COMMON CAUSE:

Anglosphere: End of transnational illusion? (James C. Bennett, 3/23/2003, UPI)

So many times in the run-up to the second Gulf War President Bush's diplomatic skills were contrasted detrimentally to those of his father. The broad coalition and unequivocal U.N. backing for the first war was an example, according to this theory, of the right way to do things.

The unilateralist cowboy approach of George W., failing to gain the military aid of the French Foreign Legion and the blessing of that final U.N. resolution, critics claim, doom the current war to -- well, exactly what it isn't clear, but obviously something not nice. Not military defeat, certainly. But victory without the blessings of certain European intellectual quarters, which they assume to be an equally traumatic outcome.

It's worth considering, however, that exactly these features of the first Gulf War contributed to the need for its successor. In particular, the fatal pause before Baghdad and the survival of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein were to some degree the result of the broadness of the coalition, some of whose members preferred a strong leader in Iraq because of fear of its fragmentation.

In a larger sense, the first Gulf War, coming in the middle of the Cold War endgame, marked the opening of a period, which we are coming to understand was a transitory interlude, in which a certain vision of transnational order was thought to be possible and desirable. Sept. 11, 2001, began the closing of this period. The second Gulf War may come to be seen as the final act of that closure, the two wars thus serving as bookends for the period. [...]

The core of the coalition of the willing assembled to pursue the liberation of Iraq demonstrates the difference between broadly inclusive organizations and more limited ones that, because they share certain understandings of the world, are able to move more quickly and effectively. The task for the coming period is to construct a set of more permanent structures along similar lines to pursue important security, economic trade and development, and political goals.

American Jacksonians can learn from the second Gulf War that, unlike the universalist organizations they have come to despise, a more select group of nations can work together effectively increase their mutual security. American Wilsonians and their cousins, the British Gladstonians, can learn that the international order they crave will more likely grow from successful collaboration of more limited partners with strong civil societies and like assumptions than the morally compromised international bodies, which have tended to lower themselves to the lowest common denominator of morality, rather than raising, as they had hoped, the lower to a higher standard.

Britain, America, Australia and their allies have accomplished what is needed in Iraq, where a decade ago the broader coalition failed, with painful consequences for the Iraqi people and others. Now is the time to explore how to apply these lessons to the broader issues of international order.

The key question in this regard is whether Tony Blair and John Howard can lead the British and Australians respectively to the conclusion--which Mr. Blair himself may not yet share--that the Anglosphere is more important to the development and maintenance of a stable and democratic world order than the EU and the UN.

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Operation Anglosphere: Today's most ardent American imperialists weren't born in the USA. (Jeet Heer, 3/23/2003, Boston Globe)

EMPIRE IS A DIRTY word in the American political lexicon. Just last summer, President Bush told West Point graduates that ''America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish.'' In this view, the power of the United States is not exercised for imperial purposes, but for the benefit of mankind.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, however, many foreign policy pundits, mostly from the Republican right but also including some liberal internationalists, have revisited the idea of empire. ''America is the most magnanimous imperial power ever,'' declared Dinesh D'Souza in the Christian Science Monitor in 2002. ''Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets,'' argued Max Boot in a 2001 article for the Weekly Standard titled ''The Case for American Empire.'' In the Wall Street Journal, historian Paul Johnson asserted that the ''answer to terrorism'' is ''colonialism.'' Columnist Mark Steyn, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, has contended that ''imperialism is the answer.''

''People are now coming out of the closet on the word `empire','' noted Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. ''The fact is no country has been as dominant culturally, economically, technologically and militarily in the history of world since the Roman Empire.'' Krauthammer's awe is shared by Harvard human rights scholar Michael Ignatieff, who asked earlier this year in The New York Times Magazine, ''What word but `empire' describes the awesome thing America is becoming?'' While acknowledging that empire may be a ''burden,'' Ignatieff maintained that it has become, ''in a place like Iraq, the last hope for democracy and stability alike.''

