An American Empire

Fifty years ago, the classical liberal author and journalist Garet Garrett published a collection of essays called The People's Pottage (1953). In the midst of the Korean War, he tried to persuade the American people that the United States was on a new course that conflicted with the original conception of the nation. Its constitutional safeguards for the preservation of freedom were being threatened and undermined by the role the government was assuming around the world.

The specific danger was reflected in the title of one of the essays in the volume, "The Rise of Empire." Garrett summarized what he considered the requisite signs of the emerging American Empire. First, the executive power of the government becomes increasingly dominant . The traditional institutional restraints and balances on the three branches of government are weakened, with more and more discretionary power and authority shifting to the office of the president. Congress plays an increasingly subservient role, with lawmaking and regulatory decision-making transferred to bureaus and departments under the executive's control.

Second, domestic-policy issues become increasingly subordinate to foreig-policy matters . Out of the ashes of the Second World War, Garrett argued, the United States had taken on the status and position of a global policeman responsible for the "the peace of the world." To fulfill this task, all other matters become of secondary importance. Threats and military actions around the globe place the American people more and more in harm's way. And in the middle of the inevitable crises that come with global military commitments, "sacrifices" of freedom at home are required to ensure "national survival" in the face of unending dangers on every continent where U.S. forces stand at the ready.

Third, Empire threatens to result in the ascendancy of the military mind over the civilian mind . Civil society places the dignity and privacy of the individual at the center of social affairs. Commerce and trade are the peaceful and voluntary means and methods by which people interact for mutual improvement of their lives. The military mind, on the other hand, imposes hierarchy and control over all those under the direction of the commander in chief. The successful pursuit of the "mission" always takes precedence over the individual and his life. And Empire, by necessity, places increasing importance on military prowess and presence at the expense of civilian life and its network of noncoercive, market relationships.

Fourth, Empire creates a system of satellite nations. As Garrett explained it, "From the point of view of Empire the one fact common to all satellites is that their security is deemed vital to the security of the Empire.... The Empire, in its superior strength, assumes responsibility for the security and the well being of the satellite nation, and the satellite nation undertakes to stand with its back to the Empire and face the common enemy."

Fifth, Empire brings with it both arrogance and fear among the imperial people . As the citizens of the nation that takes on the role of "master of the world," the people increasingly consider themselves all-powerful and superior to those over whom their government has assumed guardianship. More and more on the tongue of the citizens and their political spokesmen are references to "our" superior values, as well as "our" power and importance in all things in the world. Yet at the same time, Empire brings fear. Enemies and threats are now all around the people of the Empire, creating fears of attack and destruction from any corner of the world. Even the "friends" among other nations create suspicion and doubt about their loyalty and dependability in moments of crisis.

And, finally, Empire creates the illusion that a nation is a prisoner of history . The language of Empire contains such phases and ideas as "it is our time to maintain the peace of the world," or "it is our responsibility to save civilization and serve mankind." There emerges a sense and an attitude of inevitability, that "if not us, then who?" Empire becomes the burden we, the imperial people, not only must bear but from which we have no escape. "Destiny" has marked us for duty and greatness.

For most of the 50 years since Garrett outlined what he considered the characteristics of the emerging American Empire, most political and foreign policy analysts have denied that America was or was pursuing an empire. America was part of the world and as such could not walk away from the world's problems: after all, the outcomes of those problems affected the American people as well. Military alliances with multitudes of other nations, military bases around the globe, tens of billions of dollars spent on foreign and military aid to numerous governments on every continent, and two protracted and bloody wars on the Asian mainland, were not signs of empire. They were merely the burden created by an unbalanced world in the wake of the destruction of the Second World War.

With the end of the Cold War, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was believed and hoped that the era of America's military presence around the world could be, if not eliminated, at least significantly reduced. Instead, new burdens were now seen to require continuing U.S. political and military "leadership." The end of communism released national and ethnic conflicts in parts of Eastern Europe that 50 years of socialist dictatorships had only repressed. At the same time, "rogue states" and religious fanatics in those areas labeled "the third world" during the Cold War era seemed to threaten continuing political instability and mad acts of large-scale terrorism - especially after the events of September 11, 2001.

