American Empire

A Debate

Christopher Layne, Bradley A. Thayer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• eBook ISBN: 9781135928421
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In this short, accessible book Layne and Thayer argue the merits and demerits of an American empire. With few, if any, rivals to its supremacy, the United States has made an explicit commitment to maintaining and advancing its primacy in the world. But what exactly are the benefits of American hegemony and what are the costs and drawbacks for this fledgling empire? After making their best cases for and against an American empire, subsequent chapters allow both authors to respond to the major arguments presented by their opponents and present their own counter arguments.

1

The Case for the American Empire

BRADLEY A. THAYER

Countries and people are a lot alike. They have interests, objects that they love and want to protect against dangers and threats. They make choices about what they want to accomplish, and they strive to develop the means—ability, friends, or money—to help them reach their goals despite pitfalls and adversity. Just like people, countries come in all types. Some are rich and some are poor. Some are powerful and some are not. Some have great potential that has not yet been realized. They have a conception of their desires and interests, and how to advance them. This is the essence of grand strategy.

This book is about the grand strategy of the United States—the role Washington chooses to play in international politics. Some states have the freedom to vary their degree of involvement in the world, and the United States is one such state. It chooses to be the world leader, to maximize its interaction with the world; but it could choose to reduce its involvement and become isolationist if it so desired. Grand strategy is about these types of choices.

Grand strategy explains three things: the interests of states, the threats to those interests within international politics, and the means to advance interests while protecting against threats. The United States has interests, such as protecting the American people against threats, such as terrorists or nuclear war, and it has the means to do so because it procures a military: an air force, army, navy, and marine corps. It also has many allies who help it advance and protect its interests.

While all states have grand strategies, they differ in their means to advance their interests in the face of threats. France has greater means than Bangladesh. The United States has the greatest means. In fact, the United States finds itself in a special position in international politics: by almost any measure—economic, ideological, military—it leads the world. It is the dominant state, the hegemon, in international politics. If you stop and think a moment, it is really remarkable that 6 percent of the world’s population and 6 percent of its land mass has the world’s most formidable military capabilities, creates about 25 to 30 percent of the gross world product, and both attracts and provides the most foreign direct investment of any country. If it were a person, it would have the wealth of Microsofi chairman Bill Gates or entrepreneur Donald Trump; its military would have the punch of a heavyweight boxer like Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson; its charisma and charm would equal those of a movie star such as Cary Grant or George Clooney; and it would have as many friends, hangers on, and potential suitors as Frank Sinatra did at one time or as Oprah or Britney spears do now.

This book is a debate about the rightful place of the United States in the world. What are America’s interests in the world? how should it use its power to advance those interests? is America’s preeminent place in international politics a force for good in the world? i argue that it is.

Thinking about America’s grand strategy is important for two major reasons. First, it affects all Americans and, indeed, people the world over from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. In sum, you may not be interested in America’s grand strategy, but America’s grand strategy may be interested in you. If you are an American, it influences you by determining whether you fight in a war, how you fight it, and with whom. It affects America’s economy, and that makes it easier for you to find employment or to keep you from employment. So it is important for Americans to think about the role their country plays in the world and whether they believe it to be the right one. People in other countries are also influenced by how America acts, the countries it sees as allies and enemies, as well as by what countries and resources it chooses to defend. The American people derive much benefit from America’s predominant place in the world but it also entails significant costs. While i believe that the benefits outweigh the costs, at the end of the day it is for the American people as a whole to decide if that is so.

Second, understanding grand strategy—and specifically primacy—permits a more sophisticated consideration of why America acts in world politics, as it does, what it values, and what it will defend. When you grasp America’s grand strategy, you are able to predict how the United States will behave in the future and answer many questions, including why the United States acts essentially the same way in international politics in democratic and republican administrations. While there are differences, both democrats and republicans want a strong American military, economic, and political presence in the world. Both are willing to use force to defend America’s interests. The Clinton administration intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo, as the Bush administration did in Iraq. You can also see why the United States has military and intelligence bases in more countries now than when we faced the threat from the soviet Union during the Cold War, and why the United States wants to keep those bases. Understanding the American grand strategy of primacy grants you the ability to perceive what America’s vital interests are and the threats to those interests and to predict how the United States will act against threats to maintain its key interests.

