always be subject to the same rules of the international game as everybody else. This is why the United States, like all great imperial powers in the past, is frequently accused of being ‘unilateral’. The charge might be just, but basically it is irrelevant. Indeed, as Americans frequently argue (in much the same way as the British and the Romans might have argued before them) the responsibilities of leadership and the reality of power means that the strong have to do what they must - even if this is sometimes deemed to be unfair - while the weak are compelled to accept their fate. So it was in the past; so it has been, and will continue to be, with the United States.
But how then do others look upon the United States? With a good deal of loathing in some quarters to be sure; and rather jealously in others no doubt. But this is by no means the whole story. For while many may resent the metropolitan centre, most are conscious of the fact that the benefits of living under the American imperium normally outweigh any of the disadvantages. In fact, this is one of the reasons why the American Empire has been so successful. After all, given the choice of living within its compass or trying to survive outside it, most nations - and most people - have invariably chosen the former over the latter. If nothing else life is likely to be safer and conditions more prosperous. As one of the more surreal looks at one former Empire illustrated only too graphically, even the more discontented are well aware that life under imperial rule may not be quite so bad as some would have us think. Recall the famous scene in Life of Brian. The anti-imperialist leader, trying to stir up revolt, asks his rather small band of followers the following: ‘tell me then, what has the Roman Empire ever done for you?’ No doubt he later wished he had not asked the question in the first place, for the reply was simple and arrestingly honest, ‘well, actually, quite a lot in fact’ - from building straight roads to keeping the Huns and the Visigoths at bay, to constructing a decent sewage system through to maintaining law and order. This surely is the issue. Many Empires, including the American, have not always been benign; and they have not always been sensitive. However, the more successful including the American have lasted not just because they were feared, but because they performed a series of broader political and economic functions which no other state or combination of states was willing or able to undertake. Indeed, one suspects that the US still has a very long way to go. For whereas other more formal empires in the past failed in the end because they could not withstand progressive change, the United States will go on and on - or so some feel - precisely because it embraces and celebrates change. Not for it therefore the ignomy of being outflanked by history but the very real chance of being in its vanguard. If the optimists are to be believed, the sun may never set on this modern Empire. [53]
After Empire?
This essay began with a reflection on the ongoing debate about American power and went on to argue – no doubt controversially – that in spite of its possible imperfections as a concept, the notion of Empire has a good deal to recommend it. Nowhere of course have I tried to insist that the idea is without its flaws. Nor have I attempted to understate the differences between American as a democratic Empire with very special features and other kinds on Empire. What I have tried to suggest, though, is that by employing the term in a creative rather than dogmatic fashion, it does at least make it possible for us to make useful - and not necessarily misleading comparisons - between the United States and other ‘great powers’ in history. To this extent I very strongly disagree with those who would argue that the term does not enrich our understanding of the United States. [54] Indeed, it is only by making such comparisons that we are able to challenge one of the more restrictive and stultifying concepts that has made intelligent discussion of America so difficult in the past: namely the notion that it is so exceptional that it is impossible to compare it with anything at all. If nothing else, the idea of Empire drags the United States back into the historical mainstream where it should be, and hopefully will remain.