How shall America respond and what shall be its continuing role on the world stage? After decades of denial that what American political and military power had created around the globe was, indeed, a form of empire, the word has now had a positive rebirth. The January 13, 2003, cover story of U.S. News & World Report was "The New American Empire?" The author summarized the policy tendencies that suggest that the United States is on the path of empire and is likely to continue down it.

An essential element in following this path is the concept of "unilateralism," the idea that America must and should act alone politically and militarily around the world whenever necessary, guided by its own notion of its duty to mankind. This theme has been articulated by the Pulitzer Prize winner and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, most recently in his article "The Unipolar Moment Revisited," in The National Interest (Winter 2002/03). He argues that since the end of the Soviet Union, America has held a unique place on the world stage. It is a vast colossus that produces almost one-third of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and spends more on military preparedness than the next 20 nations together. Its culture and language dominate world commerce, entertainment, science and technology, and lifestyles. No other nation comes anywhere near it -nor should any other nation be allowed to, in Krauthammer's view. It is now a "unipolar world" with only America the one great power. And America must dominate the world if order, stability, freedom, democracy, and justice are to be preserved and extended for mankind.

Krauthammer calls for political and military "unilateralism" on the part of the United States precisely so it will be hamstrung by neither alliance partners nor any of the international organizations of which it is a member. He says that America is not an imperial power desiring to rule other countries for natural resources, nor does it want to impose "a grand vision of a new world," and it has "no great desire to remake human nature." So what is it dominating the world for? Besides its own self-defense, American unilateralism has two goals: "extending the peace by advancing democracy and preserving the peace by acting as balancer of last resort.... America's unique global power allows it to be the balancer in every region." In the pursuit of these things, "America must be guided by its own independent judgment, both about its own interest and about the global interest." There must be no "handcuffing of American power."

He revels in the idea of this unipolar world over which he considers the United States the ruler. And he wants nothing to threaten its preservation. "The new unilateralism argues explicitly and unashamedly for maintaining unipolarity, for sustaining America's unrivaled dominance for the foreseeable future." And at the end of his article, paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin, he says to his readers, "History has given you an empire, if you will keep it."

Also making a case for an imperial role for the United States is Deepak Lal, professor of international development studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Lal has long been a leading opponent of central planning and regulation in developing countries and a strong advocate of free markets and competition. On October 30, 2002, he delivered a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., entitled "In Defense of Empires." Lal argues that empires undeservedly have had a bad name in the 20th century. In his view, "The major argument in favor of empires is that, through their pax, they provide the most basic of public goods - order - in an anarchical international society of states."

Among the great tragedies resulting from the First World War, he believes, was the beginning of the end to the European, and especially British, empires around the world. In the 19th century they had created and maintained a system of international free trade, protected property rights, legally enforced contracts, and secured a global arena for investment and economic development. In their place arose political and economic nationalism that created the chaos of the 1920s and 1930s, which culminated in the Second World War. Now, in the wake of the end of the Cold War, the world is confronted with the same dangers that it faced in the period between the world wars: nationalist and ideological demagogues and religious fanatics. America, therefore, must accept the mantle of global empire for the good of the world and its own well-being. It must do for mankind in the 21st century what the European empires did in the 19th century.

Lal's only hesitation is that America may try to make the world over in its own image in the pursuit and maintenance of its empire. He says, "The so-called universal values being promoted by the West are no more than the culture-specific, proselytizing ethic of what remains at heart Western Christendom," including the "Western value" of liberty. But "many civilizations have placed social order above this value, and again it would be imperialistic for the West to ask [other cultures and religions] to change their ways." He fears that "if the West ties its moral crusade too closely to the emerging processes of globalization and modernization, there is the danger that there will be a backlash against the process of globalization." And this "potential cultural imperialism poses a greater danger to the acceptance of a new Pax America in developing countries, particularly Muslim countries" than any other basis for resisting America's political and military dominance around the world. But for discussing what America's purpose is in having and managing a global empire, Lal concludes that a good beginning "would be the acceptance in domestic politics that the U.S. is an imperial power."

