10 lessons on empire

Your whole article "overplays the parallels between Britain and the United States." While I disagree with many of the decisions and actions we've made as a powerful nation, I fail to understand what makes the United States an empire. Over whom do we rule? Where are our repressed colonies? Puerto Rico? Guam? Doesn't being an empire mean you have to have one? Where's ours?

The "evil British" are popularly resented to this very day for trying to subjugate Iran. Since the 1953 coup, America (which until then was thought of as a benign or even beneficent world power) stepped into the role of the conniving British, and nationalistic resentment has been building sense then. Sad to see the US taking the same place as the British with respect to Iran, in opposition to Iranian nationalistic sentiment, and ultimately contrary to the long term interests of the US itself too. Example: Iran's nuclear program has become a nationalistic rallying point, appealling to people across the political spectrum, even regime opponents.

if US stops being the empire, what would come next for the rest of the planet (us)? China? I prefere Robert Mcnamara incompetence that the best of the mandarins ruling my live.

We had some colonial territories -- Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, some others. Mostly they are independent now. Modern empire is economic and decentralized. And yes, the current one could fall. The history of it will be very different from that of Britain or Rome (each very different from the other themselves). There may be some parallels. But they'll be parallels across differing realms of activity.

"Globalization" can be considered a form of Empire. If it were not in the favor of the West or developed nations you can be certain it would not be done. It is a way to extract the resources out of developing nations cheaply, mainly for the benefit of the US -- we suck the most Oil.

True Globalization would mean easy movement of not just Capital worldwide also Labour.

When I see the developed nations agree to take down all immigration barriers, I will agree that we are getting a non-imperialistic version of Globalization.

Some of the people posting here have convinced me that indeed we don't have an Empire in the traditional sense of the word. We just behave as though we do -- we behave as though we can dictate to any country what they can and cannot do.

The entire World is our Empire.

Usually this works out best in piss-poor countries that are already weak -- we have never messed with any country remotely approaching our own strength.

Why? Mainly because we are a nation of ignorant, impressionable cowards. Both our elite and our people, do not feel safe unless we are using our vast economic, technological and military power in a destructive, yet irrationally 'reassuring' fashion.

We are not happy unless we are working hard at destroying some sorry, irrelevant, dirt poor peasant country (Vietnam, Angola, Nicaragua, Panama, Greneda, Afghanistan, Pakistan....).

Why? Because we have the right to rule as we see fit over our Empire -- The United States of the World.

Unlike the British, we will never work to really improve other nations that we try to dominate -- nor will we ever try to live there and understand them. The British had a much more charitable and enlightened version of Empire than our paranoiac-arrogant serial destruction of 3rd world nations.

In his classic history of ancient Rome, Gibbon had noted that "There is nothing more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to their inclination and interest." Britons thought of the empire as a positive force for themselves and their subjects, even though they had to slaughter thousands of their imperial subjects in order to maintain their control. Americans should be under no illusions either: if you maintain garrisons all over the world and repeatedly interfere in the internal politics of other countries, you are inevitably going to end up breaking a lot of heads.

This is true. I personally wish we could dispense with any type of self-righteous, self-serving propaganda, and simply say, bluntly, what we're up to, but apparently that doesn't fly in today's world anymore.

British imperialists repeatedly portrayed their role as the "white man's burden" and maintained that imperial control brought considerable benefits to their subjects. (This is an old story: France proclaimed its mission civilizatrice, and the Soviet empire claimed it was spreading the benefits of communism. Today, Americans say we are spreading freedom and liberty). Brendon's account describes the various benefits of imperial rule, but also emphasizes the profound social disruptions that imperial rule caused in India, Africa, and elsewhere. Moreover, because British control often depended on strategies of "divide-and-conquer," its rule often left its colonies deeply divided and ill-prepared for independence. But that's not what English citizens were told at the time.

See, this is what I don't particularly understand - why should this all be necessary? Considering that we live in the anarchy of nations, it should be enough to say "We're a nation-state that has various interests that need protecting, so we're going to do what we need to do to protect them." Sort of like how Bush Sr. more or less said back in 1991 that it was unacceptable to have 20% of the world's oil supply under Saddam's control.

Apparently, though, nations can't openly act on self-serving interest anymore - they have to wrap it up in some rather unctuous self-righteous nonsense.

One can only hope the next hegemon is more honest. It would be a major step forward.

Although the British did worry a lot about their reputation and prestige (what one might now term their "soft power") what really killed the Empire was its eroding economic position. Once Britain ceased to be the world’s major economic and industrial power, its days as an imperial power were numbered. It simply couldn't maintain the ships, the men, the aircraft, and the economic leverage needed to rule millions of foreigners, especially in a world where other rapacious great powers preyed. The moral for Americans? It is far more important to maintain a robust and productive economy here at home than it is to squander billions of dollars trying to determine the political fate of some remote country thousands of miles away. External conditions may impinge on U.S. power, but it is internal conditions that generate it.

True, but this usually takes you back to the main question of why states built these empires in the first place. It certainly wasn't for money - Great Britain suffered net losses in every colony except India, and India's revenue was by no means enough to make up for the rest of the net loss.

