US Cant get Empire Right

 

By Niall Ferguson

National Post; June 12, 2004 Actual Artical

 

 

 

"We're not a colonial power, we've never been a colonial power," declared U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld in an interview last February.

 

"We don't take our force and go around the world and try to take other people's real estate or other people's resources ... that's not how democracies behave."

 

Declarations like this have characterized the Bush years from the very outset. It has become a leitmotif of the rhetoric of the Bush administration that the United States is not, has never been, and could never be, an empire.

 

I would suggest this is a condition that can be diagnosed almost as a psychological condition. I call it "imperial denial" because you see, by any definition of empire that is historically valid, the United States not only is an empire today, it has been an empire from its very inception. And the only strange thing about the American Empire -- which I estimate is the 68th empire in recorded history -- is that it is the first in history that has denied its own existence.

 

The history of the United States is not of an exceptional experiment in Republican institutions and democracy, but is the history of just another perfectly normal empire -- and this is not difficult to do because the Founding Fathers themselves agreed from the very outset of their revolt against British imperial rule that the United States they were creating would have to be an empire. They all used the "e" word; Jefferson used it when he spoke of an empire of liberty; Hamilton used it and saw much more clearly that the United States would have to be an empire in the British sense of the word to survive.

 

But at some point in the 20th century the United States went off the "e" word in a most dramatic way and ceased to regard itself as an empire -- and that point must have been during the war in the Philippines. It was a dirty war, not a war the United States had expected to fight. The United States had expected its troops to be greeted by the Philippinos not as conquerors but liberators -- and they were not. Particularly on the islands populated by Muslims there was a ferocious resistance to the American presence. The phases of this American intervention fall into seven distinct steps. See if they sound familiar:

 

1. Impressive initial military success.

 

2. Flawed assessment of indigenous sentiment.

 

3. Gradual unplanned escalation of forces.

 

4. Growing domestic disillusionment.

 

5. Premature democratization.

 

6. The ascendancy of domestic economic considerations.

 

7. Ultimate withdrawal.

 

It was in the aftermath of the embarrassment of the Philippines occupation that the former imperialists gave themselves a makeover.

 

It began even with Theodore Roosevelt who, in effect, forswore future imperial ambitions when he declined to annex Cuba. From that moment on the United States resolved to exercise its power by non-imperial means, to recast its power in terms of hegemony, primacy, leadership -- you name it -- anything but empire. Well, you can change the label as much as you like, but exercising power in foreign countries always comes down in the end to empire.

 

 

 

 

And the United States shares the aspirations of the British Empire of a century ago. When I say it shares the British aspirations of a century ago, people in the United States throw up their hands in disbelief, amazement and horror. And yet when one looks closely at what the British Empire, in the time of Milner was aspiring to do, -- to create a global order based on free trade, to export to a quarter of the world's land surface British conventions about property rights and non-corrupt administration, and yes, gradually to democratize those countries over time as the British felt they matured politically -- these objectives are uncannily similar to the objectives of the United States today as set out, for example, in the National Security Strategy document produced by President Bush's administration.

 

When the British went into Baghdad in the spring of 1917 General F.S. Maude issued a proclamation that explicitly declared: We come not as conquerors, but as liberators. Long before the United States discovered the rhetoric of forcible emancipation, of democratization at gunpoint, the British had been doing it and had done it for many years. Indeed, in many ways what the United States is unwittingly trying to do is precisely what the British felt they had to do in the age of what they called The Great Game: to secure control of that Eurasian geopolitical space stretching from what used to be called the Near East to the Himalayas. The geopolitical ambitions of the American Empire would have instantly been recognizable to the geopolitical strategists of a century ago, and yet the United States is not in fact able to achieve the success that the British undoubtedly did achieve in this Great Game. Why not?

 

It's because the American Empire is afflicted by three fundamental deficits that did not afflict its British predecessor.

 

The first is the economic deficit. A hundred years ago the United Kingdom was genuinely the world's banker, it was in net terms a vast exporter of capital, sending the savings of the British all over the world in vast quantities. Today, the United States is the world's biggest debtor, with current account deficits of roughly 5% of gross domestic product. The net liabilities of the United States are mounting with dizzying speed -- already the net liabilities exceed US$3-trillion. Were it not for huge inflows of capital, particularly from East Asian central banks, the United States would already be in the gravest economic difficulties. And if one calculates the net liabilities of the Medicare and Social Security systems -- the financial imbalance which is at the heart of the American welfare state -- one arrives at a present value figure in the order of US$45-trillion. The fiscal implications of American domestic over-stretch have only just begun to dawn on Americans these past months, but that's only the first deficit.

 

The second deficit from which the American Empire suffers is a manpower deficit. We see that very clearly in Iraq today, in the way that more and more American service personnel are being prevented from leaving the Army and Marine Corps when their time to leave is due. There is a quiet conscription at work within the American military today -- a conscription that targets those already serving but due to leave the Armed Forces. I was in the Middle East at the end of last year and was forcibly struck by the extent to which American operations in Iraq rely on what the British call "weekend soldiers" -- reservists and national guards' troops. That, of course, was one of the sorrier aspects of the ghastly events at Abu Ghraib: They were conducted by reservists, these atrocities, the images of which have done so much to bring disrepute to the United States. But the manpower deficit goes much further than that.

 

 

 

 

The fundamental problem of all empires is that they cannot be based on coercion alone, they cannot be based exclusively on the export of troops. The British Empire would not have lasted long had it not been for the colossal number of Britons, particularly from the Celtic periphery, who were willing to leave behind the rainy shores of their youth and emigrate and settle on the Imperial periphery. Settlers are the key to successful colonization, it's a tautology, what else are colonies but places where people settle, live their lives, bring up their families But the United States has no settlers; it remains a destination for immigrants not a source of emigration.