History does not dictate that America continue on its path to global empire, any more than history dictated the "inevitability" of class conflict leading to a socialist paradise or that history dictated the domination of the world by an Aryan "master race." If America follows this direction it will be because the political elite and the American public choose to do so. It will be a conscious decision, and not fate or destiny. The question, then, is, is this a course that is best for America and the world? And the answer, for any advocate of freedom, must be that it is not.

Deepak Lal tries to minimize the cost of an American Empire by pointing out that in 2000 defense spending in the United States amounted only to a little over 3 percent of GDP. But even ignoring the increases in the defense budget that have been proposed by the Bush administration, that still comes out to about $300 billion. Over 10 years that would add up to $3 trillion: expressed differently, the American people will work and pay taxes that will equal almost one and a half years of the cost of government over the next decade just to maintain and man the American Empire. And this ignores the deaths of Americans and the destruction of their property during the coming years due to any wars or terrorist acts that result from resistance or retaliation by those opposed to the American Empire.

Lal also wistfully looks back to the British Empire of the 19th century and wants America to now serve as the global guardian of international order and commerce. But he confuses Empire with the prevailing ideology of that earlier time. In spite of having an empire, the British in particular were wedded to the political philosophy of classical liberalism. They managed their global empire as a free-trade zone, not because it was an empire but because the intellectuals and most people in Britain believed in the idea and ideal of personal liberty and economic laissez faire.

During these years of the 19th century, other European powers, especially the French, the Germans and the Belgians, ran their empires along far more exclusionary and protectionist lines meant to serve special-interest groups in the mother country. All of these empires were maintained and ruled with military force, with the French, Germans and Belgians in particular often extremely brutal and cruel in their domination of the subject groups in Africa and Asia. And even the British could be merciless in their use of force to maintain their empire against the wishes of their subject peoples.

The ideas of free trade and economic liberalism do not guide governments in the 21st century, including the government of the United States. Domestic economic interventionism, the welfare state, and political regulation of commerce and trade through international organizations are the guiding ideas of our time, as they have been for many decades. And the foreign-policy pronouncements and policy goals of the Bush administration suggest no change in direction. (See Freedom Daily, "A Regulated-Economy Agreement for the Americas" [July 2001] and "The Dangers and Costs of Pax America " [December 2002].) Abusive power, corruption, and special interest favoritism are inseparable from the interventionist-welfare state, whether it is practiced in domestic or foreign policy. Thus, there is little reason to think that America would be any more humane in its imperial role than the European empires of the past.

Krauthammer's American unilateralism in a unipolar world is more than unilateral action by the U.S. government in other parts of the world. It means presidential unilateralism in making those decisions here at home. As Bob Woodward points out in his book Bush at War, when he asked the president whether he ever felt that he needed to explain anything as he planned a possible attack on Iraq, Bush replied, "Of course not. . . . I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I don't need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." What remains of the traditional conception of limited, constitutional government with separation of powers and Congressional responsibility for declarations of war when the president of the United States believes that he owes no one any explanation for what he says or does when it comes to military conflict? With Empire inevitably comes the "imperial presidency."

Krauthammer may be the schizophrenic victim of his own rhetoric when he says that America has no desire to remake the rest of the world and in the next breath says that the task of America's empire is to spread Western-style democracy and values around the world. But this goal, as Lal correctly sees, threatens the conception of a benign American Empire that polices the peace and guarantees the order of the world while attempting to indoctrinate the people of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East to accepting superior Western thinking and ideals. The issue is not whether the traditional Western ideas of liberty, property, rule of law, and limited government are good and right - any classical liberal considers that they are. The issue is whether they can be force-fed to people not willing to accept them on those terms. And it is hardly imaginable that the American people, flush with the hubris of imperial power and indoctrinated themselves by intellectuals and political leaders about the "destiny" and "historical mission" of America to save the world, will be willing to bear the financial and human burden of Empire if they do not think that the end product will be to make the rest of the world just like the "superior" U.S. of A.

This means that Empire will be a costly, frustrating, and burdensome affair. It will require the expenditure of many lives and vast fortunes. And it will undermine what remains of the free society and the market economy here in the United States. At the end of "The Rise of Empire," Garrett said that the American people could have back their limited, constitutional republic if they were willing to fight for it. But people fight only when they know what they have lost and what they still have to lose.

