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PDF FormatWith the rise of a unipolar world, the debate over the merits and meaning of American empire is everywhere. Proponents of the Pax Americana see it as a liberal force for democracy and against tyranny, terrorism, military adventurism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Critics worry about its financial costs, its corrosive effects on democracy, the delegitimation of American ideals abroad, and the threat it poses to the order of alliances and institutions which the United States helped establish in the aftermath of World War II.
The British historian Niall Ferguson has been one of the most important voices in this debate. In 2002 he published Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, a treatise on the benefits the British Empire bequeathed to the rest of the world; that book wove together economic and diplomatic history with a scholarly acumen rarely encountered.
When that book first came out, Ferguson’s stars seemed aligned: The United States was in the early stages of a promising campaign in Afghanistan, and Empire, which sang the praises of the British Empire in direct contravention of postcolonial academic fashion, included a timely message to Americans as well. The United States, Ferguson argued, is also an empire, and should embrace its global calling. With the shock of September 11, 2001 still fresh and the resolve of the war on terrorism still unquestioned, Empire resonated as a validation of American foreign policy.
Ferguson’s new book, Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire, is no less timely, although it appears at a time when things are no longer so simple. The United States has invaded Iraq, with far more troops and far less understanding from the international community, and this war has taken on some of the features of a quagmire. America’s new role as global warrior has been severely called into question by many Americans, shocked by the prisoner-abuse scandal and troubled by their forces’ inability to discover weapons of mass destruction. Against this backdrop, Ferguson now makes the case that America’s biggest problem is not its inability to fill the role of world power, but its lack of desire to do so. America is a reluctant empire, and it is precisely this reluctance that might bring about its demise as a global power.
“The United States today is an empire,” he writes, “but a peculiar kind of empire. It is vastly wealthy. It is militarily peerless. It has astonishing cultural reach. Yet by comparison with other empires it often struggles to impose its will beyond its shores. Its successes in exporting American institutions to foreign lands have been outnumbered by its failures.” To explain this predicament, Ferguson divides his book into two parts, “Rise” and “Fall,” the latter followed by a question mark. Drawing upon a variety of sources stretching from arcane economic reports to quotes by Herman Melville, Ferguson deftly traces the historical roots of the American empire, at first a land-bound creature whose imagination was limited by territorial contiguity; later, thanks to the increasing might of the American navy, a hemispheric hegemon; and, finally, a true global empire with decisive influence in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
The United States, however, has in the last few decades shown itself to be more interested in shifting burdens onto others than in taking up new ones. Instead of focusing on the massive, dedicated efforts necessary for making a lasting change, Americans focus on “exit strategies” and on ways to “transfer sovereignty.” These are, in Ferguson’s view, half measures, which are unlikely to produce their desired effect in the long run. His point is not that American empire is inherently and always a good thing, but that the alternatives in our world are far worse: If the United States cannot or will not dedicate the vast resources and long-term planning necessary to set up proper, functioning governments in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, then no one will, and there is a genuine concern that in a rapidly globalizing world, the proliferation of non-state terror organizations and “asymmetrical” warfare will forever undermine American achievements, and with them the stability of the international order.
It is here that Ferguson’s historical analysis and artful storytelling are at their most potent. As the story unfolds, one example after another seems to verify his theory that America fails so often and so spectacularly precisely because it is “an empire in denial.” While some countries, such as Japan and Germany, benefited from a decades-long American presence, others—mainly the Central American nations which have been the target of limited American intervention since the late nineteenth century—suffered, Ferguson suggests, from the opposite phenomenon: That of an American army, fearing the imperialistic stigma, scrambling to withdraw, and leaving in its wake a confused political climate ideally suited to the rise of dictators and despots.
That was the case, for example, in Nicaragua, where American refusal in the early 1930s to embark on a long-term military engagement focused on nation-building eventually led to two decades of bloody dictatorship by the U.S.-trained General Anastasio Somoza Garcia. Compare this with the fate of Japan, which emerged in the half-century following long-term American occupation as a stable democracy and one of the world’s most powerful economic leaders. (According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report for 2003-2004, Japan today has the eleventh-ranked economy in terms of competitiveness, while Nicaragua langors at number 90, behind Malawi, Macedonia, and Pakistan.)