Recognizing the utility of the idea of Empire however is one thing; speculating about the future of Empires is quite a different matter, especially in the American case where so much of this in the past has veered between blind optimism on the one hand and deep pessimism on the other. In many ways, we now stand at another such cross-road today. Thus we find some – like the neo-cons and their friends - continuing to assert that ‘the United States bestrides the globe’ like some ‘colossus’ [55]; others meanwhile believe that the Empire’s best days are already behind it and the future looks anything but certain. It is all deeply confusing. For the optimists all the key indicators – except those provided by the situation in Iraq – point to continued American hegemony. Pessimists meanwhile look at the problems facing the American economy, the growing influence of new power centres in the world, not to mention the spread of nuclear weapons and conclude that whilst the conventional wisdom might be that that the ‘American era’ might be ‘alive and well’ in the heads of some misguided Americans, it is not alive in that entity known as the real world [56]
The simplest and indeed the most satisfactory way of resolving this apparent conundrum lies in distinguishing between the immediate and the structural; that is between the factors that continue to support US hegemony (the size of its market, the still central position of the dollar in the world economic system, its productivity levels, its extensive international alliances and military wherewithal) and those factors that are gradually beginning to limit (and have probably limited for some time) what it is able to do. The situation is thus complex and cannot be easily summed up by either asserting the United States is bound to lead for ever or is inevitably bound to decline. America still has a great deal of power. That much is obvious. However, as Weber and Acton have taught us, power is not the same thing as authority, and unlimited power is always likely to corrupt those who exercise it. And this, it would seem, is precisely what has happened to the United States under Bush over the past few years. Possessed of vast capabilities following a decade of renewal that left the US in an unrivalled position in a unipolar world, Bush proceeded to wield American power in a fashion that was bound to cause disquiet at best and deep resentment at worst.. This all began to manifest itself in various forms before 9/11, but took off with a vengeance as the US prepared and then went to war with Iraq. As one American commentator admitted, never had the country gone into battle (with the sole exception of Vietnam back in the 1960s) with so few allies actually prepared to back it enthusiastically. [57] In fact, never had such a war, even before it began, generated so much global opposition, the overwhelming bulk of it caused less by any sympathy that people might have had towards America’s intended target, and more by what many regarded as the dangerously aggressive policies of an over-powered state led by a President with little concern for global opinion. [58] As one friendly European critic remarked, rarely in history had one nation mobilized so much hard power in such a short space of time: and never had it lost so much soft power in the process.[59]
The first problem facing the United States therefore revolves around the issue of power and the extent to which its own imperial behaviour is already beginning to generate various forms of resistance. This in turn raises a second question about the conditions under which the United States exercises its power. As Nye amongst others has pointed out, America may be the world’s only superpower, but this does not necessarily mean it can always go it alone, and at the same time hope to maintain friendly or amicable relations with other countries. Coaltions are wonderful things, and coalitions of the very willing even better. But when coalitions are compelled into being by fear rather than consent, then something is not quite right. Of course, the new hegemonists in Washington take a typically hard-nosed view of all this. As they point out, the US still managed to build an alliance of sorts against Iraq; former critics meanwhile are now running for cover; so why all the fuss? The answer should be obvious: because the more secure Empires in history are those which can lead rather than coerce, inspire affection rather than suspicion. And while the United States might still have more than its fair share of friends around the world, it is currently testing their loyalty to the utmost.[60]
A third challenge concerns the United States itself. Views about the last remaining superpower have always been deeply divided and will almost certainly remain so. Nonetheless, for most of the post-Cold War period when the nation was at peace with itself, and liberals of both a Republican and Democratic persuasion were defining the political agenda, international attitudes towards the United States - with some obvious exceptions - tended to be positive. This however has changed since September 11, and has done so in large part not just because of what America has been doing abroad, but because of what has been happening on the home front. Indeed, in the process of securing the nation against further terrorist attacks, America appears to have become a decidedly less open and welcoming society. One should not exaggerate. To talk of a new ‘empire of fear’, as some on the left have already done, might be going too far. However, there are some deeply worrying signs, and if the American state becomes ever more intrusive, and many of its people less and less tolerant, in a world that seems to be more and more threatening, then the great shining city on the hill is going to look anything but in the years ahead - especially in those European countries where anti-Americanism is already on the rise.[61]