Richard Ebeling is the Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College in Michigan and serves as vice president of academic affairs at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va.

Thanks for posting this.

The danger to America, is indeed Imperialism; and that is coming from America; but again, it is not to the rest of the world, that this Imperialism is directed ... rather, it is to America.

Because the "American Imperialism" going on, is known in America as "Government by Judiciary" or what you may refer to as judge-made law.

It is the ignoring of, and the disdain for: our rule of law

our democratic-republic wherein laws are to made by legislative bodies consisting of representives duly elected by the people of the respective States , and of the United States, and

our Constitution.

To wit: the power of making law that is the right of the people, is being stipped away the judicial imperialists, what we call lawyers and their hegemony with politicians, or, if you will, politicians and their hegemony with lawyers; either way, so-called "experts" on the law who prey upon the land.

Thanks for posting this.

The danger to America, is indeed Imperialism; and that is coming from America; but again, it is not to the rest of the world, that this Imperialism is directed ... rather, it is to America.

Because the "American Imperialism" going on, is known in America as "Government by Judiciary" or what you may refer to as judge-made law.

It is the ignoring of, and the disdain for:

- our rule of law,

- our democratic-republic wherein laws are to made by legislative bodies consisting of representives duly elected by the people of the respective States , and of the United States, and

- our Constitution.

To wit: the power of making law that is the right of the people, is being stipped away from the people, by the judicial imperialists --- lawyers and their hegemony with politicians, or, if you will, politicians and their hegemony with lawyers --- either way, so-called "experts" on the law who prey upon the land.

expressed differently, the American people will work and pay taxes that will equal almost one and a half years of the cost of government over the next decade just to maintain and man the American Empire.

The gentleman is using hyperbole. For this statement to be true, our abandonment of any idea of "American Empire" would have to allow us to safely drop all military precautions. Even an isolationist America would need a military.

The cost of "American Empire" is the difference between the cost of an isolationist military and the cost of an imperial military.

It is also possible to make a case that isolationism, which by definition allows threats to arise without interference, will in the long run lead to far greater costs.

For instance, maintaining a strong international military presence during the period after WWI would have at least allowed the US to consider options which might have resulted in the early squashing of the Nazis. This would obviously have been far less expensive, both financially and in lives, than WWII turned out to be.

Since the production of WMD no longer requires the full resources of a large, advanced nation-state, the threat is far more dispersed in the past. It is difficult to see how a more-concentrated military can effectively defend against a more-dispersed threat.

Normally one of the concomittants of an imperial order is that the residents of the entity which controls the empire derive material benefits from the empire. However, in the 20th century the financial and social burdens of the imperial state have disporportionately been borne by the residents of the imperial metropole. This is as true for liberal-capitalist imperial states such as Great Britain as for ideologically driven meta-tyrannies such as the USSR.
Many historians consider that the direct and indirect costs of the British Empire began to exceed the financial benefits during the last quarter of the 19th century. British taxpayers paid for the costs of the financial liabilities of much of the Empire. Even with the costs of the Indian administration being largely finaced by India as the 20th century advanced even innthe case of India the British taxpayer carried the burden for the army modernization program that began in the mid-1930's as well as the costs for the naval base and fortifications of Singapore.
In the case of the USSR, its unfortunate citizens paid in enormous quantities of blood and material sacrifice to erect and maintain the superstructure of the'socialist' empire which flowed from Stalin's duplitious but far seeing foreign policy.
There were selected elite cohorts in government, industry, and finance that derived direct or indirect benefits from the British Empire. These ranged from the priviledged financial position British banking houses obtained by having the Empire as a captive market place to the avialability of administrative positions throughout the empire for the upper middle class. For rank and file Britons there were few direct benefits and the presence of the empire enabled British politicians to engage in diplomatic maneuvering and public relations ploys that helped generate the World War One.
For the American people the putative benefits of being the global hegemon seem even more limited than for their British equivalent. While taxation remains high enough that it is probable that the average wage earner pays 40 to 50% of his/her earnings in one form of taxes or another the job base of the US is being continually eroded through export of both skilled and semi-skilled production and administrative positions to low cost third world countries. At the same time the unspoken agreement among the nation's political elites to allow virtually untrammeled illegal and legal tthird world immigration acts both as a brake on wages and a cause for increased taxation. Average Americans are seeeing their country turned into a third world state, the economic futute for them and their children diminished as the leadership groups of the US become more and more comfortable acting as a transnational managerial elite with less and less real loyalty to the core culture of their nation.
In short for normal Americans the rise to global hegemony means the destruction of their culture and eventual impoverishment as they are reduced to being subjects of a state run by an opportunistic, corrupt olagarchy. To view the future Americans should visit Mexico and see what such a political and social order looks like at first hand. The American hegemon spells the Mexicanization of our nation.

