THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS SPECIES:

Beyond superpower: The ups and downs of the greatest empires the world has ever known: a review of Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance -- And Why They Fall By Amy Chua (Peter A. Coclanis, December 8, 2007, Chicago Tribune)

Because Chua employs the term "hyperpower" carefully, let us spend a moment on matters of definition. Lest readers take cheap shots, Chua states early on that her argument does not apply to all empires, but only to those that rose at some point to the status of "world-dominant power." The power of such an entity "clearly surpasses that of all its known contemporaneous rivals; it is not clearly inferior in economic or military strength to any other power on the planet; and it projects its power over so immense an area of the globe and over so immense a population that it breaks the bounds of mere local or even regional preeminence."

Such stringent conditions rule out most of the empires that ever existed, including the Aztec Empire and the Habsburg Empire, as well as the U.S. during the Cold War, each of which failed to meet at least one of the above conditions.

Which empires make the cut? How many hyperpowers have there been over the ages? Seven, according to Chua, beginning with the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire (559-330 B.C.), followed at intermittent intervals by the Roman Empire, especially at its apogee from 70 to 192; the Tang Dynasty in China (618-907); the Mongol Empire in the 13th Century; the Dutch Empire in the mid-17th Century; the British Empire from the late 18th Century until the early 20th Century; and the U.S. "empire" since about 1990, when its Cold War rival, the USSR, faded into oblivion.

Although the magnificent seven differ in countless ways, Chua argues that all hyperpowers share one hugely important characteristic: relative tolerance of diversity. Chua emphasizes the word "relative," for she is not claiming that the ancient Persians, much less the ferocious Mongols, were warm and fuzzy egalitarian multiculturalists. After all, Darius the Great "was fond of impaling anyone who defied him," and Genghis Khan was, well, Genghis Khan. Rather, to Chua, tolerance "simply means letting very different kinds of people live, work, and prosper in your society -- even if only for instrumental or strategic reasons."

Despite the huge differences between and among the seven hyperpowers, each, relatively speaking, was "open" vis a vis its competitors, incorporating talented "outsiders" into the mainstream and, in so doing, turning "cultural diversity into a source of synergy and strength." Take the Dutch, for example, who, in their 17th Century golden age, employed toleration strategically to foster growth and development, rendering the Netherlands "a haven for enterprising outcasts from the rest of Europe" and beyond. And the Mongols, bad press notwithstanding, may have taken tolerance even further, incorporating talented (and more civilized) peoples from all over Eurasia into the fold, and borrowing science, culture, administrative systems and technology from them without prejudice or even a second thought. In the same spirit, Chua ponders whether the British Empire ever would have achieved hyperpower status without the early contributions of "outsider" groups -- Jews, Huguenots and Scots in particular.

Such tolerance of diversity contrasts sharply with the ideologies and policies regarding tolerance associated with other potential hyperpowers through the ages -- 16th Century Spain; the Ottoman, Ming and Mongol Empires; imperial Japan; and Nazi Germany -- each of which failed to attain that status. In Chua's view such failures owed much to the opportunities foregone because of intolerance -- intolerance made manifest in rampant ethnocentricity, ethnic chauvinism, racism and, alas, in the extreme case of Nazi Germany an effort at genocide.

Chua focuses much of her attention on the present day and the current hyperpower, the U.S. She believes relative tolerance has been important to this country since its inception in the late 18th Century, and instrumental in our will to (hyper)power over time.

It is not apparent on what objective basis one would divide the British Empire from the American. After all, we still consider it the Roman Empire when the capitol moved to Constantinople.

The key to the success of the Anglosphere seems obvious enough, given Ms Chua's definitions: because of protestant and Protestant foundational elements it is universalist. It is tolerant of ethnic diversity but intolerant of ideological/religious diversity because of the inviolable human dignity and inalienable rights that are part and parcel of having been Created.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 8, 2007 9:22 AM