Empire, Schmempire

In the latest issue of The American Prospect, a left-wing political magazine, Editor-at-Large Harold Meyerson has a piece entitled “The Most Dangerous President Ever.” George W. Bush, he contends, bears an alarming resemblance to the Confederacy’s Jefferson Davis. Like Bush, Davis “had dreams of building an empire at gunpoint,” and, “as with Davis, obtaining Bush’s defeat is an urgent matter of national security—and national honor.” In denouncing the president’s foreign policy as imperialistic, Meyerson echoes what has become a common talking point in radical circles.

This argument, however, is not the sole property of leftists. An isolated few on the right, who declare themselves “paleoconservatives” (paleocons), have similarly attacked the motives of so-called “neoconservatives” (neocons) in the Bush administration. Their chief spokesman is Pat Buchanan. Buchanan maintains that the neocons—whom he alternately describes as Israel’s “Amen Corner” in the U.S.—are intent on conquering some half a dozen Arab states by force. He has written that Bush is “subcontracting [our] Mideast policy out to Ariel Sharon”—and, in the process, expanding an American empire.

How ironic that Meyerson and Buchanan, natural political enemies, have now found a point of agreement. Operation Iraqi Freedom has certainly forged a strange coalescence of opinion among the “progressives” and the paleocons.

Neither side, though, makes a very convincing case. Those on the anti-war left confuse the defensive and humane exercise of U.S. military power with bellicose imperialism. Meanwhile, the paleocons’ narrow-minded opposition to Israel prevents them from seeing America’s enormous interest in combating Islamic terrorism and reshaping the Middle East.

Both sides are also wrong about Bush and the objectives of the (mislabeled) “neocons” in his administration. But what if they were right? What if George W. Bush did view himself as a contemporary Caesar? What if he did hope to build a militaristic American empire under the guise of the war on terror? Could he do it?

The answer, in all likelihood, is no. There are two main reasons for this. First of all, the Founding Fathers explicitly sought to mitigate the risk of foreign engagements. Consequently, the structure of the U.S. government has a built-in check on imperial-minded leaders. As The Economist noted last June, “In a democracy as open and cacophonous as America’s, and with a constitution expressly designed to thwart decisive action by any single branch of government, it is hard to persuade a majority to support costly and risky international activism.”

That gets to the second reason why President Bush couldn’t build a “hegemonic” empire of subject-states: Voters wouldn’t stand for it. We Americans tend to be an inward-looking bunch, wary of expending blood and treasure on overseas adventures that are unrelated to national security. As military historian Victor Davis Hanson emphasizes, U.S. power is ultimately not restrained by “China, Russia, or the European Union, but rather by the American electorate itself—whose reluctant worries are chronicled weekly by polls that are eyed with fear by our politicians.” For that matter, recent polls suggest a general hesitance to seek out new battles.

At length, the most basic evidence for why America probably won’t become a modern-day Roman Empire is the fact that, well, we’ve already had the chance and chosen to pass on it. Oh, sure, some point to our military bases around the world, and others use globalization as proof of informal U.S. imperialism. Yet Turkey has long hosted American troops, and it flatly denied our requests for basing and transit rights during the Iraqi campaign. If we really were an empire, then surely we would’ve used our established presence to force those concessions.

With regard to globalization, giving foreign peoples the opportunity to drink Coca-Cola, eat at McDonald’s and listen to Britney Spears is not economic exploitation or imperialism. Are we culturally dominant? Sure. But we also believe in free markets. If, for example, Brazilians don’t like Big Macs, they’re not obligated to change their tastes. National Review’s Jonah Goldberg uses this analogy: “If the coolest guy in school wears a leather jacket and all the other kids follow suit, that’s hardly the same thing as the coolest guy forcing them at gunpoint to buy a leather jacket.”

Indeed, if we’re any sort of an empire, we are an empire of freedom and democratic idealism. America maintains an unofficial pledge to defend Taiwan from Chinese aggression and keeps 37,000 troops in South Korea, much to the respective dismay of Beijing and Pyongyang. In both cases, our goal is to protect the liberal achievements of those nations. Meanwhile, we remain staunchly close to Israel because it is the lone democratic outpost in a region of dictators and tyrannies. Although this closeness angers many in the Arab world—including those who sell us petroleum—we refuse to compromise the security of our ally. Whatever your feelings on the Palestinian question, you have to admit that if all we cared about was oil, we would’ve cut Israel loose a long time ago.

As America moves forward in the war on terror, thoughtful criticism is of course healthy. But the notion that President Bush wants to build “an empire at gunpoint” is fundamentally misguided. In Iraq, U.S. occupying forces will only stay temporarily, until law and order is restored, the necessary humanitarian and reconstruction aid arrives and a responsible, free government—run by Iraqis—can take over. After that, they will gradually leave.

Does that make us imperialists? If so, then Americans are the most liberal and compassionate imperialists the world has ever seen.

Duncan M. Currie ’04 is a history concentrator in Leverett House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.