The equation Ferguson offers is simple and clear: Wherever the United States took upon itself the full responsibilities of an imperial power—which inevitably include the prolonged presence of military and civilian forces, the imposition of a new constitution, and the construction of a free economy and democratic institutions—peace and prosperity prevailed for a very long time. Wherever, in contrast, the United States opted for a low-intensity, short-term engagement followed by full or substantive withdrawal, the results were mixed at best.
Why, then, do Americans consistently choose the less effective means? The most important part of this book is Ferguson’s elucidation of the three major “deficits” that stand between them and true imperial might. The first is an economic deficit, which he attributes not so much to the overstretching that often accompanies ambitious military engagements as to fumbled domestic policies, of which the most glaring is the failure to adjust Social Security policies to the changing, and rapidly aging, demographic landscape.
The second is a manpower deficit: Unlike the British Empire, Ferguson argues, America has been uniquely unsuccessful in producing a large, well-educated class that would be willing—as the jodhpur-clad British civil servants did in India, Africa, and the Middle East—to live abroad for many years and to fill the role of settlers, administrators, or merchants. These two deficits could be addressed, Ferguson claims, the former through better domestic policies and the latter through any number of ways, including reviving the draft as a means to allow immigrants to acquire American citizenship through military service.
The third deficiency, however, which Ferguson calls “attention deficit,” is the most concrete of the three, and possibly the least curable. In a country where presidential elections occur every four years, interspersed with midterm congressional elections, it may be difficult to expect the patient, resolved climate which earlier powers employed in order to wage successful, long-term imperial wars. Indeed, as Ferguson notes, Americans have come to expect their conflicts to be much like their television shows: Short-lived, immediately gratifying, and uncomplicated. This, he laments, erodes the very notion of the American empire, laying bare the limits of American power. Americans, he writes, “lack the imperial cast of mind. They would rather consume than conquer. They would rather build shopping malls than nations. They crave for themselves protracted old age and dread, even for other Americans who have volunteered for military service, untimely death in battle.”
This is where Ferguson is at his most interesting, and where he sets himself apart from the stream of books recently published on the question of American empire, such as Walter Russell Mead’s new book, Power, Terror, Peace, and War: America’s Grand Strategy in a World at Risk, or Benjamin R. Barber’s Fear’s Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy. While most of the new books restrict themselves to examining the strategic, economic, or international implications of America’s new role, none have explored the degree to which the country’s cultural predilections may hurt the prospects of American empire.
At the same time, this provocative cultural analysis undermines, to some extent at least, the book’s central premise—that a great American empire is not only desirable, but plausible. For even as he advocates a grand vision of a benevolent, redeeming American empire, Ferguson paints so dark an image of its prospects as to leave the reader wondering what the entire exercise was for. “Unlike most European critics of the United States, then,” he writes in the conclusion, “I believe [that] the world needs an effective liberal empire and that the United States is the best candidate for the job.…Yet for all its colossal economic, military, and cultural power, the United States still looks unlikely to be an effective liberal empire without some profound changes in its economic structure, its social makeup, and its political culture.” The United States, Ferguson seems to be saying, is equipped to govern the world, and should do so for the greater good; yet Americans, too selfish and oblivious, will never do so unless they overhaul their entire culture, and become, well, more like the British Empire. This, it seems, is a tall order.
No one disputes the overwhelming military capabilities of the United States, or its tremendous influence on world culture and the international order. This unprecedented American project has fashioned with it unprecedented global reach, for the most part for the good of the world. Yet as Ferguson shows, this empire may be built on exceedingly weak cultural foundations. Until that changes, the greatest challenge to American dominance comes not from Al-Qaida, China, or the European Union, but from within.
Liel Leibovitz is a doctoral student in communications at Columbia University. He is currently working on a historical account of three generations of American immigrants to Israel.
