To Lead an Empire

Frank J. Menetrez asks Critical questions for Obama:


Will Obama stand up to Wall Street on the regulation of the financial services industry?
Will Obama stand up to the insurance companies and enact meaningful health care reform?
Will Obama stand up to the neocons and remove US troops from Iraq? What long term role does he envision for the US in Iraq?
Will Obama stand up to AIPAC and demand an equitable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Frank J. Menetrez : as a black man, an alleged Muslim, a known associate of former terrorists, and so on, Obama will presumably feel more than the average amount of political pressure to demonstrate unequivocally that he is a good “friend of Israel,” just as Democratic politicians like Bill Clinton have so often supported reactionary “law and order” policies (like Clinton’s so-called Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act) to try to prove they’re not “soft on crime.”

Art work by Allan Burch

Tariq Ali on the symbol and the substance of Obama's victory.

Is there life after the spectacle?

New president-elect, but the bombs continue to rain on Afghan villages, and Wall Street scum continue to grow rich suckling from the public teet.

Franklin "Chuck" Spinney, a former military analyst for the Pentagon who now lives on a sailboat in the Mediterranean, dissects the strategic principles underlying Obama's victory. Obama suceeded in seizing the mantle of Mom and Apple Pie while McCain couldn't figure out if he was a "Maverick" or a "Party Man," a proud "Liberal Republican" in the mold of TR and the Trust Busters, or a proud "Conservative Republican" in the mold of Reagan (come now Mac, give it to me straight, is Govt the problem or the solution??).

Tom Engelhardt reflects on the posts-election let down: What do we do now? (I suppose there is always the Palin 0-12 race to get excited about. Who's up, who's down in that race??) Engelhardt references Tod Gitlins's Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives in discussing efforts to come to terms with life after the "election."

Bacevich predicts that with the election of Obama we have chance to put an end to the Evangelical foreign policy. Let's hope so.

Amy Goodman suggest that Palin may now have a sense of what a "community organizer" does- maybe she could send a note to Rudi.

What will the GOP do? The Party seems to have exploded. The glue holding the neo-cons, free marketeers, and Christian fundamentalists together seems to have grown dry and brittle. This problem first revealed itself in the primary: neocons split between McCain and Rudi, Free Marketeers behind Mit, and and fundamentalist base behind Huckabee. Now that the whole thing seems to be caving in, which way will the party go? More to the center? Will it be more inclusive and moderate (think more "Red Eye," less Brit Hume)? Back to the compassionate conservatism/ kinder, gentler GOP? Or will the party radicalize, and embrace the angry populism of Caribou Barbie and Joe Plummer? My guess is that the system is in a state of flux and that the elements are polarizing. The GOP will tap into that angry populism- as it seems to be the only thing that generates an emotional charge: Grandiose dreams of "democratizing the Middle East" seem frivolous as Americans watch their retirement savings go down the drain; charges of socialism seems to have lost there sting as the "free market" seems to have lost its appeal; but economic hard times, and the visible limits to American power will continue to aggravate conservative middle class anxieties, and christian fundamentalists will feed on this anxiety, look for scapegoats and put their faith in Messianic appeals to God and Country.

What will the Left(s) do? Will they keep quiet out of deference to the new leader as he repays all those who put him in office? Or will they demand that he put some meat on those "change" bones?

I must say that all the talk of Rahmbo and Larry Summers is a pretty disappointing start. On Rahmbo, Angry Arab posts this:

"In Congress, Emanuel has been a consistent and vocal pro-Israel hardliner, sometimes more so than President Bush. In June 2003, for example, he signed a letter criticizing Bush for being insufficiently supportive of Israel. "We were deeply dismayed to hear your criticism of Israel for fighting acts of terror," Emanuel, along with 33 other Democrats wrote to Bush. The letter said that Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian political leaders "was clearly justified as an application of Israel's right to self-defense" ("Pelosi supports Israel's attacks on Hamas group," San Francisco Chronicle, 14 June 2003)." (thanks Eletronic Ali)

