Have we become imperial America?

The unprecedented international position of the United States in the post-Cold War period has helped catalyze an important debate in the foreign policy community about whether it has become an empire.

Until recently, it was mostly leftist intellectuals, especially Marxists, who argued that the United States was an imperial power. Marxists hold that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.

Today, as the Bush administration seeks to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq, it is primarily neoconservative intellectuals who say America possesses the attributes of an imperial power. They say the United States is an empire that should embrace an imperial project of spreading democracy and American values in the Middle East and throughout the world.

Two of the world’s leading conservative intellectuals recently squared off for a lively debate at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where they discussed American imperialism and the U.S. role in the world.

Debating whether the United States is, and should be, an empire were a Scottish historian and journalist, Niall Ferguson, and a U.S. foreign-policy thinker, Robert Kagan.

Ferguson vs. Kagan

Mr. Ferguson said Americans refuse to accept the fact that their country is an empire, even though the rest of the world considers it to be one and will continue to do so.

Mr. Kagan, in contrast, believes it is inaccurate to characterize the United States as an empire and that it would be “strategically catastrophic” for its relations with the rest of the world if the United States declares itself an empire.

Mr. Ferguson, who has been described as a radical Tory, is considered to be one of Britain’s leading historians. He is a professor of financial history at New York University and Oxford University, a senior research fellow at Jesus College in Oxford, and a regular contributor to leading U.S. and European newspapers.

His most recent book is the best seller “Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power,” which has been adapted into a series for British television.

Mr. Kagan is a prominent U.S. neoconservative foreign-policy writer. He is also a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a columnist for The Washington Post, a contributing editor of the Weekly Standard and a former high-level State Department official.

He is author of the best-selling book “Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order.” This book, adapted from an essay in the journal Policy Review, is the most widely discussed recent contribution to understanding trans-Atlantic relations.

Empire in denial

Mr. Ferguson, who considers himself to be “a passionate pro-American,” argued that the United States is an empire in denial and that Americans should face up to the fact that the nation is an empire and “do the job properly.”

In particular, Americans need to develop a longer attention span when it comes to foreign interventions. They should be prepared for the long stay that will be required for democracy to emerge in Iraq, he says, rather than plan to leave as soon as free elections are held.

He said it is “a fundamental flaw” for Americans to think that complex nation-building efforts can be completed in a matter of months or a few years, and reminded the audience that Britain was in Iraq for 40 years beginning in 1917.

In addition, the United States “does not adequately resource its imperial undertakings” and needs to get its fiscal house in order if it wishes to continue playing the activist international role it has in recent years.

The United States “can’t run an empire on a shoestring,” he said, citing as evidence the fact that in Afghanistan, it has allocated a mere $5 million in direct spending for nation-building. Mr. Ferguson also mentioned that the Bush administration’s estimate of $3.9 billion a month in Iraq covers only military costs and does not include any funding to ensure that law and order take root there.

’Colossus’ with clay feet

Moreover, the U.S. empire “is a colossus with feet of clay” because its social welfare system is headed for a major crisis, he predicted. This was a reference to the fiscal pressure that large numbers of retiring baby boomers soon will place on Medicare and Social Security.

Washington also needs to work harder to elicit the cooperation of its allies to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, because empires are based on “collaboration and cooperation with other powers,” he said, adding that the United States is “incapable” of carrying out peacekeeping and policing missions without the help of its European allies.

Mr. Ferguson noted that Americans reject the idea that they are imperial and said U.S. political culture is anti-imperial. For example, he said, the United States started off as “an anti-imperial, rebellious colony that fought against an evil empire for its own independence.”

He also said that the normal, narrow definition of empire makes Americans think that their country’s 14 dependent territories that cover approximately 6,000 miles could hardly constitute an empire.

Mr. Ferguson prefers a broader definition of empire and said: “The U.S. not only is one, but is one of the most powerful in history.”

Historians often say that the United States picked up where the British Empire left off, beginning with the Middle East. Mr. Ferguson said the U.S. empire “bears an uncanny resemblance” to the British Empire, except for the fact that Britain never had “the lead over its imperial rivals that the U.S. currently enjoys.”

Three attributes

He also maintains that the United States has all the attributes of past empires, which are military, economic and cultural.