 

But the manpower deficit and the economic deficit are not the most serious of the deficits from which the United States suffers. The fatal deficit from which it seems to me the American Empire will never recover is its attention deficit.

 

The United States is the first empire in history to suffer from attention deficit disorder. The assumption, extraordinary as it seemed to me at the time, that the United States could invade Iraq, overthrow Saddam Hussein, create a market economy, promote the rule of law, introduce democracy and be home in time for November 2, 2004, beggars belief. How could anybody seriously have thought this undertaking could be completed in a matter of 15 months?

 

Even American history itself showed how long it took to transform West Germany and Japan. If one looked at the condition of those countries just 15 months after the end of the Second World War, there was no sign then of economic miracles. On the contrary, the economic situation in West Germany in late 1946 was far worse than the economic situation in Iraq today.

 

Why all the unrealism? That is the only way to describe the planning, if that is indeed what it was, in the Defence Department for the post-war period in Iraq and yet that lack of realism seems almost to have been universally shared throughout American society. Every time I pointed out to Americans that the United Kingdom in effect ran Iraq from 1917 until the last troops left in 1955, they stepped back in horror at the time frame that implied, 40, 50 years of occupation.

 

 

 

 

So the American Empire is not in any sense, other than its ambitions, a clone of the British Empire. What does it resemble then? What empire is it like?

 

It seems to me that if anything, the American Empire is more Roman than it is British. It's a republic and this is an important point to bear in mind. The republics face certain classical temptations when they exercise power far from their own metropolis. The United States seems to me to be poised dangerously on a precipice -- on one side the familiar surroundings of the republic personified, in many ways, by Senator John Kerry with his patrician complacency. On the other side of the precipice a place in which individual liberties could quite quickly be sacrificed to the pursuit of a limitless war against shadowy enemies -- the war against terror as instrument of subjugation at home more than abroad.

 

But if my Roman parallel is right, then that raises a final question: the Monty Python question.

 

In Life of Brian, John Cleese poses the question: "What did the Romans ever do for us?" Somebody says, "Well, the aqueducts." Cleese responds, "Apart from the aqueducts ..." "Well public health ..." Apart from public health ..." You get the point.

 

These days the Germans are asking, "What did the Americans ever do for us?" In Berlin -- of all places -- only the other day I effectively had that conversation. "Well, apart from the airlift ..."

 

It's very easy to criticize the American empire. It's easy to mock it. It's easy to strike poses of the most satisfying moral indignation about it. The trouble is, there might be something worse than it and that is what so many of the critics of American policy in the Middle East leave out of account.

 

When the French government says that full sovereignty must immediately be conferred to Iraqis and the American troops must immediately withdraw -- which in its more rhetorical flourishes it seems to have said -- there's an almost complete failure in recognizing the danger of full-scale civil war in Iraq. This is a real danger, the magnitude of which can scarcely be exaggerated. What happened in Lebanon from the late 1970s into the '80s, something the Americans were powerless to stop, could very easily repeat itself in Iraq if the American-led coalition loses control of the situation there if, prematurely, it hands over sovereignty, if, prematurely it comes home.

 

There was something worse than the Roman Empire. It was called, though it's not so fashionable to call it that now, the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages was a time when there was no empire or rather, when all the empires declined more or less simultaneously -- it was a good time to be a Viking!

 

Well, today's Vikings are much more dangerous than the Vikings of old. The terrorists today are armed with weapons much more deadly than the longbow and the axe. The simple reality is that if the United States loses its imperial appetite, if it heeds all the many calls to go home, to give up, to pull out, to retreat, in effect, back into isolation, then we may find the truth of that old saying, "be careful of what you wish for, you may get it."

 

 

 

 

Much as we all have difficulty with living under or close to an American Empire, we should recognize that there are no very credible alternatives to it in the world today apart from an incipient and spreading anarchy. The powers around Osama bin Laden today are rather like the Bolsheviks in the early phase of their career, peripheral terrorists, anarchists who no one takes too seriously. But if those powers ever gain control of Saudi Arabia with its vast oil reserves, or of Pakistan with its nuclear weapons, we may look back and say, "Bring back the Romans."

 

Niall Ferguson is the author of Colossus: The Price of America's Empire. This is an adaptation of his Donner Canadian Foundation Lecutre. The full lecture will be broadcast on the CBC Radio program Ideas, in the fall. Ideas is heard every weeknight at 9:05, 9:35 in Newfoundland.; Niall Ferguson is the author of Colossus: The Price of America's Empire. This is an adaptation of his Donner Canadian Foundation Lecture. The full lecture will be broadcast on the CBC Radio program Ideas, in the fall. Ideas is heard every weeknight at 9:05, 9:35 in Newfoundland.

 

? National Post 2004

i really dont even know what to say about this article.

 

it is unnecessary, absurd at points makes SOME intersting comments and comparisons.

 

for a while i couldn't tell if it was a serious article or not. over all i find it pretty dumb

I thought it was an interesting article and view into the british outlook towards us. You need to consider it from their point of view. They are trying to reason with the american strengths and mistakes.

 

Over all it is interesting. But, I took it with a grain of salt.

 

I did enjoy the parts of how they already tried this with Iraq and Aghanistan.

I think it's a great article. Good read.

I only agree with some of what he says. I don't think that we should be looking to create an empire abroad, because that will only increase the number of terrorists worldwide.

 

He was dead on, however, about how we rely too much on "Weekend Warriors", and have too much foreign debt.

Foreign Debt keeps those countries in check.

I only agree with some of what he says. I don't think that we should be looking to create an empire abroad, because that will only increase the number of terrorists worldwide.

 

He was dead on, however, about how we rely too much on "Weekend Warriors", and have too much foreign debt.

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