Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

On the Question of American Hegemony

Kenneth Thiesen of, it will not surprise you, Berkeley California offers up a screed in which he opines:

Let me say it straight out—I do not support the troops and neither should you. It is objectively impossible to support the troops of the imperialist military forces of the U.S. and at the same time oppose the wars in which they fight. ...

We need to expose that those in the U.S. military are trained to be part of a “killing machine.” While not every member of the military is an individual murderer, they are all part of a system that commits war crimes, including aggressive wars, massacres, rape, and other crimes against humanity, all in the service of U.S. imperialism. The bottom line is that even if these people are relatives or friends, you can not support the troops without also supporting the objective role that these troops play in the imperialist system.

United States troops are acting as destructive and murderous forces of invasion and occupation. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan see this on a daily basis. Hundreds of thousands have died as a direct result of the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Millions are either internal or external refugees. Tens of thousands have been detained in prisons, with thousands of these tortured and scores murdered. Haditha, Iraq where 24 Iraqis were massacred is just the best known of the massacres. Women and children are routinely described as “collateral damage” by military spokespersons when they are murdered in military operations.

We could debate the facts with Thiesen. Objectively, are the people of Afghanistan or even Iraq really worse off now? Would Thiesen really prefer to have left the people of Afghanistan to the tender mercies of the Taliban?

We could also swap insult for insult. We could opine, for example, that his column demonstrates that the far left ”really [does] despise their own country.” Or we could note that:

Thiesen, in establishing the U.S. military’s war criminality and urging an end to recruiting, doesn’t say who he would like to defend the United States and the rest of the free world. ... Nothing on how he feels about the prospects, once recruitment-free attrition eliminates the last vestiges of U.S. warmongering, of Berkeley babes being burkha’d, Berkeley boys beheaded, etc.

Instead, however, let’s face the question directly and on the merits. Thiesen says:

If you “support the troops” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other more than 100 countries in which they are located, you also objectively support U.S. hegemony in the world.

A candid, objective appraisal of that statement would acknowledge that it has at least a grain of truth. It is hard to disentangle support for the troops and support for the mission.

So let’s ask the question: Do you support American hegemony or not? One of my heroes, Russell Kirk, was a great skeptic of American hegemony, calling it one of the major political errors of the 20th Century:

In this century, great empires have collapsed: the Austrian, the German, the British, the French, the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Italian, and the Japanese. The Soviet empire now languishes in the process of dissolution. “Imperialism” has become a term of bitter reproach and complaint; all this within my own lifetime.

American Empire. But there remains an American Empire, still growing—though expanding through the acquisition of client states, rather than through settlement of American populations abroad. Among the client states directly dependent upon American military power are Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Israel, and El Salvador; and until the withdrawal of American divisions from Germany for service in Arabia, Germany, too, was a military client. Dependent upon American assistance of one kind or another, and in some degree upon American military protection, are the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, and Panama; and also, in the Levant, Egypt and Jordan, and formerly Lebanon. Now Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are added to the roster of clients. I hardly need mention America’s earlier acquisitions: Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgins, and lesser islands. I refrain from mentioning America’s economic ascendancy, through foreign aid or merely trade, over a great deal more of the world. In short, although we never talk about our empire, a tremendous American Empire has come into existence—if, like the Roman Empire, in a kind of fit of absence of mind. No powerful counterpoise to the American hegemony seems to remain, what with the enfeebling of the U.S.S.R.

Such a universal ascendancy always has been resented by the lesser breeds without the law. Soon there sets to work a widespread impulse to pull down the imperial power. But that imperial power, strong in weapons, finds it possible for a time to repress the disobedient. In the long run—well, as Talleyrand put it, “You can do everything with bayonets—except sit on them.” In the long run, the task of repression is too painful a burden to bear; so the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has discovered in the past few years. Napoleon discovered that hard truth earlier and King George III and the King’s Friends discovered it between the years 1775 and 1781. Doubtless George Bush means well by the world near the end of the twentieth century. He is a man of order, diligent, dutiful, honest, and a good family man. But he lacks imagination, “the vision thing.” And power intoxicates; and, as Lord Acton put it, power tends to corrupt. The love of power tends to corrupt both speech and actions. It may corrupt a grave national undertaking into a personal vendetta. It may corrupt what began as a chivalric rescue into a heavy belligerent domination. (Talk continues to come to our ears of a “permanent American presence” in the Persian Gulf.)

President Bush and Americans of his views doubtless intend the American hegemony to be gentler and kinder than the sort of hegemony that prevailed in the ancient Persian Empire, say; more just even than the Roman hegemony that gave peace, for some centuries, to several lands—relative peace, anyway, at the price of crushing taxation and the extinction of earlier cultures. But devastating Iraq (and the rescued Kuwait) is an uncompromising way of opening an era of sweetness and light. Peoples so rescued from tyrants might cry, as did the boy whom Don Quixote de la Mancha had saved from beating by the muleteers but who was thrashed by them not long later, nevertheless—“In the name of God, Don Jorge de la Casablanca, don’t rescue me again!”

