American Empire
<p>The American Left, and some of the Buchananite/isolationist elements of the American Right, have spent a lot of time and rhetorical energy fretting about the &#8220;American Empire&#8221;, and/or the &#8220;global system of American hegemony&#8221;.  Lee Harris has written a very informative essay on <a href="http://www.techcentralstation.com/021405B.html">Hegemony vs. Empire</a> in which he points out that these two words mean different things, and delves into the history of &#8220;hegemony&#8221; as a form of voluntary organization of groups of states against external threats.</p>
<p>Harris&#8217;s implicit point is that in the post-9/11 world, confusion between &#8220;hegemony&#8221; and &#8220;empire&#8221; serves the ideological purposes of the enemies of our civilization &mdash; the head-hackers, the suicide-bombers, and the rogue states behind them.  But even if the word &#8220;hegemony&#8221; had not been misappropriated and trashed by the anti-American left, the phrase &#8220;American Empire&#8221; would still have a sting.  The implication, quite intentional, is that the U.S. aims to rule the known world after the manner of the Romans or the British.</p>
<p>Does the United States have an empire?  There are at least two ways to address this question.  One is extensional: ask to what extent the U.S. behaves as imperial powers have historically behaved.  The other is intensional; ask what purpose empire serves for the people who control it, and then ask if the U.S. has created a structure of control that achieves the purpose. (The second question is useful partly because it may enable us to discern imperialism that dare not speak its name.)</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s take the second question first.  What is the purpose of empire?  In fact, this turns out to be an easy one.  The one consistent feature of all empires, everywhere, is that commerce between subject regions and the imperial center is controlled so that the imperial center imports goods at below-market rates and exports them to the subject regions at above-market rates. The mailed fist, the satrap, and the gunboat are just enforcement mechanisms for imperial market-rigging.</p>
<p>This economic criterion may sound dry and abstract, but it is the one thing that relatively benign imperia like the British Empire have in common with out-and-out despotisms like the Russian or Persian empires.  Thus, for example, the Roman grain ships feeding the population of Rome with wheat harvested by slaves in conquered Egypt; the British destruction of the Indian textile industry so its customers would be effectively forced to buy shoddy cloth made in the English Midlands; and, more crudely, the tribute wagons rolling to Persepolis.</p>
<p>Over time, imperial means of squeezing their subject nations&#8217; economies have become more subtle.  Early empires looted; later ones used discriminatory taxation; still later used preferential tariffs (all, and this is the point, enforced by the imperial military). Does the U.S. have an empire by this criterion?</p>
<p>Some would argue that it does, and cite U.S. attempts to force an American-style patent regime and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act on its trading partners.  The trouble with this theory is that the U.S.&#8217;s negotiating leverage comes from the size of its economy, not fear of its military.  Not even the most tinfoil-hatted of paranoids imagines that U.S. troops will ever land in (say) Brazil to enforce the DMCA; rather, it&#8217;s the prospect of being locked out of the world&#8217;s biggest export market that alarms Brazilian  politicians.  Reasonable people may reject the U.S. patent regime and the DMCA, or differ about the fairness of the Brazilo-American relationship, but &#8220;empire&#8221; is not a good word for it.</p>
<p>(Arguably the U.S. in fact did have an empire by this criterion until the 1950s, in parts of Central and South America and the Pacific.  However, that is the past.  I am addressing the question of whether &#8220;American Empire&#8221; is a true or useful description of the <em>present</em>.)</p>
<p>To reduce the market-rigging claim to absurdity, consider oil.  If the U.S. truly were an empire, Venezuela (which supplies 25% of U.S. oil needs) would have been subjugated and annexed long since rather than left to the tender mercies of an unstable anti-American dictator like Hugo Chavez.  The corrupt and despotic House of Saud (supplying a much higher percentage I don&#8217;t have at my fingertips) would likewise have been replaced by American puppets, not left unmolested to dole out billions of back-channel petrobucks to any anti-American terrorist who can pronounce the word &#8220;Wahhabi&#8221;.</p>
<p>In both cases, these would have been distinct improvements and among the best arguments one could muster for imperialism in the 21th century.  But the U.S. has neither done them nor sought the power to do them.  It fails the intensional test of empire.</p>
<p>To perform the extensional test, let&#8217;s look at some things that previous empires normally did and ask if the U.S. does them. To make the anti-American case as easy as possible, I won&#8217;t pick straw-man brutalities like crucifying, impaling, or machine-gunning entire populations in order to suppress revolts, the sorts of things the Soviets or Mongols or Japanese routinely got up to; instead, I&#8217;ll confine myself to the subset of common imperial practices engaged in by the Victorian Britons. If the U.S. fails even to replicate the behaviors of that least oppressive empire in human history to date, it&#8217;s hard to see how the term &#8220;empire&#8221; can sensibly be applied to the U.S.&#8217;s situation at all.</p>
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<p>Does the U.S. impose U.S. law by force on conquered peoples  without giving them citizenship or representation in the national government?</p>
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<p>Are there any places outside the U.S. where treaties with subject nations stipulate that an American citizen will be subject only to U.S and not local law?</p>
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<p>Does the U.S. routinely conscript large portions of its armies from subject peoples who lack U.S. citizenship?</p>
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<p>The answer to all these questions is, of course, &#8220;no&#8221;. The U.S. fails the extensional test of empire as well.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I am certain the charge will continue to be flung. The most forgivable reason for flinging it is gross ignorance of history and what actual empires are like.  Far too often, however, people raising the cry of &#8220;American Empire&#8221; would not actually care about the facts if they had them; it is the emotion of anti-Americanism that drives their convictions, rather than the reverse.</p>