Because it is such an important subject that touches on what America’s interests ought to be, Americans disagree about grand strategy. There are three major schools of thought: isolationism, selective engagement, and primacy. Proponents of isolationism argue that the United States should withdraw from involvement in international politics and devote more resources to domestic social problems.¹ Selective engagement submits that the United States should only possess sufficient strength to defend the centers of economic might in the world, principally Europe and northeast Asia.² Advocates of primacy assent that the United States should be the major power in international politics and must keep its preponderant position in international politics by maintaining its military and economic strength.³

My argument fits into the primacy school of thought. I advance my argument in three sections. First, I examine the motivation and spirit of the American Empire from its inception. I submit that its origins date to the founding of the country. The desire to spread the influence of the United States filled the spirits of the Founding Fathers. Second, I address the question: Can America remain dominant in the world? I argue that it can for the foreseeable future. Third, I consider the critical issue: Should America strive to retain its prominent place in global politics? I submit it should indeed do so because it is the right action for the United States at this point in its history.

The Spirit of the American Empire: More the Expansion of Ideas and Influence than of Territory

Is America an empire? yes, it is. An empire is a state that surpasses all others in capabilities and sense of mission.⁴ An empire usually exceeds others in capabilities such as the size of its territory and material resources. Its capabilities are much greater than the average or norm prevailing in the international system.

Second, an empire has worldwide interests. Its interests are coterminous with boundaries of the system itself, and the interests are defended directly by the imperial states or by client states. That is, there is literally almost nothing that does not concern the United States; from Paraguay to Nepal, or Sweden to new Zealand, the United States has interests there it seeks to protect. As the comedian Jeff Foxworthy would put: “you know you are an empire when….” You know you are an empire when other states cannot ignore you and must acquiesce to your interests, but you do not have to satisfy theirs. Other states, willingly or not, define their positions, roles, or actions in relation to the imperial power, rather than to their neighbors or other states. Diplomats in New Delhi first worry about “What will Washington think?” rather than “What will Islamabad, or Kabul, or Harare, think?”

Third, empires always have a mission they seek to accomplish—this is usually creating, and then maintaining, a world order. The details of the world order broadly match the interests of the imperial state. For Rome, it was obedience to the senate and people of rome. For France, it was Catholicism, French political control, and French language and culture. For the United States, it has been a free economic order, democracy, and human rights.

While almost the entire world agrees that the United States is an empire, it is not according to American leaders. They almost never use the “E word.” It is as if they had never heard the word “empire.” They prefer to speak of American “leadership,” or “direction,” “the key role of the United States” in the Western “community” or “civilization.”

Of course, it is not surprising that American leaders suffer a memory lapse when it comes to the word empire. They choose not to use it because it does not help to achieve the grand strategic goals of the United States. To do so would make their lives more difficult because it would aid resistance to the American Empire. For an American president or senior official to state that America is an empire would only help to organize resistance to it. To say it is an empire might cause the American people to question whether or not they want one. To say it plainly would only help those who do not wish the American Empire well.

After all, there is a reason a used car salesman calls a used car a “pre-owned” one. Both buyer and seller know the car is used. But using the euphemism “pre-owned” helps both. For the seller, it helps to focus the buyer’s attention away from some of the unpleasant consequences of owning a “used” car, and the buyer benefits because he thinks he is getting something better than a “used” vehicle.

Accordingly, American leaders are right not to call attention to the American Empire, as this would only increase balancing forces against it, and thus would ultimately be damaging to its continuation. Also, not mentioning the word helps to ensure that U.S. political leaders are careful not to be gratuitously arrogant or boastful. The leaders of the United States seem to be following the advice of French statesmen in the wake of the Franco–Prussian War. The French defeat caused it to lose important territory—the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine—to Germany. The French claimed that it was the duty of French statesmen and citizens to “think of them always, but speak of them never.” So it is with the American Empire. American leaders and the American foreign policy community must labor mightily to ensure the expansion and maintenance of the American Empire, but they should never tout or gratuitously boast of it: “think of it always, but speak of it never.”

While American leaders may not use the “E word,” plenty of others do— from all around the world. In fact, in 1998, French foreign minister Hubert Védrine found that “superpower” was too weak a word to describe the power of the United States, so he created a word, “hyperpower,” to describe its formidable capabilities. The French are not the only ones to notice. The Chinese leadership’s warnings of the risks of one country becoming too powerful are as constant and rhythmic as a drumbeat. Not to be left behind, worldwide media such as the BBC and al Jazeera television lament the unpleasantness of living in a world dominated by Uncle Sam’s Empire.

