AMERICA-HAMMER OF THE EMPIRES:

-INTERVIEW: "The Shah Always Falls": A soldier-historian looks at how the world has changed in the past decade and finds that America is both hostage to history and likely to be saved by it: An Interview With Ralph Peters (Fredric Smoler, February/March 2003, American Heritage)

[A:] The clash of civilizations is a great thesis, but it does not describe a new phenomenon. The history of the eastern Mediterranean in the twelfth century b.c. is the clash of civilizations, and so are the imperial wars of the eighteenth century. In the eighteenth century the French and Indian War is crucial, and the colonial militia is decisive. On the Plains of Abraham, we prove that modern empires can fall. We show that it's possible. Well, we fight the greatest empire of that age, the British Empire, twice, once to kick it out, and once to confirm it's got to stay out. Our next war is against the Mexican Empire. The first phase of our struggle against empires climaxes with the Civil War, when we destroy the imperial legacies of human bondage and a landed aristocracy. That first phase ends with Seward's purchase of Alaska, and it roughly defines American territory as we know it, except for Hawaii.

[Q;] What's the second phase?

[A:] In 1898 phase two kicks in, and America starts looking outward. Nowadays we underestimate the Spanish-American War because we assume that important wars are bloody. This one wasn't bloody, but it was the first time a non-European power destroyed a European empire. The Spanish Empire was decrepit, archaic, and bankrupt, but it was an empire, and we reached out and broke it, and we began becoming a new form of empire in the process. The Japanese saw that the Europeans didn't all gang up on the Americans for destroying a European empire, so a half-dozen years later they took on the other decrepit empire in the Far East, the empire of the czars, and destroyed part of it. In the First World War we were fighting alongside empires but also against them, and we destroyed the decrepit Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires and the upstart Second Reich. In the Second World War we destroyed the Italian empire, the Japanese empire, and the German Third Reich. By the end of the Cold War we'd destroyed the last great surviving European empire, the Soviet incarnation of the Russian Empire of the czars, and in some respects become an empire ourselves, although a new kind.

This process was layered and complex. In Indochina we were an anti-imperial power fighting imperial wars against anti-imperialists backed by imperial powers. Communism was an imperial force, the last great wave of European imperialism. But at the same time, the Vietnamese and Cambodians were fighting their own anti-imperial struggle against us. By the nineties we'd directly or indirectly been involved in the destruction of almost every European empire. Even the Dutch in Indonesia had to leave back in 1949 because America basically said, "You've got to go home." The Belgians pretty much withered on their own. The Portuguese mostly withered on their own too, but sad to say, we apparently gave Indonesia a green light to kick them out of East Timor, which we came to regret less than a quarter of a century later. Finally, in the course of restructuring empires we've gotten a legacy of behaving like a new sort of imperial power. I want us to continue to be this new sort of enlightened imperial power. It's the moral, right, and wise thing to do.

[Q:] Is the Chinese empire the last one that you think America will destroy?

[A:] I don't see China as an empire. It's got some imperial possessions, but it's not an empire in the European sense. I think the greatest threat to the Chinese is internal fissuring. There might be a period of warring states. There have been such periods throughout Chinese history. Whether we'll see a division between the rich east coast and the poor interior, whether we will see a Chinese democracy or a renewal of dictatorship, perhaps of a grotesque and monstrous form, nobody knows. China is the great wild card for the twenty-first century. It's important that we avoid the American arrogance of imagining we can have a decisive effect on a power like China. We're not even going to have a decisive effect on Indonesia, but if we engage there, we can make a difference. With China, we're playing on the margins. Patience is the one great virtue Americans lack. It's true in our personal lives, it's true in our consumer habits, and it's certainly true in geostrategy.

Mr. Peters's perspective is, as always, an interesting one. However, he could probably push his model at least that one step further: if China is going to fissure into warring states then it's an empire at least to the extent that it is an artificial construct of states that are natural rivals, rather than an organic state in and of itself. And, of course, if it does not fall apart on its own and if, though it's hard to see how, it does manage to rise to world power status, then it's entirely likely that eventually our power will be brought to bear on it, with decisive consequences. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 27, 2003 7:49 PM