Empire and US: Power or Values?

March/April 2007 Historically Speaking 25 Empire and US: Power or Values? Harold James f f ¦ ^ mpire" and "imperialism" are curB ^ rendy used mostly as terms of dis_______ ! approval. Yankee imperialism" and phrases like "the running dogs of American imperialism " belong to a vocabulary that originated in Maoist ideology as filtered by 1960s Western radicalism . Given a postmodern turn, the language survived in Empire (2000), the hugely popular book by Michael Hardt and Toni Negri. It has become the shared discourse of globalization critics. On the other side of the ideological divide , few like candidly to term themselves worshippers at the imperial throne, with the result that the rather nostalgic-sounding reflections of Niall Ferguson and Deepak LaI seem to derive from a very backward-oriented mirror. These interesting articles wrestle with the question of nomenclature and definition, but they are notably focused solely on the issue of empire in relation to the United States, whereas in actuality the problem is a much more general one. LaI and Jan Pieterse give strikingly identical definitions before proceeding, in both cases quite logically, to diametrically opposed conclusions as to the ethical value of imperialism. LaI starts from Thucydides in distinguishing between Athens and Sparta and observing that die nature of Athenian imperialism was that it sought to control both the domestic and foreign policies of its allies, while Sparta was content to restrict itself to hegemony over foreign policy. Pieterse argues that the United States has a strong Wilsonian tradition, in which security issues are thought to depend on domestic reform and liberalization in other countries. Washington thus comes to believe that the world can only be stable if it shares Western or American values . Wilsonianism, whether in the form taken in and after the Second World War by Roosevelt or Truman or in its more contemporary incarnation in George W. Bush, is thus by definition imperial. But the problem with this kind of definition is that many states today follow the same kind of logic. It is not simply an American peculiarity or a feature of the mental world of George W. Bush. In fact the underlying logic derives from one of the basic insights of international relations theory about the way in which foreign policies are formulated. Since foreign policy is generally never made in isolation of domestic preoccupations, it is rational for any state that wants to influence its neighbors also to try to shape their domestic policies. Russia wants to influence former Soviet Republics. Most analysts today are in consequence happy to describe Vladimir Putin's Russia as imperialistic. But the European Union and its principal member states also try to influence the behavior of EU members (for instance, over whether to admit semi-fascist parties into government coalitions, as in the debate about whether Jörg Haider or his party should participate in the Austrian government). It does not stop at the boundaries of the EU, however, and uses discussions about membership as a way of forcing its po- "Let her be heard!" President Wilson gestures at "Humanity." An Oscar Edward Cesare cartoon in the New York Evening Post, between 1915 and 1917. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-1 32055]. liticai preferences on would-be members, such as Turkey. Would such (perfectly legitimate) pressure really be adequately described by the term "imperial "? Jan Zielonka recently concluded that "the rise of a neo-medieval empire does not need to herald the end of European integration" and in fact makes it more powerful. By contrast, Charles Maier is agonizingly reluctant to make such a determination of imperial character , even in the case of the U.S., although he makes the same definitional observation, namely that "if empire refers not to colonization, but rather to a less formalized search for decisive control by intervening to remove governments we dislike and installing those we prefer, i.e., engaging in so-called regime change, then the U.S. should be reckoned as imperial." He sensibly adds what he calls "functional and performative criteria." Again, however, there is a problem with this kind of approach, in that the definition is in reality just as all-encompassing of...