The Reluctant Empire: The U.S. leads the world — but doesn't have to rule it

Is America an empire? This simple question elicits astonishingly passionate answers. Those who argue that the Pax Americana is effectively an imperium generally do so in a somewhat shamefaced way. They are quick to point out that it is a very different empire from European empires of the 19th century -- for example, it has no colonies (apart from a handful of islands in the South Pacific). This makes it, in the current euphemism, "an empire of freedom." On the other hand, those who deny that America is an empire make exactly the same point: How can America be an empire, if it has no colonies? In this view, what the U.S. has constructed is a set of alliances and trade agreements that link America with other countries by trade, migration, investment, and diplomacy. To call these mutually beneficial and acceptable arrangements an empire, however "informal," is simply a misuse of language.

One can argue around these points indefinitely. If the U.S. has no colonies, what exactly are Indian reservations? Americans have been able to convince themselves that they were good anti-imperialists because they had swallowed (or found convenient) the "blue-water fallacy" that ignored imperial conquest and occupation over land, reserving the terms "imperialism" and "colonialism" for overseas possessions. Thus, the Philippines were a colony and the U.S. got rid of it pretty smartly, but Arizona and New Mexico are states, and therefore a permanent part of the Union unless Mexican immigration and the Reconquista movement change local sentiments. (That seems highly unlikely, but it is largely how the U.S. acquired Texas.)

But these are debating points. The more important point is that imperialism is an abstraction and that actual empires differ greatly. The Belgian Congo was a vile political exploitation akin to mass slavery or the work camps of 20th-century totalitarianisms. The British Empire, despite its flaws, was generally an improvement on what had gone before. Not a single territory taken and ruled by the British had been a democracy beforehand; furthermore, as the Empire expanded, slavery contracted.

Since empires differ, if we are to judge their worth, we must ask such questions as: Do the imperialists aim at the eventual independence of their subject peoples -- or regard them as permanent possessions? Do they treat their colonies economically as targets of mercantilist exploitation -- or do they seek to develop them economically via free trade and inward investment? Do they gradually introduce mechanisms for self-government, permit rule by traditional local structures, and respect local customs -- or do they impose entirely alien rule?

As Niall Ferguson points out in his recent book, Empire, the British succeeded in bringing people into the modern world and world market -- he calls the Empire "Anglobalization" -- because they educated their subject peoples as much as ruled them. Broadly speaking, they neither imposed modernity on native peoples nor sought to keep them in a primitive or backward state. What they did was open up their societies to the outside world, to trade, to new ideas and techniques, to new economic opportunities, and eventually to development and a gradual embrace of modernity. These changes exposed the contradiction at the heart of a liberal empire -- or "empire of freedom" -- namely, that as the imperial subjects become educated, they wish to enjoy full political rights. So the empire must either democratize or die. The British wrestled with this problem at the beginning of the 20th century, when Joseph Chamberlain proposed to turn the Empire into a single economy that could eventually become an imperial federation. But the demographic logic of this was that India would end up ruling England -- and 100 years ago that was not really thinkable. As a result, the British Empire gradually dissolved itself, mainly peacefully, into a series of independent states loosely linked in a Commonwealth that is a fraternal international association rather than a directly political one.

An American empire -- supposing one to exist -- would probably resemble the British one more than any other. In the first place, the political ideas animating it would be shaped by essentially the same liberal political culture. Secondly, as an island continent, America has the same immunity from sudden invasion as Britain enjoyed because of the English Channel. It therefore enjoys the consequences of this immunity: a secure home base from which to expand via the sea and a strong navy, and a moralizing puritan tradition in foreign policy. And, thirdly, the impetus for imperial expansion is the same in both cases -- namely, trade.

It was Palmerston, the fire-breathing liberal imperialist of the mid- 19th century, who articulated the case for an American empire when he issued the following prescription for the British: "Trade without the flag where possible; trade with the flag where necessary." Palmerston in the Opium War and Commodore Perry in Japan both used naval power to force the opening of markets to trade and their exports. Neither wanted to occupy and formally rule either China or Japan; they would have regarded such an imperialist venture as expensive, unnecessary, and likely to stretch their local power to its breaking point. Empire consisted instead of a series of ad hoc arrangements: colonies like Australia founded by British settlers; territories conquered and administered by the Crown, such as Ghana; coaling-stations like Aden, acquired to enable the Royal Navy to protect the sea lanes; and so on. Some of these were the work of local adventurers and entrepreneurs, who seized territory that the Colonial Office would have much preferred not to acquire. But the main imperial structure was formed by trade, and by the need to protect trade from threats as various as pirates and local wars.