Brendon's description of the British Empire Exposition at Wembley in 1924-1925 is both slightly comical and bittersweet; with cracks increasingly evident in the imperial façade, Britain put on a lavish show designed to bind the colonies together and highlight its continuing glory. Moral: when you hear U.S. politicians glorifying America's historical world role, get worried.

I'm slightly skeptical of this point. America has had this type of rhetoric since at least World War 2, when we were at the pinnacle of our power in terms of relative strength.

The British empire was not a uniform enterprise; the various bits and piece were acquired at different times and in different ways, and the relationship between London and the different components was far from uniform. One could say the same thing for America's less formal global "empire": its relationship with NATO is different than the alliance with Japan, or the client states in the Middle East, or the bases at Diego Garcia or Guantanamo. An empire is not one thing.

This is why I hesitate to call the US dominion an "empire", because, strictly speaking, we don't control anything. We have client regimes, but so does every other major state.

Yet we could control things, if we wanted to. We could simply seize the oil-rich province that contains most of the Saudi oil fields, and extract it ourselves. But we don't, because it's cheaper to trade those resources rather than govern them.

Great powers like to portray themselves as "civilized" societies with superior moral and ethical standards, but realists know better. Like other empires, Britain used its technological superiority without restraint, whether in the form of naval power, the Maxim gun, airplanes, high explosive, or poison gas., and the British showed scant regard for the effects of this superior technology on their "uncivilized" targets. Today, the United States uses Predators and Reapers and smart bombs. Plus ca change ...

This is true, but I'd argue there is some degree of difference. The US has been far more lenient in many ways in dealing with the respective insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan than many states have done in the past - compare the US suppression of the insurgency with what the British did in Iraq in the 1920s in response to a major uprising.

Britain's supposedly "liberal" empire contained a deep contradiction: a society that emphasized individual liberties could not hold in bondage whole societies and deny the inhabitants independence. Once nationalism took root in the colonies (intermingled with other tribal and/or religious identities), resistance to imperial rule increased apace. As the United States is now discovering in Iraq and Central Asia, most peoples don’t like taking orders from well-armed foreigners, even when the foreigners keep telling them that their aims are benevolent.

That's only if you don't make a distinction between a state's responsibility to its citizens and that of other people. A state should be responsible to its citizens, first and foremost, and protect their interests even if it sometimes requires dirty work.

Great Britain remains in influential force in world affairs, if anything batting slightly above its weight, and is more secure now than at any time in its modern history.

Yeah, but the British had the advantage of a rising power stepping into their shoes just as they were finally being pushed out of the empire business in the form of the US. How would they be if that hadn't happened?

It's entirely possible, too. Had the Soviets not been so aggressive about trying to push and protect client regimes in Europe (up to and including active subversion attempts in Western Europe), the US might have fallen back into an isolationist sleep. How would the British have been then, in a situation where much of their security in the sea and world would still be dependent on their much reduced resources?

yummy!

the british empire maybe gone, but unlike the romans, the english people are just fine without it:). follow gently, americans!

If the US people are able to value those remaining sections of The Constitution and the Bill of Rights that have not yet been eroded, probably never to return, then they should also try and value the following three extracts from wiser men than we have seen in this administration. ( As for the previous administration, the less said the better )

George Washington in his Farewell Address

“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.”

George Washington again

“The nation which indulges toward another habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interests."

Thomas Jefferson

"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none."

"Entangling alliances with none"
Sadly, no one is listening, Thomas. Israel has the government you helped establish by the throat.

Actually, re-reading, I guess I've been a touch too prickly. I suppose technically you can get away with your Englandish uses.

Though, would you agree that Britianish words would have been more accurate?

The British Empire is a curious example: Didn’t Bismarck say if the British Army landed in Germany he would send apoliceman to arrest it? Granted the “hard power of the British was the superior to most any potential opposition in the Empire. But it was minimal comared to what the Contintal countries were spending for non-imperialon defense.

Note:

The current Indian Army is four to five times the size of the Imperial garrison.
The Pakistani army is about two to three times the size of the Imperial garrison.
The Bangladesh Army is about half the size of the Imperial garrison.

If the British had a problem on the subcontinent they could draw forces from other parts of the Empire and when problems existed elsewhere they could draw on the Imperial garrison in India. But since the current governments of these countries have no guarantee of large scale outside reinforcements, they must maintain a larger force than the old Imperial Garrison. Even if Partition did not happen, the Army would not be as large as the three combined, but it would still be notably larger than old Imperial garrison.

I think a case could be made that an Empire provides an “economy of scale” on hard power that allows the Empire as a whole to maintain less “ample” hard power than would maintained in aggregate if the if there was not an empire.

This allowed for a lower tax base and economic benefits across the Empire. When the Boer War, WWI, and WWII required the use of huge hard power assets that consumed the benefits and caused serious strain that helped bring the Empire down.

The dichotomy, An empire like any political unit, needs the threat of the use of force and it’s occasional use. But if it must avoid situations that that increase the costs beyond the efficiencies gained. Something much easier written than done.

One thing that explains the course (or intended course) of imperial policing actions was the desire to keep it short and cheap, which often meant short and violent.