POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW: 2007 VOL 5, 1–10
Still the American Empire
Michael Cox
London School of Economics and Political Science
Over the past few years there has been an intellectually controversial, strategically significant and
politically charged debate as to whether America should – or should not – be characterised as an empire.
More recently, it has become equally fashionable to argue that this empire is either now failing or in steep
decline. This essay examines the background to the original ‘empire debate’, suggests that the notion
of empire is one that can (with care) be applied to the United States, and that in spite of recent setbacks
– like Iraq – we should take care not to underestimate the US capacity to shape world politics. The
American Empire may be in trouble, but it is not about to fall.
Modern America is strangely fascinated by imperial Rome. Our
Capitol, and our best train stations look Roman. Roman and classical
images surface in popular culture at regular but not chance intervals: the
big films of the 1950s and 1960s, from Ben Hur (1959) Spartacus (1960)
Cleopatra (1964), and Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) were also films
of the Cold War, in which the imperial analogy looked very attractive.
The classical blockbusters then stopped quite suddenly, however, with
Vietnam-era doubts. The idea revived with Gladiator (2000) or Troy
(2004) and Alexander (2004). Classical empires literally speak to us – but
they require some interpretation ( James, 2006, p. 1).
Intellectual constructs tell us a great deal about how we try to make sense of the
world, even if they sometimes tell us less about the real world itself.The Cold War
produced many such constructs from the notion of ‘the free world’ through to
the always dubious idea that the Soviet Union had a single goal of achieving
world domination. Indeed, during the last decade of the Cold War, much was
made of the Soviet threat and what many academics regarded as the almost
inevitable decline of the United States, when in fact the USSR was in headlong
retreat and the latter about to experience a decade-long renaissance. All this of
course came to a quite unexpected end between 1989 and 1991, leaving many
intellectuals confused and for the most part concerned about the shape of the
future world order. Some took refuge in liberal nostrums (some would argue
banalities) like the ‘end of history’; others (invariably realists) predicted that we
were about to return to a more dangerous past. Most though tended to bank on
what seemed a far more relevant and dynamic idea: globalisation.The notion was
not without its appeal. In fact, for a while, there seemed to be no other label that
more accurately defined the nature of the post-Cold War era. Once again though
the gap between what at least some writers assumed was unfolding – no less than
the withering away of states and the disappearance of geography – and what in
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MICHAEL COX
fact was taking place on the ground became wider and wider.The idea thus lost
some, if not all, of its sparkle among a whole host of increasingly disenchanted
analysts. Indeed, according to one of the more critical, by the end of the 1990s
globalisation and with it the theories it had spawned was now quite dead, reduced
to conceptual rubble by the idea’s contact with reality (Rosenberg, 2005).
Intellectuals, like nature, it seems, abhor a vacuum, and no sooner had the
globalisation debate been consigned into that proverbial dustbin of history than
yet another great idea began to be discussed in earnest: namely, what kind of
conceptual creature was this vast, sprawling entity known as the American system
of power? It was none too clear. But brute facts this time actually looked like
brute facts, and after having seen off its main enemy in 1991 it did begin to look
as if the world was confronted with a unique situation: a superpower that was
more than just a superpower. This may have meant the world was seriously out
of balance. But few seemed willing to challenge the increasingly irresistible
proposition that no other nation in history had enjoyed such a formidable
advantage.This not only posed something of a problem for other nations; it posed
a dilemma too for students of world politics, who whatever their theoretical
inclinations found it difficult to come to terms with this new unipolar world. As
one of the leading liberal theorists of international relations observed, although
one century was giving way to another, the new century promised to be just as
American as the previous one (Ikenberry, 2002, p. 2). A Latin American with
impeccable radical credentials was less circumspect still: ‘The Twenty First
Century will be American’, he proclaimed (Valladao, 1996).
In the midst of these musings three things occurred which converted a fairly
easy-going academic debate about American primacy into a deadly serious one.
The first was the election of a very new kind of leader in the shape of George W.
