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.