There must be someway outta here said the Joker to the Thief

I was first introduced to William Appleman Williams in Ronnie Lipschutz' "The US in the World" class at UCSC. Williams' reputation preceded him. I had a vague sense that The Tragedy of American Diplomacy was the most important book on American foreign policy ever written, but no knowledge of the book's substance. Suffice to say, the book disappointed. I couldn't quite figure out how this book first penned in 1959, with slight revisions in in 1961, and rather substantial additions in 1972. As I read it, it made sense why the book was hardly read in 1959, and almost totally unreviewed. I had recently read Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, and J.P. Sartre's introduction. Along side that tract (penned at roughly the same time), Williams' rather rambling meditations on John Hay's Open Door Notes seemed rather modest and tame. I should have read Empire as a Way of Life. If I am ever in the position to assign reading on American Empire, I will give a short lecture on the social origins of W.A. Williams, and the intellectual history of his famous book. But I will assign Empire as a Way of Life: an impassioned and prophetic essay.

Some highlights (perhaps I'll elaborate more):

Empire is about "the loss of sovereignty... the metropolitan domination of the weaker economy (and its political and social superstructure) to ensure the extraction of economic rewards." (15)

Montesquieu's principle [was] that liberty could exist only in a small state. Madison boldly argued the opposite: that empire was essential to freedom." (45)

TJ flirts with the idea of direct redistribution of property- but ultimately backed off from this proposition- and advocated imperial expansion on the frontier as an alternative to a direct confrontation with the Power of Money. (57)

"an honest imperialist is surely preferable to an apologetic, let alone a disingenuous, imperialist." (84)

As for the War of the States, Williams says: "let the South go. Or, for that matter, let the north leave first." But instead Lincoln "made a deal with the Devil." He could have his empire (of "freedom" of course...) only if he "was willing to destroy the southern culture based on slavery." Unfortunately, Lincoln's quick victory did not materialize. Lincoln rolled the dice with the devil and lost. Lincoln and his men "established a strategic tradition of destroying the opponent's society that caused so much trouble - and horror - America's later wars... It was brilliant military strategy and miserable morality." 87-89

Sen James Doolittle: "the surplus of free land 'will postpone for centuries, if not forever, all serious conflict between capital and labor." 90
But in fairness, "One may doubt that even Karl Marx could have done so [devised a persuasive non-imperial alternative to empire as a way of life]. Indeed, Marx would have probably shrugged his shoulders (and ideology) and said only that socialism is unimaginable, let alone pragmatically possible, until capitalist empire has run its course."97

And so TR, Taft and Wilson devised an image as a "global policeman" to replace the continental empire that had reached its limits. 124

It was Hoover who understood the limits of empire- Hoover understood that Wilson's "New World Order" was a fool errand, and had no interest in confronting every outburst of revolutionary nationalism the world over, but he was outgunned in the face of superior Democratic opposition. 139-142

Instead FDR blamed him for the problems endemic to capitalism- and sought to discredit his philosophy, and once and for all put to bed any notion that there were limits to American power.

FDR's New Deal did not generate peacetime recovery -- let alone a new burst of growth and prosperity. Most Americans realized, privately if not publicly, that the economy was revived only through WWII." (148). His first move was to reverse Hoover's policy of cutting military spending by dramatically expanding US war spending (in 1933!). "In the broader, structural sense, the New Deal created an institutional link between the huge companies and the military." 150. FDR "was simply a charming upper-class disingenuous leader who understood that marketplace capitalism had proved incapable of functioning without being subsidized by the taxpayer. And he could not imagine anything beyond marketplace capitalism." 150. "The point is that, while it was a New Deal, it was not a different game. The imperial outlook had once again become a vision of progress for everyone." 151.

on WWII, FDR had a choice, admit we are an empire and fight like an empire (open a second front in France in 1942) or dissemble and try to trick the Russians into fighting for us. He chose the later. While the Russians lost 20 million people, the US gained 20 million new jobs. Americans had never lived so as as they lived during WWII. Oh, if only the war could be kept going forever... The US lost 405,399 men and inherited a world scarred by colonialism. 167-168

Is this deeply iconoclast interpretation of American history simply Williams' nostalgia for his Great Depression era youth? In many ways the book reads like a call to reenter the Great Depression and figure out a new way out of it. One not predicated on global expansion, and the unholy alliance of State and Corporate power.