I don't know if 9/11 fundamentally changed the world for the US. It did for me (I am 68, a college educated Navy vet with an interest in history). I have always said that we need the Marines because there were some people in the world that would shoot me right between the eyes, kill my children and grand children (maybe raping them first) and steal my property just because I am an American.

This didn't concern me too much because, I noticed as I traveled the world, they were there and I was here. There also were two oceans between us, and few of them had Navies.

What changed on 9/11 is that they came after us in our warm, snug offices. Unfortunately, they killed more that 3,000 innocent civilians. The original reports, if you recall. feared that 50,000 persons may have been killed.

My response is to hunt them down, and speakingly quite frankly, kill them. I don't want them brought back to stand trial. This is not a judicial process.

Unfortunately, both for us and the world, they come from a region of the world where there really are no legitimate goverments except for Israel. In my unstudied opinion, I can't predict what will happen when we replace Sadam, but it will send a powerful message to those other countries which have supported and support terrorism and terrorists. It may have been fashionable to pull feathers from the eagle's tail a few years ago, but ,hopefully, it now is a dangerous and perhaps fatal game to play.

If we keep our eye an the goal, and do not waver, we will prevail. So, no it is not an American empire, it is a response to the murder of 3,000 plus persons on our territory by an alien entity.

Gee, it's a tough problem, just maybe it would be best to state it accurately instead of ranting against 'neo-conservatives.

What's not accurate? In their own words in print, on TV and radio neocons talk of dominating the world, remaking the entire middle east and bringing liberal democracy to all the dark corners of the globe and using preemptive wars to make sure no one can challange our status. Somehow in my mind that registers diferently than defending our borders or protecting our shipping. Unless of course one concludes that everywhere in the world one can find an American citizen so there must be American military might there just to ensure their safety. I'm not sure but I do not think most Americans would like to be on the recieving side of these equations. If so then it would not be far fetched to conclude that others might not be too keen on it either but I guess their desires don't count when our "national greatness" and "global hegemony" is at stake.

So, no it is not an American empire, it is a response to the murder of 3,000 plus persons on our territory by an alien entity.

This arguement is not just about 9/11 and Iraq, it goes back at least to the Spainish American War and the projection of force globally, our taking out and putting in rulers in other countries and a large military presence overseas AND it is about the large amounts of blood and tax dollars necessary to sustain these things and the cost of backlash AND the cost to our liberties here at home. No matter how it is calculated the costs of "projecting force" is enormous and the current arguement is do we expand and exasperate the problem or try a different path like the one our founders suggested.

cordially,

While I think that may have been a genuine hazard in 1953, world events played out into something much stranger than a conventional empire. That's the problem with historical analogy - it's a slave to parallelism. Normally it helps with broad trends and fails in the particular - I suspect that here it helps with the particular and fails in the broad trends.

This sort of empire, if so you can properly term it, has little to do with military domination despite the focus on that provided by recent events in Iraq. I offer for evidence the fact that in a country of over a quarter billion people and a world of over seven billion, we have 1.4 million people in active armed service and the number has been decreasing for half a century. This number clearly does not serve to explain predominance inasmuch as it puts us pretty much in the middle of the pack at best.

Certainly technology is a force multiplier, and the U.S.'s is, at the moment, superior, but not enough superior to explain the predominance of power by itself. It is, moreover, very much a follow-on to civilian technology and not the reverse, which is the typical historical pattern.