Bush.The second was 9/11 and with it the fear of more attacks to come on the
United States. And the third was the revolution all this then produced in US
national security strategy. Taken together these changes were to have a massive
impact on both policy-makers and public alike. They also provoked a flurry of
debate about how best to understand the Bush foreign policy and what word to
use to describe America in an age of pre-emption. Clearly new times called for
new thinking and new ideas – and at least one idea began to gain some influential
adherents: the idea of an American empire (Bacevich, 2002). Long abandoned by
more mainstream academics (Snyder, 1991), the notion soon became the talk of
the town – Washington in particular (Boot, 2001). As Charles Maier was to
observe,‘a decade ago, certainly two’, the very idea would have caused ‘righteous
indignation’ among most American observers. But not any longer it seemed
(Maier, 2005, p. xi). As Ronald Wright noted, ‘how recently we believed the age
of empire was dead’, but how popular the idea was now becoming in certain
American circles (Wright, 2002, p. 3). And what some within these circles were
suggesting was quite startling: namely that we should start calling things by their
right name, drop the pretence that America was different to other great powers
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and accept that if the world was going to remain a stable place, the US had to act
in much the same imperial fashion as the British and Romans had done several
centuries before. Indeed, according to some analysts, it was precisely because the
United States had been insufficiently assertive in the 1990s – now referred to in
some conservative circles as that ‘decade of neglect’ – that 9/11 happened in the
first place. Such inertia was no longer an option. In a fragmenting postmodern
world, where small bands of fanatics could cause havoc and mayhem, there was
only one possible solution. Politicians might want to call it something else, and no
doubt President Bush would deny that ‘America’ had ‘an empire to extend’. But
that is precisely what the United States would have to do. Other existing methods
had been tried and found wanting. Now, in a new era, where old forms of
deterrence and traditional assumptions about threats no longer held, it was up to
America to impose its own form of order on a disorderly world: to fight the
savage war of peace (to quote one of the new gurus) so as to protect and enlarge
the empire of liberty (Boot, 2002).
How well the United States has actually managed to fulfil the imperial grand plan
laid out for it by the new theorists of empire remains open to debate. The
enormous costs the Iraq war has imposed on the United States, not to mention
the deep unpopularity of the Bush presidency abroad, would certainly appear to
indicate that it is much easier to talk empire than practise it.Yet still the debate
goes on almost unchecked. Moreover, it seems to involve more than the usual list
of academic suspects. Aspiring Canadian prime ministers (Ignatieff, 2003), development economists (Lal, 2004), economic historians ( James, 2006), even retired
US generals (of whom there must be a great number in the United States) have
muscled their way into the discussion. The generals are an especially interesting
group. Few it seems see much merit in the Bush foreign policy. Most though see
a great deal of virtue in the idea of an America empire.‘No other word’ describes
what America has become, argues Tony Zinni (2006, p. 4, p. 5). It is miles ahead
of the rest of the pack, insists Bill Odom (Odom and Dujarric, 2004) and not
likely to be overhauled for generations to come.And even though it may well not
be an empire in the formal sense, and should not aspire to be one according to
General Wesley Clark (2004), his publishers still had the good sense to leave the
word in the title of his book.
If the discussion about empire has achieved nothing else it has at least forced
those who would not have thought about the problem before to confront one
of the great silences in both academic international relations (IR) and American political discourse. Indeed, one of the more interesting counterfactual questions is why the term has not been deployed more before – except of course
by those on the left (usually writing in the more radical 1960s) who were
critical of the whole project (Williams, 1969; 1980). There are several possible
reasons. One has to do with international relations as a field. For years dominated by what might be termed the ‘Westphalia syndrome’, IR grew to maturity more concerned with the actions of those units called states rather than
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those conglomerations known as empires. Empires too have fast been going out
of fashion, beginning immediately after the First World War with the collapse
of three land-based empires in Europe, continuing during the post-war period
with the long drawn-out process of decolonisation and concluding with the
rather surprising death of the Soviet Empire between 1989 and 1991. Thus
why study that which is of only historical interest? Finally, of course there is
the very special case of the United States and the way in which Americans
themselves have generally tended to conceive of their own history. This has
been in anything other than imperial terms. Indeed, most Americans simply do
not think the term empire applies, or could ever apply, to the United States
(Cox, 2005). Born out of an anti-colonial struggle, and the bearer of a message
of freedom and liberation abroad, the idea that the US might be an empire is
not one Americans have ever felt particularly comfortable with. As has been
observed by one of the new theorists of empire, ‘empire signified pomp and
privilege, corruption and excess – the inverse of the virtues’ that Americans
normally associate with being American (Bacevich, 2003, p. ix).
