America
as Empire
by Jim Garrison Source
The founder of the State
of the World Forum examines the way American
power is shaping our geopolitical future.
People used to think of America as a global leader. Now a majority
of the world thinks of America as a rogue power. Why? The answer to
this question has to a large degree to do with what America has become.
America has made the transition from republic
to empire. It is no longer
what it was. It was founded to be a beacon of light unto the nations,
a democratic and egalitarian haven to which those seeking freedom could
come. It has now become an unrivalled empire among the nations, exercising
dominion over them. How it behaves and what it represents have fundamentally
changed. It used to represent freedom. Now it represents power.
It was when I began to realize that my country had crossed the threshold
from republic to empire that I began to study the history of empire.
It was the only concept large and dynamic enough to explain what was
going on, providing a larger framework, a more complex metaphor with
which to understand America and the world. Republics imply single nations
democratically governed, which was what America was founded to be.
The very essence of empire is the control of one nation over other
nations. While America remains a republic within its own borders, it
has become an empire in relationship to the rest of the world.
The inordinate power of the United States disturbs people on the American
left and excites people on the American right. Liberals are uncomfortable
with the notion of an American empire because they are uneasy with
the fact that America has so much power, especially military
power.
They would prefer that America simply be part of the community
of nations,
perhaps a first among equals but an equal nevertheless, and use its
power to further human welfare. Conservatives, on the other hand, are
jubilant that America is finally breaking out of multilateral strictures
and is unilaterally asserting its imperial prerogatives abroad. For
them, national self-interest, enforced by military supremacy, should
be the guiding principle of U.S. policy.
The liberal notion that America confine its power within multilateral
frameworks and the conservative desire to apply American power unilaterally
for narrow self-interest are both inadequate. There is a deeper and
more complex reality going on. Whatever qualms people may have about
it, America has become an empire, and there is no turning back. As
Heraclitus taught us, one can never enter the same river twice. The
transition from republic to empire is irreversible, like the metamorphosis
from caterpillar to butterfly. Once power is attained, it is not surrendered.
It is only exercised. The central question before America, therefore,
is what it should do with all the power it has. How should it assert
its authority and for what end?
This means that America should acknowledge, even celebrate, its transition
to empire and acquisition of global
mastery. What began as a motley
band of colonies 225 years ago is now not only the strongest nation
in the world but the strongest nation in the history of the world.
Americans should be justly proud of this achievement. It has been attained
with enormous effort and at great cost.
The world, too, should modulate its antipathy against America with
the consideration that America has become so powerful in part because
it has been so benign. This might
be a little hard to take if one has
experienced the boot of American strength, but consider the three other
national attempts at empire in the last century: the Soviet Union,
Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan. What if any of these empires had
defeated the United States and established global hegemony? What would
the world be like today if Nazi Germany and Japan had won the Second
World War, or if the Soviets had won the Cold War? We should all breathe
a sigh of relief that these eventualities never occurred and that a
democratic nation committed to universal values triumphed and established
global dominion.
Having prevailed in the competition against these other empires and
having achieved what they were denied, Americans should be aware that
there are now enormous responsibilities that must be undertaken both
in relation to the United States itself and in relation to the world.
The fate of empires can be long or short, noble or tragic, depending
on how astutely leadership is exercised and decisions are made. The
exercise of power is highly unstable, especially the near-absolute
power that empire represents. It provides opportunity; it also corrupts.
It demands wise action; it also seduces to the dark
side.
There are thus all sorts of dangers inherent in the exercise of power.
Internally, the transition from republic to empire is almost always
made at the cost of freedom. Power and freedom are contradictory and
do not coexist comfortably. Freedom requires the limitation of power.
Power demands the surrender of freedom. This is something the ancient
Athenians and Romans learned at great cost: democracy was the casualty
of their empires. Americans must heed this ancient experience and painful
truth. American freedoms are not eternally bestowed but must with each
generation and circumstance be reevaluated and preserved. Freedom is
lost far more easily than it is gained, especially when it is surrendered
for the sake of more power.
Externally, empire incites insurrection. No nation wants to be ruled,
especially those that have just been liberated, such as Afghanistan
and Iraq. Maintaining dominion is therefore a very
tricky challenge,
especially in a world of instantaneous communication and porous borders,
in which information and people can move about virtually unimpeded,
and small actions can have large and unexpected effects. This was the
lesson of September 11. There are many enemies of empire and few friends.
Americans must know this as they rule, especially in obscure places
far from American shores.
To achieve greatness, an empire needs a transcendental
vision that
can unite all the disparate elements within it into an overarching
purpose. It must aspire to a mission that the entire empire can join
in building. It must be fundamentally constructive, not destructive.
Americans at their point of empire are called to articulate a vision for the world worthy of the power they now hold over the world. This
vision must transcend self-interest and embrace the whole. In order
to do this, America must remember that even though it now represents
power, it has historically been a shining light to the international
community, symbolizing freedom. Can the vision that built the American
republic now guide America as it consolidates its empire?