This in turn raises a question about the domestic sources of the ‘new’ American Empire. As we have already suggested, perhaps the most unique aspect of the American system of imperial power is that few Americans actually feel that they have been involved in the past or might be involved now in the messy business of building an Empire. And this has serious consequences. Most obviously, it means that US actions (such as those in Iraq) have always got to be sold in the most politically acceptable of ways, thus laying it open to the constant charge of hypocricy and double standards. It also means it is difficult to build a strong domestic platform for continued exertions abroad. Thus when things begin to go wrong – as they invariably do for any Empire – great pressure immediately arises at home to cut and run; to look in other words for an exit strategy. This is precisely the dilemma the United States is currently facing in Iraq. As Cheney and others have suggested in private, there are very powerful, long-term reasons for the US to have what Cheney has aptly been termed a permanent footprint in the sands of a key region like the Middle East. This however is not how the American people see things. Socialized into believing the best of their own nation, and educated into thinking that while other great powers might do conquest they only do liberation, it is hardly surprising they find it difficult to stay the course when the going gets rough. Moreover, lacking what Ferguson has called the necessary attention span to keep focused on affairs abroad – even ones as important as those unfolding in Iraq – it follows that they find it very difficult indeed to sustain support for a policy originally sold as not necessarily being in the American national interest but in the interest of Iraq itself.. Significantly, according to one poll, the American people even now seem to have little stomach for continuing the battle for Iraq alone, and over time, this cannot but have consequences for the conduct of US foreign policy. [62]
Finally, the success of Empires in general, and it could be argued of the American Empire in particular, has in the end rested on its ability to deliver a bundle of economic goods in the form of improved living standards, economic opportunity and growth world-wide. This in large part brought the United States victory in the Cold War and self-confidence for most of the 1990s. However, as recent economic events have revealed only too graphically, none of this can any longer be taken for granted. Naturally, we should beware crying wolf. [63] The US capitalist system continues to have huge reserves and an even greater capacity for regenerating itself. Yet the warning signs are there; and to make matters worse, Europe is beginning to show clear signs of challenging the United States economically.[64] This will not necessarily undermine America’s position of material (let alone strategic) privilege within the wider international system; if anything, under conditions of crisis, its position is likely to be augmented rather than weakened simply because it has greater political capacity and market space. Nonetheless, the economic dominance it once enjoyed can no longer be taken for granted, especially in an age when it is becoming increasingly dependent on the financial largesse of others to manage its growing debt.[65] America and Americans live, in other words, in deeply troubling times where the old economic truths are coming under challenge. In some ways, the modern imperialists in Washington could not have thought of a more inauspicious time to start building their ‘new’ American empire.
[1] I deal with some of the issues addressed here in my ‘The Empire’s Back in Town or America’s Imperial Temptation - Again’ Millennium, Vol. 32, No 1, 2003, pp. 1 -28, and ‘Empire, imperialism and the Bush Doctrine’, Review of International Studies, Vol 30, No 4, 2004, pp. 585 - 608. See also the extended debate around my work in the June 2004 issue of Security Dialogue.
[2] I discuss this in more detail in my ‘Whatever Happened to American Decline? International Relations and the new United States Hegemony’, New Political Economy, Volume 6, No. 3, 2002, pp. 311-340.
[3] See Ronald Steel, Pax Americana (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1967).
[4] For a good discussion of hegemonic stability theory and the challenges it faced see Stefano Guzzini, Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy: The Continuing Story of a Death Foretold (London: Rouledge, 1998).
[5] Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000 (London, Unwin Hyman, 1988).
[6] See Susan Strange, ‘The Future of the American Empire’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 42, No.1, 1988, pp. 1 – 18.
[7] See, for example, G.J. Ikenberry, ed., America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 2002).
[8] Bruce Cumings, ‘Still the American Century’ in Michael Cox, Ken Booth and Tim Dunne eds., The Interregnum: Controversies in World Politics, 1989 - 1999 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999) pp. 271 - 299.
[9] For an example of 1990s triumphalism see Alfredo Valladao, The Twenty First Century Will Be American (London: Verso, 1996).