In the military sphere, it has roughly 750 military installations in about 130 countries — two-thirds of the world. In addition, “the U.S. accounts for 40 percent of all the military spending in the world.”

In military terms, Mr. Ferguson said, no empire has ever been as powerful as the United States, which “could fight and win any war against any rival.”

In economic terms, the United States accounts for about 31 percent of world output, which he said is three times the share of world output for which the British Empire accounted at its height.

In the realm of culture and “soft power,” the United States can export its cultural values around the world and these are adopted by people voluntarily.

The purpose of the U.S. empire, in Mr. Ferguson’s view, is to spread free markets, representative or republican government, and the rule of law around the world, and these objectives can be accomplished only by what used to be called an empire, irrespective of whether or not one uses that term.

In addition, he said the United States is making the transition from an indirect and informal to a direct and formal empire, and this is because many local rulers are corrupt and Washington cannot rely on them.

Great powers vs. empires

Mr. Kagan said it would be a grave mistake to call the United States an empire, and to do so is to confuse an empire with a powerful country.

For him, countries with great power and influence should be distinguished from empires, which seek to dominate their subjects. He added that we can dismiss the Marxist idea that “the expansion of the free market” is imperialism, and contends there is no such things as “cultural imperialism.”

He also said that “on the large questions of world power and world order, the British Empire failed miserably again and again,” and that a more apt comparison for America would be the Roman Empire, which made citizens of its subjects.

For Mr. Kagan “the essence of American foreign policy” is not that it is imperial, but that U.S. power is good for the world and that it is based on voluntary associations and alliances.

Moreover, he considers the United States as the key to maintaining a liberal world order, but adds that Americans have a short attention span and conduct their foreign policy in an inefficient way — two opinions also held by Mr. Ferguson.

Mr. Kagan says the United States does have an imperial past, arguing that “Americans had no problem with imperialism before the [American] Revolution” and during the early years of the American republic.

He notes that Benjamin Franklin had hoped that the United States eventually would become the headquarters of the British Empire, and that until the mid-19th century, this country engaged in “tremendous acquisition of territory, some by purchase, mostly by force or persuasion or blackmail.”

Stronger, less imperial

The historical turning point against the imperial idea for Mr. Kagan — when the United States ceased to be an imperial power — was the Civil War. He says that over the course of the 20th century, as it became more powerful it became less imperial.

Mr. Kagan says it is a virtue that Americans do not have imperial designs and that their country’s increasing influence is “widely accepted and so little feared” throughout the world because other nations are well-aware that the United States would never seek imperial control over them.

“We are beyond the age of empires,” he said. “Americans, and the vast majority of the world’s people, do not accept empire as the purpose of foreign policy.”

What ultimately matters for Mr. Kagan is that “we must continue to engage in the difficult task of constantly arguing the case for why the United States must remain engaged in the world, why it must have more constancy.”

This means educating the U.S. public about “the important role the United States has to play” and explaining to people throughout the world that America’s aims are not selfish but “are in the interests of many others who share its views.”

Empire vs. power

In essence, Mr. Ferguson celebrates the notion of empire, whereas Mr. Kagan celebrates U.S. power.

The debate about whether the United States is an empire is, to a certain extent, a question of terminology — and on this point it is likely that most Americans will continue to refuse to accept the notion that they are, or should be, imperial.

Therefore, what ideas and guidelines this debate can offer for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy may be of greater value than resolving the matter of whether the United States is imperial.

Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Kagan hold similar views of U.S. power and of the country’s global role — which is that they are beneficial for the world — and offer many of the same policy prescriptions.

In particular, they both argue that it is critically important that the United States remain engaged in the world, because it is the one country upon which global stability and a liberal world order depend.

Both also believe that Washington should try to work closely with its allies.

Where they part company is related mostly to what historians of empire call “imperial overstretch.”

Mr. Ferguson believes that the United States cannot sustain its current international commitments unless it gets its domestic foundation in order. In this regard, he advocates scrapping Bush administration tax cuts in order to reduce the size of the budget deficit.

At the end of the debate, audience members voted for or against the proposition that the United States is an empire. Forty-seven agreed it is, 51 took the position that it is not, and 26 abstained.