America Is a Unique Empire

The answer to the question is yes, America is an empire, but it is a unique empire. When we consider the subject, we realize that each empire is different in scope, in size, and in its place in history, but the United States is the most singular of all empires. It certainly is not an empire in the traditional sense of a country that occupies others. It is true that America has gained a lot of territory. The United States has expanded greatly since its founding in 1776, and it has occupied other countries, but most of its territory it acquired peaceably from the French (1803), Mexicans (1853), Russians (1867), or Hawaiians (1898), and its territorial expansion stopped at around 1900. In fact, after becoming a strong country, America’s desire and need to occupy territory was less than when it was weaker, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While it has occupied countries, such as Japan and parts of Germany, after World War ii, its occupations were short—certainly if you compare the American Empire to all others, including the British and roman, which occupied lands for hundreds of years.

Then, in what sense is America an empire? What unites any empire is control over weaker states or, before there were states, other political units like tribes. That was true of all the great empires in the past—Athens, Alexander the Great’s Macedonia, Byzantium, Carthage, China, Rome, France, Great Britain, Mongol, Ottoman, Portugal, Russia, Spain—and it is true of the United States now. Other empires sought direct control over other political units (states or city-states like Athens or Carthage), and, once gained, maintained and spread their control. Think of Rome controlling through occupation the known world or Spain occupying almost all of the New World after 1492.

As Table 1.1 indicates, the United States is like those empires because, fundamentally, every empire is concerned with control—it wants its goals realized and its interests preserved. But in most respects—and these are more important than the similarities — the United States is not like those empires. Table 1.1 explains the important differences with respect to the type of rule, the need for territorial and ideological expansion, the openness of its economic system, the degree to which the imperial state uses its own military forces to conduct wars or fight with allied states, and the amount of interaction between its military—for training and education—and other militaries. This last point is particularly important because few Americans realize that their military is a “mini-State Department.” It conducts its own diplomacy with the militaries of other countries and works to train and educate them, as well as to learn from them, to benefit the foreign and American militaries.

The preferred instrument of the United States is to control indirectly, through countries that share its ideology and want to align their country with the United States. Now, keep in mind that the United States is no shrinking violet of a country. It will not shy from using its “hard power”—its military or economic might—when it must. Examples of hard power include imposing economic sanctions on countries or attacking them. The United States is certainly willing to use hard power. It has invaded Panama, liberated Kuwait, intervened in Bosnia, fought a war with Serbia over Kosovo, and invaded Iraq since the end of the Cold War. But it prefers to use “soft power,” because soft power is the most effective way of influencing countries over a long period of time. Think of soft power as getting others to do what you want through the attractiveness of the political ideas of the United States and its culture.⁵ If countries share the same goals and have the same expectations about international politics, then cooperation between them will be easier.

Table 1.1 A Comparison of Traditional Empires with the American Empire

The American Empire differs from other empires because, most often, the United States is concerned with influencing the foreign policies of other states, principally leaving their domestic policies alone. For example, Washington sets the tone for most of the 26 countries of the NATO alliance, as well as Australia, Japan, the Philippines, south Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. There are differences, to be sure, and at times these can be quite vociferous; for example, consider the strong French objections to the invasion of Iraq. But most of the time the foreign policies of these states dovetail with the United state’s political goals. Because of the strains in America’s relations with France and Germany caused by the Iraq war, Americans often forget that the French, Germans, and other NATO allies have soldiers in Afghanistan who fight alongside Afghani and American soldiers.

The United States seeks to maintain control not through occupation of territory but through other means, such as expanding its ideology of democracy and free market economics; it freely permits access to its economy by other countries. And it will, if necessary, threaten the use of military force to protect and advance its interests, and if required, it will use force for those ends. Occasionally, it will act explicitly like other empires and occupy other countries. Recently, it has occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. In the past, it has occupied many countries, including the Dominican republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, and the Philippines.

But the United States is a unique empire. It is very different from all of those that have come before. The American Empire stands in marked contrast even to the British Empire, with whom it shares an ideology and economic system. It is not interested in the expansion of territorial control by conquering territory and imposing colonial rule. It is interested in promoting the political and economic well being of its allies. Of course, the American Empire stands in even greater contrast to the world’s other empires, most of which were principally interested in exploiting their colonies as efficiently and rapidly as possible.

In September 1943, in a speech given at Harvard University, Winston Churchill made a remarkable comment about the future of imperial power: “The empires of the future,” he said, “are the empires of the mind.” That is the American Empire. It does not covet territory or resources. It covets ideas. The American Empire is an empire of ideas, and its ideas are those that led to its founding in 1776. These ideas are the “spirit of 1776.”

The Spirit of 1776

If the United...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• 1: The Case for the American Empire
• 2: The Case Against the American Empire
• 3: Reply to Christopher Layne
• 4: Reply to Bradley Thayer
• Suggested Reading