[10] John M. Owen, ‘Why American Hegemony is here to Stay’, Symposium: Pax Americana or International Rule of Law, 16 January 2003.
[11] For a critique see Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: the Costs and Consequences of American Empire (London, Little Brown and Company, 2000).
[12] See Martin Walker, ‘America’s Virtual Empire’, World Policy Journal, Summer 2002, pp. 13 – 20. Robert Dujarric, America’s Inadvertent Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
[13] Clyde Prestowitz, Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions ((new York: Basic Books, 2003) pp. 19 - 50.
[14] Michael Ignatieff, ‘Empire Lite’, Prospect, Issue 83, February 2003, pp. 36 – 43.
[15] William Appleman Williams, ‘The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy’, Vol. XXIV, Pacific Historic Review, p. 379.
[16] Charles S. Maier, ‘An American Empire’, Harvard Magazine, November-December 2002, Volume 105, No. 2, pp. 28 - 31.
[17] Ronal Wright, ‘For a wild surmise’, Times Literary Supplement, December 20, 2002, p. 3.
[18] See Alex Callinicos, ‘The grand strategy of the American empire’, International Socialism, 97, Winter 2002, pp. 3 - 38.
[19] Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (London: Allen Lane, 2004)
[20] Robert Kaplan, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos (New York: Random House, 2002) pp. 152, 153.
[21] George Bush speeches to cadets at West Point (June 2002) and to veterans at the White House (November 2002).
[22] Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
[23] G.John Ikenberry, ‘America’s Imperial Ambition’, Foreign Affairs, Volume 81, No. 5, September-October 2002, p. 44.
[24] See Niall Ferguson, ‘The empire that dare not speak its name’, The Sunday Times, April 13, 2003.
[25] As Pierre Hassner makes clear in his The United States: the empire of force or the force of empire? Chaillot Papers, Paris, No. 54, September 2002.
[26] See for example Martin Shaw, ‘Post-Imperial and Quasi-Imperial: State and Empire in the Global Era’, Millennium, 2002, Vol. 31, No.2, pp. 327-336.
[27] ‘Those who by virtue of age and sobriety can remember the 1960s may recall the term “American empire” as a bit of left-wing cant’, Ronald Wright, Times Literary Supplement, p.3.
[28] For an earlier plea along similar lines see the useful piece by Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, ‘Retrieving the Imperial: Empire and International Relations’, Millennium, 2002, Vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 109-127.
[29] See for example Emmanuel Todd, Apres L’Empire: Essai sur la decomposition du system americain (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2002) and Charles A. Kupchan, The End of the American Era (New York: Vintage Books, 2002).
[30] Michael Mann, The Incoherent Empire (London: Verso Books, 2004).
[31] See Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Relations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991, and David C. Hendrickson, ‘Toward Universal Empire: The Dangerous Quest for Absolute Security’ World Policy Journal, Volume XIX, No. 3, Fall 2002, pp. 1 -10.
[32] Andrew J Bacevich, American Empire (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2002).
[33] ‘Empire Lite’, Prospect, Issue 83, February 2003, pp. 36 – 43.
[34] See Thanh Duong, Hegemonic Globalisation: U.S. centrality and global strategy in the emerging world order (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).
[35] For a balanced critique of the Bush foreign policy see Chris Reus Smit, America and World Order (Cambridge: Polity press, 2003) and Barry Buzan, The United States and the Great Powers (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004). See also Dimitri K. Simes, ‘America’s Imperial Dilemma’, Foreign Affairs, Volume 82, Number 6, November-December 2002, pp. 91 - 102.
[36] I discuss this in my ‘America and the World’ in Robert Singh ed., Governing America: the Politics of a Divided Democracy (Oxford: oxford University press, 2003) PP. 13 - 31.
[37] The presidential champion of self-determination, Woodrow Wilson, sanctioned the use of military force to the ‘South’ on nearly ten occasions during his period in the White House.
