September 13, 2004
This review in The Nation of a number of recent books says what many deny. And it says it simply:
"Suddenly everyone has discovered, and accepts as a commonplace, that the United States possesses an empire. For some our newly acknowledged imperial status is a source of celebration, for others of lamentation, but it is in any case something that cannot be denied. It is no longer even a choice, but rather a simple reality.....The empire is what it is, and the power realities will not be greatly different even if the name is euphemized and the personalities who direct it are changed. How long it will last rests in good measure on how well it is managed."
Anthony Steel goes on to add:
"We are in the early stages of imperial self-recognition. Americans are only just beginning to understand the role their nation plays in the world, and the price incurred by that role. That acknowledgment is late in coming because we have been brought up on an image of ourselves as rebellious colonists winning liberation from the clutches of imperial Europe."
So how do they understand America to be an empire? Steel says:
"If the emerging American empire was not based on the formal acquisition of territory, a territorial concept was inherent in the construction of economic and political control. This was the continuation and expansion of the prewar pattern. Following World War I the United States--unlike its French, British and Japanese allies--claimed no spoils from those it had defeated. Instead it focused on economic expansion (and continued suzerainty over Latin America). Its goal then, and now, was a global Open Door for American trade and investment."
Steel says that American foreign policy is about advancing the economic and political interests of the dominant groups within the United States. The disappearance of the long-term serious rival made no significant difference in the American project for a world conducive to US economic and political goals. But it did restrict the agenda.
The US is a great imperial power with global interests to protect and advance.
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Hmm.
Yes. Three things come to mind.
1) Can the Imperial America thesis be advanced without the American Exceptionalism mythos? Suppose "yes" -- isn't the nascent self-recognition that these books point toward based on an acceptance of the idea that America stands apart? This does not necessarily imply that America, by virtue of its once-cherished image as scrappy underdogs, is different from other, past empires because of its Jeffersonian democracy. Rather, the very fact that America is waking up to its imperial stature indicates its difference, and its difference requires explanation (assuming a certain amount of value-neutrality in our examination). Suppose "no" -- how can we explain the sudden irruption of the idea of American Empire if America is like every other empire that ever existed? How can an empire become an empire if it is in denial of its imperial nature? Or perhaps the Imperial America thesis requires a judicious selectivity on this question -- and thus taking up a little of both suppositions?
2) Is there imperial difference? What is the essence of empire? What is the relation of "empires" to "empire" as species to genus? Euphemisms, personalities, and management matter, don't they? Is empire necessarily oppressive? Can we differentiate one from the other, i.e., a taxonomy of empire? Is a empire with its foundation in capitalism and commerce different than one in conquest and bondage?
3) Is it possible for an empire to voluntarily relinquish its imperial domination? Does the empire treat its subjected domains as objects for the satisfaction of desire? Can it treat subjects as anything other than objects? How did an empire come to know itself? Is imperial self-knowledge possible? Is the insight of imperial self-knowledge anything other than self-recognition as the essential being? Wouldn't that then imply that imperial self-knowledge is not really knowledge, but instead, something else entirely?