History teaches that great empires are constructed, not simply by
using military might but by building institutions that are perceived
by the governed as just and fair. The common
interest of the empire
as a whole must supersede the national interest of the dominant state
in order for the empire to endure. The great paradox of empire is that
stewardship is far more powerful than force in maintaining imperial
control.
Sixty years ago, Presidents Roosevelt and Truman achieved this level
of greatness, as did Woodrow Wilson in the generation before. They
defeated world fascism and contained communism by ensuring that the
United States had the strongest military in the world. At the same
time, they founded the United Nations, established the Bretton Woods
institutions, implemented the Marshall Plan, and established NATO,
thereby ushering in a new postcolonial international system. They blended
American interests with the interests of the common good to create
a new world order. American strength thus served political aspirations
that were welcomed by the international community.
Six decades later, the forces
of globalization have made the institutions
built then anachronistic to the needs of an integrating world. The
world is therefore in a new state of crisis, both in terms of the magnitude
of the problems pressing down upon us and in terms of the inability
of the prevailing national and international institutions to cope with
these challenges.
The major difference between now and sixty years ago is that Roosevelt
and Truman redesigned the international order within the context of
an acute and undeniable crisis: a world at war. Today, we are in a
crisis of similar magnitude, but the crisis is more like an accident
in slow motion. The old Cold War system and the system of nation states
are dysfunctional and no longer capable of coping with global problems
ranging from global warming, deforestation, and water scarcity, to
persistent poverty, dealing with failed states, and HIV/AIDS. All these
crises are pressing down upon us and the prevailing system of international
institutions is simply incapable of effective response. The planet is thus quite literally on a collision
course with itself. Yet strangely,
the totality of the danger is not yet apparent. World
leaders thus
do little more than talk about it. Most are simply in
denial.
The opportunity in this situation is for America to ask itself anew
what it can do about the needs of the global
commons. How can America
proactively lead the world out of the present crisis? How can it revitalize
the international order and lead in the development of innovative ways
to solve global problems? What global institutions need to be established
to ensure that democracy and prosperity, along with American primacy,
prevail in the twenty-first century?
What both Americans and the world must internalize is that no
one is even remotely capable of leading this effort but the United States.
The United Nations is weak and bureaucratically paralyzed. Other powers
that could one day serve as regional sources of stability and order,
such as the European Union, Russia, China, India, or Brazil, are themselves
either unformed, unstable, or not sufficiently coherent. The myriad
number of new international initiatives and institutions coming from
the nongovernmental sector have high aspirations but remain fragile,
underfunded, and only marginally effective.
This situation may be completely different in a few decades. But right
now, it is only the United States that has the capacity, the traditions,
the reach, and the will to lead at the global level. Until there is
a sufficiently strong matrix of global institutions to ensure global
stability and prosperity, there is literally no one
else to lead the
world but America. This means that the highest vision for the American
empire is to serve the global need for effective global governance.
The greatest temptation at the moment of power is
to be seduced by the dark side, or in arrogance, to dispense with “the vision
thing,” as President George Bush, Sr., put it, and to use
one's power not for the common good but for the sake of gaining
even more
power. The question before the United States is whether the magnitude
of its power will eclipse the light by which it was founded, or
whether it will use its power to serve greater light. Does it seek
mastery to dominate or mastery to serve?
This is a crucially important distinction and question. If it uses
its power to build democracy at a global level with the same
genius with which it built democracy at the national level, the United States
could leave a legacy so powerful that the world will become knitted
into a singularity of democracy and freedom. The possibility for a
successor empire could then be superseded by the demands of a single
global system.
To achieve this task, America must consciously view itself as a transitional empire, one whose destiny at the moment of global power is to midwife a democratically governed global system. Its great challenge is not to dominate but to catalyze. It must see its historic task as that
of using its great strength and democratic heritage to establish the
integrating institutions and mechanisms necessary for the effective
management of the emerging global system such that its own power is
subsumed by the very edifice it helps to build.
Wilson established the League of Nations. Roosevelt and Truman established
a new world order during and after World War II. It must now be done
again. If it attains this level of greatness, America could be the
final empire, for what it will have bequeathed to the world is a democratic
and integrated global system in which empire will no longer have a
place or perform a role.
This is the challenge before America: to manifest a destiny of both
light and power at the level of global affairs. It is ultimately a
challenge about how high it will cast its sights, about what kind of
vision it will manifest as it leads in an integrating world fraught
with crises. The deep question is whether Americans have the political and moral intention to rise to this occasion and whether the world
will accept the leadership that America then provides.
Jim Garrison is president of the State
of the World Forum, which he
cofounded with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1995. Garrison has written six
books on various aspects of philosophical theology and history, including
Civilization and the Transformation of Power (2000). His most recent
book, America as Empire, from which the above article is excerpted,
came out in January 2004.