Today's advocates of American empire share one surprising trait: Very few of them were born in the United States. D'Souza was born in India, and Johnson in Britain - where he still lives. Steyn, Krauthammer, and Ignatieff all hail from Canada. (Krauthammer was born in Uruguay, but grew up in Montreal before moving to the United States.) More than anything, the backgrounds of today's most outspoken imperialists suggest the lingering appeal and impact of the British empire.

''I think there's more openness among children of the British Empire to the benefits of imperialism, whereas some Americans have never gotten over the fact that our country was born in a revolt against empire,'' notes Max Boot, currently afellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ''But lots of people who are advocating pro-imperial arguments - such as Bill Kristol and me - are not Brits or Canadians.'' (Boot, who was born in Russia, moved to the United States as a baby.)

Imperialism is often seen as an expanding circle, with power radiating outward from a capital city like London or Paris to hinterlands. But a quick review of history shows that imperial enthusiasm doesn't emanate only from the center. Often, the dream of empire is nursed by those born on the periphery of power, precisely because empire would give them a place in a larger framework. Alexander the Great, for example, was born in Macedonia and went on to create an Hellenic empire. And France's greatest empire-builder was the Corsican Napoleon. [...]

The promotion of ''Anglo-Saxon unity'' was particularly attractive to transnational business leaders like the Canadian-born newspaper tycoon William Maxwell Aitken (later known as Lord Beaverbrook). In 1910 Aitken moved to Britain, where he used his newspapers, Daily Express and the Evening Standard, to argue for free trade and the strengthening of imperial ties. In recent years, Beaverbrook's ideas have been given new currency by another newly ennobled Canadian-born newspaper magnate, Conrad Black, also known as Lord Black of Crossharbour.

While he has recanted his belief that the English-speaking provinces of Canada should join the United States, Black has been campaigning for the inclusion of the United Kingdom into the NAFTA trade accord. For Black, Britain's destiny is to be primarily an Atlantic power, not a European one.

Among conservative intellectuals, Black's dream of an Anglo-American concert of nations is part of a larger desire to strengthen ''the Anglosphere.'' Apparently coined by science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his 1995 novel ''The Diamond Age,'' the term has been popularized lately by journalists like James C. Bennett, who writes a weekly column covering ''The Anglosphere Beat'' for United Press International, and Andrew Sullivan, as well as by the English historian Robert Conquest. The proponents of an anglosphere want a loose and informal alliance of English-speaking peoples, modelled on the ''soft'' imperialism that governed Britain's relationship with dominions like Canada and Australia, not the ''hard'' imperialism of the Raj.

The enthusiasm for the old Pax Britannia has been bolstered by the revisionist scholarship of Scottish historian Niall Ferguson, whose new book ''Empire'' argues that the British Empire was a progressive force in world history that lay the foundations of our current global economy.

But the idea of a new American empire remains controversial on the American right, and not just among isolationists. Take the case of David Frum, the Canadian-born former Bush speechwriter who famously helped coin the term ''axis of evil.'' Though his writing shows touches of imperial nostalgia (among other thing, he has argued that Canada should jettison the nationalist Maple Leaf flag and return to the Union Jack), he rejects the imperial analogies drawn by writers like Max Boot. ''If `empire' means anything, it certainly does not describe what the US is proposing to do in Iraq,'' notes Frum. ''The big story, it seems to me, is the ascendancy of neo-Wilsonianism on the political right, not neo-imperialism.''

For Boot, that's just a language game. ''I don't think David and I disagree on any substantive point of foreign policy,'' Boot says. Another name for ''`hard' Wilsonianism,'' he points out, is liberal imperialism. After all, Wilson, who took over Veracruz, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, was one of our most imperial presidents. Boot adds: ''I prefer the more forthright if also more controversial term American Empire - sort of like the way some gays embrace the `queer' label.''

Mr. Boot's right here and the entire seeming discrepancy on the Right clears up if you just think of the new imperialism as cultural rather than territorial. The point is not to take over and admninister every corner of the globe but to have a forceful enough ideological message and muscular enough foreign policy to extend Anglo-American ideals throughout the world.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 30, 2003 11:36 AM