What I'm considering right now to explain this anomalous geopolitical position is an oddly disproportionate economic strength and cultural permeation. What may be unique is that, contrary to most classical economic models, the former is not so much the power of the collective and central planning as it is the sum of innumerable small-scale activities accumulating into a rather amorphous whole. Von Mises may have been right. Something like that may be happening culturally, too, or perhaps that is simply a function of the means of cultural permeation the explosion in communications methods afforded it, both from economy and technology. Maybe both.

If so, we are wrong to focus on the military as a proper measure of this sort of "empire," in fact, if military means equates to empire then perhaps the latter term is inappropriate. "Hegemony" seems to be coming back into vogue, but that is a descriptive, not an explanatory, term. We're going to have to think outside the historical box here, because in 1991 the sides of that box got kicked away and the world we ended up looking at is both unexpected and unprecedented.

In short, I don't know what's going on either. Comments?

"In my unstudied opinion... it will send a powerful message to those other countries which have supported and support terrorism and terrorists. "

You're in good company:
"such presents as would show a friendly liberality should at the same time be made to those who unequivocally manifest intentions to remain friends; and as to those who indicate contrary intentions, the preparations made should immediately look towards them; and it will be a subject for consideration whether, on satisfactory evidence that any tribe means to strike us, we shall not anticipate by giving them the first blow, before matters between us and England are so far advanced as that their troops or subjects should dare to join the Indians against us.
It will make a powerful impression on the Indians, if those who spur them on to war, see them destroyed without yielding them any aid. " Pres. Jefferson to Sec. of War Dearborn August 28, 1807

Our historical policies have been so successful that mid-east tribes on the other side of the world are now more integral to our huge economy than the indians were in Jefferson's presidency.

Honest people familiar with our founding- such elementary events as the Jay treaty, the Quasi-war, Jefferson's Barbary war and the disaster of his embargo- can address the growing difficulties of continuing to follow the principals of relations with other nations that we have for over two hundred years. If costs and benefits of changing our historical policies are discussed honestly we can decide on new ones, or find ways to best make the pro-growth ones work in a crowded world without a frontier.

In short, I don't know what's going on either

Ha!!! I nor anyone else can prove anything and we never will as we will never have all the evidence BUT as we watch events unfold we can note the clues and produce theories based on accumulated facts.

something much stranger than a conventional empire

Exactly. We influence without always being a force directly on the scene - rule by proxy or satrap as the case may be. If one satrap gets uppity - take him out. The key to all this is our wealth, global reach militarily and high tech capabilities.

Let's face it we, The US spend more on defense than everyone else combined and no one can hope to match it and the same goes for the high tech, it is beyond anyone else's capabilities. France and Germany want the EU to rise to prominence but they can't even afford their domestic socialist obligations so they can't compete militarily. China may be up and coming but they are far down the ladder from us and we are boxing them in with our forces. But the big prize in this whole adventure of ours and the key to everything is the strategic location of Iraq and the strategic natural resources - oil. Iraq is dead center in the middle of the Arab world and the first step. With a huge military force in place there we can dominate the entire region like never before. Right now it takes 6 months or better to build up a large invasion force. Once we have Iraq the problem is solved. With Afghanistan under our control and forces in the Stans of the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe opening up to our bases on top of Iraq and the Balkans we will control cental Asia - the world's oil supply (the balkans being the place for a pipeline to facilitate the supply out of the Black Sea bottleneck). Add to this mix the possibility of taking out the leadership of Syria, Lebanon, Iran and maybe even Saudi Arabia we will truly be a hyper power and total rulers of the world. With strategically placed forces and puppet governments we not only impose our will but our companies get the contracts. As a side note we can eradicate radical Islam, liberalize that religion to a "religion of peace" and force a peace between the Arabs and Israel - peace and safety, a world safe for democracy and all that.

So with England on our side and forces in eastern Europe and all oil purchases remaining in dollars and not in eruos France and Germany and their dream of a powerful EU are smashed. With our forces all over central Asia and in Japan and Korea we have China hemmed in. The result - Pax Americana. New World Order. No longer a distant dream , a very near reality.</P.

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