Was it me or did Bill Clinton look drunk the other night?

Sirota argues against a Clinton third term

Bacevich on the Global War on Terror:

President Bush will bequeath to his successor the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone. To defense contractors, lobbyists, think-tankers, ambitious military officers, the hosts of Sunday morning talk shows, and the Douglas Feith-like creatures who maneuver to become players in the ultimate power game, the Global War on Terror is a boon, an enterprise redolent with opportunity and promising to extend decades into the future.

Yet, to a considerable extent, that very enterprise has become a fiction, a gimmicky phrase employed to lend an appearance of cohesion to a panoply of activities that, in reality, are contradictory, counterproductive, or at the very least beside the point. In this sense, the global war on terror relates to terrorism precisely as the war on drugs relates to drug abuse and dependence: declaring a state of permanent "war" sustains the pretense of actually dealing with a serious problem, even as policymakers pay lip-service to the problem's actual sources. The war on drugs is a very expensive fraud. So, too, is the Global War on Terror.

Centre-Right Nation?

Thoughts on Louis Hartz and The Liberal Tradition in America (1955):

Jon Thares Davidann critiques one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors (Bruce Cumings, Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations at the End of the Century. Duke, 1999)

The second issue which is both a strength and weakness of the book is Cumings' reading of history in parts of the world outside of East Asia. He stretches the book into the literature of both American exceptionalism and world history approaches. His argument is informed substantially by his vast knowledge of East Asian history but unfortunately also informed by a more superficial reading of American and world history.

For instance, his discussion of the possibilities of reading the history of American exceptionalism (Toqueville, Hartz) as the history of the influence of the American middle class suffers from a weak grounding in the literature of American history. American historians have been doing battle over class and exceptionalism for some time, and it is clearer than ever now that Americans have had a class structure, not just a dominant middle class as Cumings suggests.

Even more importantly, American arguments for uniqueness were made possible by that most invisible of Americans, the African slave. Edmund S. Morgan argued in American Slavery American Freedom that a commitment to freedom was animated by the assurance of a captive underclass which would not be permitted under any circumstance to participate in politics. Consequently, while some can argue that the predominance of small landholders allowed Americans to bypass the worst European aspects of class inequality and pursue liberalism to a greater extent, race took the place of class as the most powerful dividing line in American history. Cumings misses all of this and ends up endorsing rather than critiquing the exceptionalist arguments of Toqueville and Hartz. And since the study of American exceptionalism can now be linked to a rapidly growing literature on world-wide nationalism, both American and Japanese arguments for uniqueness can be seen within the framework of modern nationalism, in which arguments for exceptionalism are simply the demand of the modern nation for uniqueness in a world of nations. See Prasenjit Duara's work for the most sophisticated analysis of the complex forms nationalism has taken.

(H-Diplo, July, 1999)

Empire: reflections on one of history's most enduring political structures

My teacher's (Gordon Chang) teacher (Arno J Mayer, emeritus professor of history at Princeton University) warns against any premature obituaries for American empire. In his view we have "Two Parties, One Imperial Mission: The US Empire will Survive Bush." In his analysis the Mid East is the fulcrum of world power - and when it comes to US ME policy he sees only continuity and bi-partisan consensus.

Sooner or late we will have to wrestle honestly with this problem of Empire. One thoughtful effort (though perhaps not completely "honest") in this direction is the eminent historical sociologist Charles Maier's recent book Among Empires: American Ascendancy and its Predecessors (Harvard UP: 2006). Maier seeks to define empire, explain why they emerge, and whether the US constitutes such a formation.

