Here's a history of the American Empire
via Plymouth Mass...for those who love bone dry political reading.
"Empire" is a dirty word.
Considering the behavior of many empires, that is not unreasonable.
But empire is also simply a description of a condition, many times
unplanned and rarely intended. It is a condition that arises from a
massive imbalance of power. Indeed, the empires created on purpose,
such as Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany, have rarely lasted. Most
empires do not plan to become one. They become one and then realize
what they are. Sometimes they do not realize what they are for a long
time, and that failure to see reality can have massive consequences.
World War II and the Birth of an
Empire
The United States became an empire in
1945. It is true that in the Spanish-American War, the United States
intentionally took control of the Philippines and Cuba. It is also
true that it began thinking of itself as an empire, but it really was
not. Cuba and the Philippines were the fantasy of empire, and this
illusion dissolved during World War I, the subsequent period of
isolationism and the Great Depression. America turned tail and went back home.
The genuine American empire that
emerged thereafter was a byproduct of other events. There was no
great conspiracy. In some ways, the circumstances of its creation
made it more powerful. The dynamic of World War II led to the
collapse of the European Peninsula and its occupation by the Soviets
and the Americans. The same dynamic led to the occupation of Japan
and its direct governance by the United States as a de-facto colony,
with Gen. Douglas MacArthur as viceroy.
The United States found itself with an
extraordinary empire, which it also intended to abandon. This was a
genuine wish and not mere propaganda. First, the United States was
the first anti-imperial project in modernity. It opposed empire in
principle. More important, this empire was a drain on American
resources and not a source of wealth. World War II had shattered both
Japan and Western Europe. The United States gained little or no
economic advantage in holding on to these countries. Finally, the
United States ended World War II largely untouched by war and as
perhaps one of the few countries that profited from it. The money was
to be made in the United States, not in the empire. The troops and
the generals wanted to go home.
But unlike after World War I, the
Americans couldn't let go. That earlier war ruined nearly all of the
participants. No one had the energy to attempt hegemony. The United
States was content to leave Europe to its own dynamics. World War II
ended differently. The Soviet Union had been wrecked but nevertheless
it remained incredibly powerful. It was a hegemon in the east, and
absent the United States, it conceivably could dominate all of
Europe. This represented a problem for Washington, since a genuinely
united Europe — whether a voluntary and effective federation or
dominated by a single country — had sufficient resources to
challenge U.S. power.
The United States could not leave. It
did not think of itself as overseeing an empire, and it certainly
permitted more internal political autonomy than the Soviets did in
their region. Yet, in addition to maintaining a military presence,
the United States organized the European economy and created and
participated in the European defense system. If the essence of
sovereignty is the ability to decide whether or not to go to war,
that power was not in London, Paris or Warsaw. It was in Moscow and
Washington.
The organizing principle of American
strategy was the idea of containment. Unable to invade the Soviet
Union and utterly lose had they done so, Washington's default
strategy was to check it. U.S. influence spread through Europe to
Iran. The Soviet strategy was to flank the containment system by
supporting insurgencies and allied movements as far to the rear of
the U.S. line as possible. The European empires were collapsing and
fragmenting. The Soviets sought to create an alliance structure out
of the remnants, and the Americans sought to counter them.
The Economics of Empire
One of the advantages of alliance with
the Soviets, particularly for insurgent groups, was a generous supply
of weapons. The advantage of alignment with the United States was
belonging to a dynamic trade zone and having access to investment
capital and technology. Some nations, such as South Korea, benefited
extraordinarily from this. Others didn't. Leaders in countries like
Nicaragua felt they had more to gain from Soviet political and
military support than in trade with the United States.
The United States was by far the
largest economic power, with complete control of the sea, bases
around the world, and a dynamic trade and investment system that
benefited countries that were strategically critical to the United
States or at least able to take advantage of it. It was at this
point, early in the Cold War, that the United States began behaving
as an empire, even if not consciously.
The geography of the American empire
was built partly on military relations but heavily on economic
relations. At first these economic relations were fairly trivial to
American business. But as the system matured, the value of
investments soared along with the importance of imports, exports and
labor markets. As in any genuinely successful empire, it did not
begin with a grand design or even a dream of one. Strategic necessity
created an economic reality in country after country until certain
major industries became dependent on at least some countries. The
obvious examples were Saudi Arabia or Venezuela, whose oil fueled
American oil companies, and which therefore — quite apart from
conventional strategic importance — became economically important.
This eventually made them strategically important.
As an empire matures, its economic
value increases, particularly when it is not coercing others.
Coercion is expensive and undermines the worth of an empire. The
ideal colony is one that is not at all a colony, but a nation that
benefits from economic relations with both the imperial power and the
rest of the empire. The primary military relationship ought to be
either mutual dependence or, barring that, dependence of the
vulnerable client state on the imperial power.
This is how the United States slipped
into empire. First, it was overwhelmingly wealthy and powerful.
Second, it faced a potential adversary capable of challenging it
globally, in a large number of countries. Third, it used its economic
advantage to induce at least some of these countries into economic,
and therefore political and military, relationships. Fourth, these
countries became significantly important to various sectors of the
American economy.
Limits of the American Empire
The problem of the American Empire is
the overhang of the Cold War. During this time, the United States
expected to go to war with a coalition around it, but also to carry
the main burden of war. When Operation Desert Storm erupted in 1991,
the basic Cold War principle prevailed. There was a coalition with
the United States at the center of it. After 9/11, the decision was
made to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq with the core model in place.
There was a coalition, but the central military force was American,
and it was assumed that the economic benefits of relations with the
United States would be self-evident. In many ways, the post-9/11 wars
took their basic framework from World War II. Iraq War planners
explicitly discussed the occupation of Germany and Japan.