Yet in spite of this resistance, the idea has clearly become rather popular of late,
raising the obvious questions: what exactly does the term mean and should it be
applied to the United States? Here there has been a very lively debate that has
divided writers into two intellectual camps, one of which thinks the whole idea
far-fetched and the other which insists that it has its uses.Writers of the former
camp have made a series of well-chosen but fairly self-evident points. Empires,
they insist, are territorial entities. This has always been their core feature. The
United States does not control vast amounts of other people’s territory. Ergo, the
United States is not an empire. Nor, they continue, can we reconcile the reality
of the world market with the idea of a politically-centred empire (Hardt and
Negri, 2000). Indeed, under modern financial conditions where no one state or
even combination of states can control the movement of money, it is quite absurd
to think of the world revolving around a single fixed entity. Nor, to conclude the
list of more important objections (there are others), can the idea of empire be
reconciled with the rather obvious international fact that we live more than ever
in a world of legally independent states with their own borders, flags and national
anthems. Naturally, this does not mean the United States is just another great
power (Buzan, 2004).We may even call it a hegemon. But we certainly should not
be referring to it as an empire (Agnew, 2005).
The objections are real but the response has been equally robust from those
(including the present author) who think the idea has a great deal to recommend
it and, moreover, that we should not allow essentialist definitions to abort a debate
before it has even begun. Here the sceptics have something to learn from the
historians, who have not allowed the issue of what words might, or might not
mean, to get in the way of saying something both interesting and important about
the idea. And what they have said, in short order, has been challenging and clear.
First, that empires have taken different forms over time; second, that to be an
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empire it is not necessary to possess the territory of others; and lastly, that
although there is something distinct about the American Empire, the United
States does what all important empires have done in the past: namely, set the
principal rules for those who live within the imperium and punish and reward in
equal measure those who either disobey or play by these rules (Cox, 2003).
Obviously words matter and the way we use and define words is important.
However, in the social sciences as much as in history, words can often mean very
different things to different people, and we should not permit single definitions
of words to prevent us thinking creatively, and in the American context comparatively too.
Indeed, one of the more obvious advantages of the idea of empire is that it
permits us to make what I think are very useful comparisons between empires of
the past and this rather interesting entity we call the United States. Significantly,
where such comparisons have been made they have often revealed some rather
surprising similarities, one being the role empires – including the American –
have played over time in setting what they see as ‘civilisational standards’, and
another the extent to which all imperial elites believe that what they are doing is
invariably for the good of all.As MarilynYoung has pointed out, there is a benign
language of power that empires have deployed in order to justify their function of
‘indispensable nation’ at the heart of their own system (Young, 2005). Comparison though does more than just reveal similarity: it should also point to meaningful difference too.And in the special case of the United States, one of the most
heavily debated differences of course is that America thus far appears to have been
doggedly resistant to what some would see as the almost immutable law of all
empires: namely that they mature, evolve and finally pass away as Gibbon (1983)
reminded us in his famous late-eighteenth-century study. On the contrary, after
a period of introspection in the 1970s and 1980s, the United States appeared to
do quite the opposite, much to the chagrin of those who had earlier assumed that
post-Vietnam the US was becoming just another ordinary country (Cox, 2002a).
Even one-time pessimists were taken aback, and none had been more pessimistic
than Paul Kennedy (1988), for several years the English prophet of American
doom. Kennedy, recall, made his reputation in the late 1980s by predicting the
longer-term ‘relative’ decline of America as a great power. By the beginning of the
new century, he was beginning to sing from a very different hymn-sheet
altogether.After a decade of economic growth, he noted, with America spending
more on national security than most of the rest of the world put together, it was
no longer possible to talk (as he had done only a few years before) as if the United
States was on the way down. Clearly it had turned a corner and the sooner we all
recognised the fact the better (Cox, 2002b).