[38] Dominic Lieven, ‘The Concept of Empire’, Fathom: the source for online learning. See http://www.fathom.com/feauture/122086.
[39] See John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., Vol. 6, No. 1, 1953, pp. 1 - 25
[40] This point is outlined in terms of IR theory by Robert Gilpin, Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order (Princeton University Press, 2001) pp. 97 - 102.
[41] See G. John Ikenberry, ‘Rethinking the Origins of American Hegemony’, Political Science Quarterly, No. 104, 1989, pp. 375 - 400.
[42] Figures from Martin Wolf, ‘American and Europe share the responsibility for world trade’, Financial Times, April 23, 2003.
[43] See the chapter on ‘Imperial Anticolonialism’ in William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1959).
[44] On the uses of self-determination as a means of advancing US influence see Michael Cox, G. John Ikenberry and Takashi Inoguchi eds., American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies, Impacts (Oxford: Oxford University press, 2000).
[45] On British suspicion of Wilson and Roosevelt see Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the World (London: Allen Lane, 2003).
[46] See John Wacher, 2 vols ed., The Roman World (London: Routledge, 1990) p. 139.
[47] A term recently coined by Chalmers Johnson in his Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire .
[48] ‘Empire is the rule exercised by one nation over others both to regulate their external behavior and to ensure minimally acceptable forms of internal behavior within the subordinate states’. Quoted in Stephen Peter Rosen. ‘An Empire, If You Can keep It’, The national Interest, No. 71, Spring 2003, p. 51.
[49] ‘The US does not and indeed no nation-state can today form the centre of an imperialist project’. Cited in John Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000) pp. xiii - xiv.
[50] Jospeh Nye Jr, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
[51] Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (London: Penguin Books, 2002) p. 24.
[52] Robert Wade, ‘The Invisible Hand of the American Empire’, Unpublished Ms. 15 February 2003.
[53] For an alternative perspective see Donald W. White, The American Century: The Rise and Decline of the United States as a World Power (New Haven: Conn., Yale University Press, 1996).
[54] See Philip Zelikow, ‘The Transformation of National Security: Five Redefinitions’, The National Interest, No. 71, Spring 2003, p. 18.
[55] ‘America’s World’, The Economist, October 23, 1999, p. 15.
[56] Charles A. Kupchan, ‘The End of the West’, The Atlantic Online, 18 April 2003. http://www..the atlantic.com
[57] Fareed Zakaria, ‘Arrogant Empire’, Newsweek, March 2003.
[58] On forms of anti-Americanism see Richard Crockatt, America Embattled, esp . pp. 39 - 71.
[59] Charles Grant, Comment at the Centre for European Economic Reform. May 2003.
[60] See for example Thomas Risse, ‘Beyond Iraq: Challenges to the Transatlantic Security Community’. Unpublished paper presented to the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Washington D.C., January 24, 2003.
[61] On German and French anti-Americanism assessed even before 9:11 see D. Diner, America in the Eyes of Germans: An Essay on Anti-Americanism (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1996) and Philippe Roger, L’Ennemi Americain; Genealogie de l’antiamericanisme francais(paris: Seuil, 2002).
[62] On this see Craig Kennedy and Marshall M. Boulton, ‘The Real Transatlantic Gap’. Http://www.cianet.org/olj/fp/fp_novdec02_kec01.html
[63] As does Robert Brenner, ‘The Crisis in the US Economy’, London Review of Books, Vol. 25, no. 3, 6 February 2003, pp. 18 - 23.
[64] For the most radical scenario concerning the European challenge - written by an American - see Charles A. Kupchan, ‘The Rise of Europe: America’s Changing Internationalism, and the End of U.S. primacy’, Political Science Quarterly, Volume 118, Number 2, 2003, pp. 205-225.
[65] On some of the economic problems facing ‘Pax Americana’ see John Gray, Al Qaeda and what is to be means to be modern (London: Faber and Faber, 2003) pp. 85 - 101.