It is well to be reminded of these simple truths. In particular, in light of the Bush administration’s policies, it is well to be reminded of Kirk’s skepticism that we can bomb the world into democracy:

Are we to saturation-bomb most of Africa and Asia into righteousness, freedom, and democracy? And, having accomplished that, however would we ensure persons yet more unrighteous might not rise up instead of the ogres we had swept away?

Having said all that, we are not yet in a millenial utopia in which the lion lies down with the lamb. The world remains an intensely dangerous place. Conflict is endemic. Indeed, many of Thiesen’s ilk manage to complain about the presence of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan while deploring the absence of US troops in Darfur.

Moreover, there are those who defend American hegemony, and they too have valid points to make. James Nuechterlein, for example, comments that:

Of course American leaders put great emphasis on continued economic growth, and of course they look to foreign trade and investment to further that growth. They would be derelict in their duty if they did not. It also comes as no great revelation that those same leaders overwhelmingly agree that the constituting elements of democratic capitalism-political freedom, democracy, free markets, and the free flow of ideas-are good not just for Americans but for the world. And few indeed are the Americans-leaders or ordinary citizens-who doubt that the world’s only superpower must take a strong leadership role not only in global diplomacy but, where necessary, in the deployment of military power. Madeleine Albright’s oft-repeated designation of the U.S. as the “indispensable nation” is not so much a boast as a statement of the obvious.

And, of course, Robert Kagan:

For the tnlth about America’s dominant role in the world is known to most clear-eyed international observers. And the truth is that the benevolent hegemony exercised by the United States is good for a vast portion of the world’s population. It is certainly a better international arrangement than all realistic alternatives. To undermine it would cost many others around the world far more than it would cost Americans--and far sooner. As Samuel Huntington wrote five years ago, before he joined the plethora of scholars disturbed by the “arrogance” of American hegemony: “A world without U.S. primacy will be a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy and economic growth than a world where the United States continues to have more influence than any other country shaping global affairs.” ...

Ever since the United States emerged as a great power, the identification of the interests of others with its own has been the most striking quality of American foreign and defense policy. Americans seem to have internalized and made second nature a conviction held only since World War II: Namely, that their own well-being depends fundamentally on the well-being of others; that American prosperity cannot occur in the absence of global prosperity; that American freedom depends on the survival and spread of freedom elsewhere; that aggression anywhere threatens the danger of aggression everywhere; and that American national security is impossible without a broad measure of international security. ...

If there is to be a sole superpower, the world is better off if that power is the United States.

And so we need, as a people, to have an honest debate. Would the world be a better place if America ceased to pursue hegemony? Would America long remain free and prosperous in a globalized world if it were to lose its hegemonic position? Is it possible to create a kinder, gentler hegemon that would be exempt from the worst of Kirk’s critique? I believe that these are the core questions of American foreign policy, yet one rarely hears them discussed. Instead of takling about a grand strategic vision, we quibble over tactics.

Where is the American politician today who would dare give a speech remotely resembling that Tacitus claims Petillius Cerialis gave to the Gauls during the civil wars of 68-69 A.D.?

The reason why Roman generals and Emperors came into you territories and those of the other Gauls, was not a desire for gain, but at the invitation of your forefathers. They had become so exhausted by internal strife that they were close to collapse, and the Germans whom they had called in for help had seized power over friend and foe alike.

We did not occupy the Rhineland to protect Italy, but so that another German leader like Ariovistus should not impose his rule on the peoples of Gaul.

Until you conceded to us the right to govern you, there were wars constantly among you, and local despots in control all over Gaul. Yet, though we have often been provoked, we have used our victories to impose only those burdens that are unavoidable if peace is to be preserved. Peace between nations cannot be maintained without armies. Armies need paying, and that means taxes. Everything else is shared with you. You and your fellow countrymen frequently command our legions and govern these and other provinces of the empire. You are not excluded from anything. In fact, in one way you benefit especially the good that flows from popular emperors reaches everyone, far and near, but the evil wreaked by tyrants falls on those closest to them. Just as you put up with natural disasters such as too much rain or poor harvests, so should you look upon extravagance and greed among those who are in power over you. There will be faults as long as there are men, but they are not with us all the time, and better times compensate for the bad. But do you really expect a milder regime if Tutor and Classicus [seen as rebels by the Romans] take over? Or that they will reduce the taxes necessary to support the army that protects you from the Germans and the Britons. If he Romans are expelled - which Heaven forbid! - what else can follow but world wide conflict, in which each people will fall on it’s neigbours? Good fortune and discipline have gone hand in hand over the last eight hundred years to build this structure [the Roman Empire], which destroyed will bring down all together. At present, victor and vanquished enjoy peace and the imperial civilisation under the same law on an equal footing. Let your experience of the alternatives prevent you from preferring the ruin that will follow on revolt to the safety that is conferred by obedience.

American hegemony is imperfect, as are all the works of fallen man. Prudence and peace should be the watch words. Yet, at the end of the day, I think I stand closer to Cerialis than Thiesen.