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March 17, 2005
What I found of interest in Perry Anderson's article on external relations between nation-states, 'Arms and Right: Rawls, Habermas and Bobbio in an Age of War', that I mentioned earlier is the way these philosopher's concerns for a desirable liberal international order deal with American hegemony or Empire. I remember glancing through Rawls' The Law of Peoples and not being very impressed.It did not seriously address the issue of the US as a global hegemon. Anderson concurs.
According to Anderson:
"Rawls describes his Law of Peoples as a 'realistic utopia': that is, an ideal design that withal arises out of and reflects the way of the world... [For Rawls] veneration of totems like Washington and Lincoln ruled out any clear-eyed view of his country's role, either in North America itself or in the world at large. Regretting the us role in overthrowing Allende, Arbenz and Mossadegh---'and, some would add, the Sandanistas [sic] in Nicaragua': here, presumably, he was unable to form his own opinion---the best explanation Rawls could muster for it was that while 'democratic peoples are not expansionist', they will 'defend their security interest', and in doing so can be misled by governments. So much for the Mexican or Spanish-American Wars, innumerable interventions in the Caribbean, repeated conflicts in the Far East, and contemporary military bases in 120 countries. 'A number of European nations engaged in empire-building in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries', but--so it would seem--happily America never joined them."
This is pretty standard US liberal position.We are not an empire because we are not colonizers like the Europeans. And the bases, invasions and unilaterial actions? America is the champion of liberty, democracy and law--look at our record in the twentieth century with respect to the two world wars.
That was yesterday. Has not the US built an empire of bases rather than colonies, creating in the process a government that is concerned with maintaining military dominance over other nations? The American republic is becoming an empire.
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