No empire can endure by direct rule.
The Nazis were perhaps the best example of this. They tried to govern
Poland directly, captured Soviet territory, pushed aside Vichy to
govern not half but all of France, and so on. The British, on the
other hand, ruled India with a thin layer of officials and officers
and a larger cadre of businessmen trying to make their fortunes. The
British obviously did better. The Germans exhausted themselves not
only by overreaching, but also by diverting troops and administrators
to directly oversee some countries. The British could turn their
empire into something extraordinarily important to the global system.
The Germans broke themselves not only on their enemies, but on their
conquests as well.
The United States emerged after 1992 as
the only global balanced power. That is, it was the only nation that
could deploy economic, political and military power on a global
basis. The United States was and remains enormously powerful.
However, this is very different from omnipotence. In hearing
politicians debate Russia, Iran or Yemen, you get the sense that they
feel that U.S. power has no limits. There are always limits, and
empires survive by knowing and respecting them. Hubris in thought or
action always leads to failure.
The primary limit of the American
empire is the same as that of the British and Roman empires:
demographic. In Eurasia — Asia and Europe together — the
Americans are outnumbered from the moment they set foot on the
ground. The U.S. military is built around force multipliers, weapons
that can destroy the enemy before the enemy destroys the relatively
small force deployed. Sometimes this strategy works. Over the long
run, it cannot. The enemy can absorb attrition much better than the
small American force can. This lesson was learned in Vietnam and
reinforced in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq is a country of 25 million
people. The Americans sent about 130,000 troops. Inevitably, the
attrition rate overwhelmed the Americans. The myth that Americans
have no stomach for war forgets that the United States fought in
Vietnam for seven years and in Iraq for about the same length of
time. The public can be quite patient. The mathematics of war is the
issue. At a certain point, the rate of attrition is simply not worth
the political ends. We lose if we are whittled down and that's
happened.
The deployment of a main force into
Eurasia is unsupportable except in specialized cases when
overwhelming force can be bought to bear in a place where it is
important to win. These occasions are typically few and far between.
Otherwise, the only strategy is indirect warfare: shifting the burden
of war to those who want to bear it or cannot avoid doing so. For the
first years of World War II, indirect warfare was used to support the
United Kingdom and the Soviet Union against Germany. Think of the
Lend-Lease program in place before the US put one soldier on the
ground in Europe.
There are two varieties of indirect
warfare. The first is supporting native forces whose interests are
parallel. This was done in the early stages of Afghanistan. The
second is maintaining the balance of power among nations. We are
seeing this form in the Middle East as the United States moves
between the four major regional powers — Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel
and Turkey — supporting one then another in a perpetual balancing
act. In Iraq, U.S. fighters carry out air strikes in parallel with
Iranian ground forces. In Yemen, the United States supports Saudi air
strikes against the Houthis, who have received Iranian training.
This is the essence of empire. The
British saying is that it has no permanent friends or permanent
enemies, only permanent interests. That old cliche is, like most
cliches, true. The United States is in the process of learning that
lesson. In many ways the United States was more charming when it had
clearly identified friends and enemies. But that is a luxury that
empires cannot afford.
Building a System of Balance
We are now seeing the United States
re-balance its strategy by learning to balance. A global power cannot
afford to be directly involved in the number of conflicts that it
will encounter around the world. It would exhaust us rapidly. Using
various tools, it must create regional and global balances without
usurping internal sovereignty. The trick is to create situations
where other countries want to do what is in the U.S. interest.
This endeavor is difficult. The first
step is to use economic incentives to shape other countries'
behavior. It isn't the U.S. Department of Commerce but businesses
that do this. The second is to provide economic aid to wavering
countries. The third is to provide military aid. The fourth is to
send advisers. The fifth is to send overwhelming force. The leap from
the fourth level to the fifth is the hardest to master. Overwhelming
force should almost never be used. But when advisers and aid do not
solve a problem that must urgently be solved, then the only type of
force that can be used is overwhelming force and God help us if we
mismanage it (think of the Iraq War and how miserably that turned
out). Roman legions were used sparingly, but when they were used,
they brought overwhelming power to bear.
The Responsibilities of Empire
I have been deliberately speaking of
the United States as an empire, knowing that this term is jarring.
Those who call the United States an empire usually mean that it is in
some sense evil. Others will call it anything else if they can. But
it is helpful to face the reality the United States is in. It is
always useful to be honest, particularly with yourself. But more
important, if the United States thinks of itself as an empire, then
it will begin to learn the lessons of imperial power. Nothing is more
harmful than an empire using its power carelessly and we saw that ten
years ago with Iraq.
It is true that the United States did
not genuinely intend to be an empire. It is also true that its
intentions do not matter one way or another. Circumstance, history
and geopolitics have created an entity that, if it isn't an empire,
certainly looks like one. Empires can be far from oppressive. The
Persians were quite liberal in their outlook. The American ideology
and the American reality are not inherently incompatible. But two
things must be faced: First, the United States cannot give away the
power it has. There is no practical way to do that. Second, given the
vastness of that power, it will be involved in conflicts whether it
wants to or not. Empires are frequently feared, sometimes respected,
but never loved by the rest of the world. And pretending that you
aren't an empire does not fool anyone.
The current balancing act in the Middle
East represents a fundamental re-balancing of American strategy. It
is still clumsy and poorly thought out, but it is happening. And for
the rest of the world, the idea that the Americans are coming will
become more and more rare. The United States will not intervene. It
cannot afford to now. It will manage the situation, sometimes to
the benefit of one country and sometimes to another.
