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So are we the Romans or the Christians this time? I have a hard time keeping it straight.
I'm a little late; my apologies.
The problem with the word imperial is that we lack all but the most superficial trappings of an empire. I concede the enormous number of military bases around the globe; I concede our enormous military, financial, and power advantage over every single other nation, and indeed, perhaps any feasible combination, of States the world across.
Fine.
But Empire is not being the biggest, baddest, richest kid on the block. Admittedly, being all of those things makes it considerably easier to establish and hold an Empire; but if you put a pig in a tuxedo, no one outside of my ancestral stomping grounds will confuse him for a groom.
To be an Empire by definition involves conquering and controlling foreign territories -- and holding those foreign territories apart from the homeland, to use a relatively new and relatively ugly word. Thus, America before the Spanish American war was not an Empire; every conquered or gained territory became part of America. I'll grant you the decades between our acquisition of the Philipines (and Cuba - but that's a longer story) in support of an Imperial period (though not without qualifiers, and I refuse to include Puerto Rico, given their schizophrenic relationship with this Nation). But since?
So: Name for me the country or territory we've conquered in, say, the last two decades (heck, for the neo-Marxists out there: the last seven). Now identify which of that group we've attempted to either colonize (by which I mean precisely to import our nationals into as a means of permanently gaining territory or political control), annex, or hold as possessions. (Is the PRC an Empire? They've done all of this, in the last five decades.)
Name, too, those nations or peoples we hold in slavery or serfdom or under our heel for our economic advancement. Name those nations required (as was the Latin League, especially after Hannibal) to send hostages to our capital as a pledge of good relations, or to kowtow (in its original meaning) to our leaders.
Do we exert a great deal of influence? Undoubtedly. But an Empire -- especially one founded around the most powerful nation in the history of the planet -- would not submit itself to humiliating diplomacy. Empires dictate; they do not bend. The eighteen-month rush to war in Iraq is not what an Empire -- or even a vaguely arrogant hegemon -- does. That year and a half of abject humiliation happened because, for some benighted reason, we care what the rest of the world thinks -- a behavior distinctly at odds with every other empire of which I'm aware.
Name an Empire whose "imperialism" was defined by sending its blood and treasure abroad, to protect allies and even neutrals; whose conquests were always self-limited; who gave two tenths of a damn about what other, lesser nations thought; who spent enormous sums of money for little to no gain in return, knowing that at most it was helping its fellow men; an
[sorry] ... and who, when faced with genocidal threats, responded with restraint, rather than overwhelming force. If you can, I applaud you, and I'll change my stance. Until then, I just don't see America's Empire as more than a simulacrum.
Wes: Neither.
How about the Brits? There's been alot of rethinking of the ideological antipathy for the British Empire recently.
I'll also note that Paul Johnson has penned an essay in which he uses the term Empire to describe us.
Paul: You'll get little from me in the way of antipathy for the British Empire; for all its missteps, it is one of the great civilizing acts of human history. (I should add that I don't view the word "Empire" as a pejorative, per se; I simply do not think we qualify as one.) But I'm not clear: Do you mean to imply that Britain today is an Empire? If so, I would argue that it is one only in the loosest possible sense.
Which leads to Johnson's essay. (Thanks for the link; that was an enjoyable read.) My quibble is that he inflates the word beyond its modern sense by returning it to its older sense. (Not "oldest," of course; he's too canny for that.) An Empire, as we understand the concept, is not merely an active hegemon, with complete control over its own territory (one of the classic criteria of a post-Westphalian State is complete control over its own territory, thus every nation-State the world over would be an Empire in that sense); it is of a hegemon that acquires territory and peoples for its own growth and profit. If it does good works in the process, all to the better.
Thus, Johnson has to reach back to when "Imperium" meant "a government with complete control of its own borders," then expand that into a relatively new concept, Defensive Imperialism (the Russians have been practicing this since they kicked out the Mongols). With due respect to a man for whom I have little but, he's reaching.
I concede that there may be no word in our language for what America is now -- Empire is simply wrong, Hegemon is too weak, Unipower is awkward and silly, Lone Superpower is worse -- but that does not mean that we should confuse the terms.
Paul and all,
Yes, this issue about 'imperial overstretch' is something that many conservatives and American patriots were talking about during the Clinton administration. David Keene and Donald Devine, the leaders of the American Conservative Union, have had some good anti-empire articles in recent and past years. My May 31st blog entry has links to some of those (scroll down to the second heading in it).
In addition to that, on the issue of military overextention, there were some good article from 2001 on that, that I came across. Joseph Farah, the editor of World Net Daily, had an article from May of that year called "The American Empire," in which he gives a brief summary of this problem. A couple months later, Human Events, the national conservative weekly, published this informative chart, and this related article is from a month later.
This has been a major problem that has been affecting our military, our defense capabilities, our government, and our country as a whole. When campaigning for president, Governor Bush correctly addressed this issue, and rightfully pointed out these problems, and the fact that they needed to be corrected.
Now, the only thing left is to act on those goals, and rectify this situation, and the terrible situation that the previous administration left us in. This dangerous dilemma needs to be fixed.. And fast.
Time is running out.
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