Yet even America’s resurgence did not change the outlook of the American
people. Indeed, one of the great flaws in the whole imperial system according
to Niall Ferguson (2004, especially pp. 290–302) is the unfortunate fact that
even though America might be an empire, the citizens of the republic have no
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such consciousness of this themselves. And this he believes means that the
United States can neither plan for the long haul nor expect solid support at
home when the going gets tough abroad. Worse still, he feels, is the very
political culture of the United States itself. Although an immensely successful
polity, its people have little real interest in the outside world, are more likely to
be concerned with self-improvement than international affairs and are easily
bored by events ongoing in faraway places they have never visited and would
never have heard of unless some poor unfortunates happened to be dying there.
Moreover, unlike the British Empire – something Ferguson much admires –
the American Empire has never exported its own people or indeed (until
recently) much of its capital either. All in all, the American Empire is thus a
most peculiar formation: immensely powerful on the one hand but on the
other suffering from what Ferguson has neatly called a great ‘attention deficit
that seems to be inherent in the American political system’ (Ferguson, 2004, p.
293), one that in his view could easily lead Bush or his successor to call it a
day in Afghanistan and Iraq, and pack up his bag and go.
Finally, in any discussion about the United States we are bound to confront the
issue of its immediate future. Here we face a most paradoxical situation. During
the first four or five years of the new century nearly all of the loudest voices
were waxing lyrical about the extraordinary power of the United States. Now,
in the wake of Iraq the mood – and with it intellectual fashion – has shifted
enormously to one of doom and despair. Indeed, one could almost say that a
new consensus is already beginning to emerge in Bush’s second rather desultory term that the ‘new American Empire’ is now living on borrowed time and
the bubble (to quote the irrepressible Bush-hater Soros) is about to burst
(Soros, 2004). Many new books in fact appear to have picked up on an idea
earlier floated by Michael Mann (2003), that the United States was almost
bound to become the ‘first failed Empire’ of the millennium. Indeed, according
to one author the American Empire has already become unmade (Bello, 2005).
Another has raised the old bogey of ‘imperial overstretch’ (Burbach and Tarrell,
2004). A couple of French writers – predictably – have reflected in flowing
Gallic terms on the ‘powerlessness’ of American power and the inevitable
decline of the imperial republic (Badie, 2004; Todd, 2002), while many others
(not French) have pondered in deeply sombre ways about America’s ‘great
unravelling’ and the disastrous consequences this is bound to have upon the
world at large. The influential Paul Krugman (2004) can hardly conceal his
anger at the current team in the White House. The radical right he believes has
not only conducted a dangerously irresponsible foreign policy, but quite literally robbed the American middle class in order to benefit the super rich.
Moreover, though all this has been done in the name of conservatism and
traditional values, the Bush administration, he insists, has been driven by a
truly transformational ideology that not only threatens US alliances abroad but
the very foundations of the republic itself. Obviously, deeply disturbing times
lie ahead.
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Nobody though has been quite as downbeat as Chalmers Johnson. Having
achieved early fame in the debate by predicting what he called ‘blowback’ against
an over-powerful empire – and this some time before September 11th ( Johnson,
2000) – he is now arguing that the United States is in dire peril, threatened by the
very empire it has helped spawn. Johnson is especially worried about the combined dangers of militarism and that old bogey known as the American militaryindustrial complex. Together he believes both are strangling the life out of the
republic, leaving in its wake a national security state obsessed by secrecy and
sustained by fear. Nor is there very much to look forward to. The process of
degeneration has gone too far, and it is unlikely that America will be able to
recover. Reform of the political system is a possibility. But even here he holds out
little hope. ‘It is difficult to imagine’, he writes, ‘how Congress, much like the
Roman Senate in the last days of the republic, could be brought back to life and
cleansed of its endemic corruption. Failing such reform, Nemesis, the goddess of
retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for
her meeting with us’ ( Johnson, 2006, p. 312).
Thus we arrive full circle. Having started the century in bullish mood the United
States it seems is standing – or so we are now being led to believe – on the edge
of a precipice. At this point we obviously need to take stock. That the United
States is facing a series of problems from burgeoning deficits to having to deal
with what could turn out to be one of the great strategic blunders of modern
times in Iraq, is evident to all, including more mainstream scholars (Jervis, 2005).