He defines empire:

"Empire is a form of political organization in which the social elements which rule in the dominant state - the 'mother country' or the 'metropole' - creates a network of allied elites in regions abroad who accept subordination in international affairs in return for the security of their position in their own administrative unit (the 'colony' or - in spatial terms, the 'periphery')" (p. 7)

Throughout most of the work he seeks to exorcise the ghost of Marx. When seeking to explain empire he attempts to move beyond economic theories of imperialism- toward a more encompassing theory of the psychic and sentimental advantages of power for its own sake - but he definitely gives Hobson, Hilferding, Lenin and Luxemburg their due.

Most importantly, he asks some very important questions:

“The issue is to discern what long-term implications for international and domestic society and politics arise if we have in fact become an empire. Do we safeguard or subvert our domestic institutions? Do we make world politics more peaceful or more violent? Do we make it more or less likely that the peoples of poorer nations will share in, or be excluded from, economic development and welfare?”

But when it comes to answering these questions, he chooses to punt. He ultimately avoids "claiming that the United States is or is not an empire," as such claims tend to be “polarizing” (again trying to exorcise the ghost of Marx). He ultimately concludes that despite his masterful reflections on the world history of empire- he can not decide whether the bloodshed associated with raising imperial frontiers is justified by the "order and peace" they bring about.

And what he is most concerned about are the domestic implications of empire: the concentration of power in the hands of the imperial presidency- the tendency towards an authoritarian political culture. But when push comes to shove, he suggests that empire may be a necessary alternative to anarchy- and that there is nothing predetermined about the Empire's corrosive affect on Republican values and institutions- America just might be different: America may be exceptional. Despite his claims to agnosticism, these suggestions betray a deeply conservative spirit and his close association with unapologetic imperial booster Niall Ferguson (they co-teach courses in international history at Harvard).

Boston University prof of History and IR Andrew Bacevich has no patience for this kind of waffling. In his review he writes:

Without meaning to be disrespectful, this is not good enough. The United States has pursued its “duckish” or “duck-like” course for many decades now. The arrangements that Professor Maier describes as an empire of consumption have existed at least since the 1970s. There is no need to speculate on how empire might affect American democracy; there is every need to assess how empire has affected and is affecting our democracy – the evidence continues to accumulate before our eyes.

So come on, Professor Maier, give it to us straight.

Speaking of Bacevich, he wrote the introduction to the 2007 reprint of William Appleman Williams' Empire as a Way of Life (1980). I hope to review Williams soon. But for now, Bacevich's autobiographical comments are worth posting:

"I never had the privilege of meeting Williams. When as a graduate student I was introduced to his work, the encounter was a disconcerting one. During that interval between the fall of Saigon and the Iran hostage crisis when I attended graduate school, history departments still reflected the divisions that had occurred during the prior decade. Ideological barricades remained much in evidence and the pressure to choose sides was great. Seeing myself as a conservative (of sorts) [and as an officer in the US Army, I might add], I instinctively aligned myself with the defenders of orthodoxy. From this perspective, Williams, the self-described radical who flirted with Marxism and appeared oblivious to to the crimes of Stalin and Mao, became something of a personal nemesis.

But over time my understanding of politics evolved so too did my appreciation of Williams... [Bacevich began to realize that] At root, empire as a way of life is an exercise in evasion. Americans look abroad to avoid looking within...

Well, it's time to face the music, curb our profligacy, and start paying our bills. Or as [the Angry Prophet] Jeremiah [Bacevich's name for Williams] wrote back in 1980, "Its time to turn in the credit cards and stop passing the buck onto the next generation."

The jig is up. Let Americans heed the prophet's words - or suffer the consequences."

Bacevich wrote these words one year before he lost his son 1st Lt. Andrew John Bacevich (7/8/1979 - 5/13/07) to the Iraq War. So his own personal tragedy cannot explain his intolerance for the brand of Romanticism that leads Maier to write: "the elections [in Iraq] that took place in January and December 2005 suggested that American aspirations had awakened democratic resonances."

This kind of romanticism underwrites murder and mayhem.

Bacevich on the other hand writes with all of the clear-eyed realism of one who carried a rifle for more than twenty years. For him the blood that flows at the edge of empire is anything but Maier's theoretical abstraction.

Hunt on Maier

Maier responds to his critics.