EMPIRE OF THE WILLING

Ill-Suited for Empire (Joseph S. Nye, May 25, 2003, The Washington Post)

The military victory in Iraq seems to have confirmed a new world order. Not since Rome has one nation loomed so large above the others. Indeed the word "empire" has come out of the closet. Respected analysts of both left and right are beginning to refer to "American empire" approvingly as the dominant narrative of the 21st century.

But those who openly welcome the idea of an American empire mistake the underlying nature of American public opinion. Neoconservatives such as Max Boot argue that the United States should provide troubled countries with the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets. But as the British historian Niall Ferguson points out, modern America differs from 19th-century Britain in our "chronically short time frame."

Some say the United States is already an empire and it is just a matter of recognizing reality. It's a mistake, however, to confuse the politics of primacy with those of empire. The United States is more powerful compared with other countries than Britain was at its imperial peak, but it has less control over what occurs inside other countries than Britain did when it ruled a quarter of the globe. For example, Kenya's schools, taxes, laws and elections -- not to mention external relations -- were controlled by British officials. The United States has no such control today. We could not even get the votes of Mexico and Chile for a second U.N. Security Council resolution. Devotees of the new imperialism say not to be so literal. "Empire" is
merely a metaphor. But the problem with the metaphor is it implies a control from Washington that is unrealistic and reinforces the prevailing strong temptations toward unilateralism.

Despite its natal ideology of anti-imperialism, the United States has intervened and governed countries in Central America and the Caribbean as well as the Philippines. But imperialism has never been a comfortable experience for Americans, and only a small portion of the cases led directly to the establishment of democracies. American empire is not limited by "imperial overstretch" in the sense of costing an impossible portion of our gross national product. We devoted a much higher percentage of GNP to the military budget during the Cold War than we do today. The overstretch will come from having to police more and more peripheral countries -- more than public opinion will accept. Polls show little popular taste for empire.

In fact, the problem of creating an American empire might better be termed imperial under-stretch. Neither the public nor Congress has proved willing to invest seriously in the instruments of nation-building and governance as opposed to military force.

"Imperial under-stretch" is a clever term and precisely right. There's an excellent case to be made for having a more powerful and advanced nation govern a less advanced and developed one for a period of time to, counterintuitive as it sounds, instill an ethos of liberal democracy--look around the world and note how many of the most democratic or democratizing nations of the developing world were once British or American colonies or where we intervened heavily: from obvious places like India and the Phillipines to more subtle ones like Iran. However, there is no longer any stomach in the Anglo-American leadership or citizenry for the kind of repression of nationalist ambitions, even though it's benign repression, that this kind of colonialism requires. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 25, 2003 6:01 PM