Indeed, there is by now a view that what even one centrist has termed Bush’s
‘assault on world order’ has left the United States more isolated than ever and that
something needs to be done about it (Newhouse, 2004).The same sentiment has
more recently been expressed within traditional republican circles too. In fact, one
of the more interesting aspects of the current foreign policy debate is the degree
to which critics of all persuasion have joined together in assailing Bush for either
having come under the influence of a group of imperial neo-conservative
ideologues apparently inspired by Leo Strauss (Norton, 2004) or forgetting what
made American foreign policy the success it was before – namely its ability to
work with others in a well-defined common cause to which all subscribed
(Gaddis, 2004, p. 65).
However, we need to keep things in perspective. Bush may look the metaphorical
Nero fiddling while his Rome burns. But we should take care not to do what
others have consistently done in the past: either underestimate America’s powers
of recuperation – it did after all recover from Vietnam – or assume that what we
wish for (in this case a more balanced international order) is likely to arise on the
detritus left behind by an American empire in retreat. Indeed, there are still very
good reasons for suggesting that the American era may not be over just yet
(Kupchan, 2002).
The first and most obvious is the realist one: that at the end of the day, no other
power has the military capabilities or the economic wherewithal seriously to
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challenge the United States. Europe may have once been seen as a major future
contender by some analysts. But that was long ago and now only the foolish or
the naïve continue to talk about a new European superpower replacing the
United States at the head of the international table (Reid, 2005). Japan of course
is economically more dynamic than its recent travails would suggest. On the other
hand, it is only now coming out of a ten-year depression, it has little cultural reach
and has yet to overcome the legacy of the Second World War. Moreover, while a
few individual Japanese might now be prepared to say ‘No’, the country remains
very firmly within the American camp while showing not the slightest interest in
abandoning it.Which brings us inevitably to China – an empire in the making (or
so we have been told) that is bound to surpass the United States over the next
twenty years.Yet this is not how it appears to the Chinese themselves who have
done as much as any state could do over the past period to reassure Washington
that it has no intention of challenging its position in Asia. Indeed, if Chinese
international behaviour is anything to go by, then it is clear that contemporary
states – however upwardly mobile they may be – see every advantage in working
with and alongside the United States and not against it. Bandwagoning rather
than balancing looks like being the favoured strategy of all great powers for the
time being.
Secondly, we should not forget what some now seem to be forgetting in the
shadow of Iraq: namely what Susan Strange (1988; 1991) identified long ago as
America’s many structural advantages, ranging from its several alliance systems
(still intact), the dollar (under challenge but still hegemonic), its vast military (still
vast) and of course its financial and commercial clout. Indeed, a rereading of the
iconoclastic Strange on the many strengths of what she quite openly referred to
as the American Empire would serve to remind modern pessimists why it is not
about to fall off its proverbial perch. As she wisely pointed out, intellectuals have
always been fascinated by the idea of imperial decline. It sounds interesting and
makes them seem important. Yet intellectual fashions – as we hinted at the
beginning of this essay – and what in fact may be happening in the real world
need not necessarily be the same thing at all. Indeed, if the experience of the last
few years points to anything, it is that we should beware any analysts bearing
analogies between what happened to the Romans and the British in the past and
what is happening to the United States today.
Finally, we should take care not to identify the United States with either one
unpopular president or one set of controversial policies.America is more than just
George W. Bush and his administration is more than just a group of apparently
blinkered ideologues who hate treaties, the United Nations and the French. In
other words, we should not judge the long-term future of the United States
through the problems confronting one president or the ideas of those who may
once have had his ear. Bush in the end will go. America will in the end get out
of Iraq.And at that point,America will begin to look a very different place. It may
be a much chastened country – understandably so after Iraq. It will still be facing
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all sorts of problems at home and abroad.And it will no doubt still be the pet hate
of very large numbers of people around the world who like neither its policies
nor its very great power. However, hatred and resentment alone never brought
down an empire in the past, and we can remain reasonably confident that they
will not bring down the American Empire in the future either.
(Accepted: 27 June 2006)
About the Author
Professor Michael Cox, Department of International Relations, London School of Economics and
Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK; email: m.e.cox@lse.ac.uk
Note
I have discussed some of the issues raised in this article in earlier essays, e.g. Cox (2004). See also the debate around my
thesis on empire in Security Dialogue (2004).
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© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2007, 5(1)