Niall Ferguson
The unconscious colossus:
limits of (& alternatives to) American empire
What is an empire? In the words of
one of the few modern historians to at-
tempt a genuinely comparative study of
empires, it is
First and foremost, a very great power
that has left its mark on the internation-
al relations of an era . . . a polity that rules
over wide territories and many peoples,
since the management of space and multi-
ethnicity is one of the great perennial di-
lemmas of empire . . . . An empire is by def-
inition . . . not a polity ruled with the ex-
plicit consent of its peoples . . . . [Ma] by
a process of assimilation of peoples and
democratization of institutions empires
can transform themselves into multina-
tional federations or even nation states.1
It is possible to be still more precise
than this. In the table below, I have at-
tempted a simple typology intended to
capture the diversity of forms that can
be subsumed under the heading em-
pire. Note that the table should be read
as a menu rather than as a grid. For ex-
Niall Ferguson is professor of history at Harvard
Università, senior fellow of the Hoover Institution,
and senior research fellow of Jesus College, Ox-
ford. His latest book is “Colossus: The Price of
America’s Empire” (2004).
ample, an empire could be an oligarchy
at home, aiming to acquire raw materials
from abroad, thereby increasing interna-
tional trade, using mainly military meth-
ods, imposing a market economy, serv-
ing the interests of its ruling elite, E
fostering a hierarchical social character.
Another empire might be a democracy at
casa, aiming to ensure security, provid-
ing peace as a public good, ruling mainly
through ½rms and ngos, promoting a
mixed economy, serving the interests of
all inhabitants, and fostering an assim-
ilative social character.
The ½rst column reminds us that im-
perial power can be acquired by more
than one type of political system. IL
self-interested objectives of imperial
expansion (second column) range from
the fundamental need to ensure the se-
curity of the metropolis by imposing
order on enemies at its (initial) borders,
to the collection of rents and taxation
from subject peoples, to say nothing of
the perhaps more obvious prizes of new
land for settlement, raw materials, trea-
sure, and manpower–all of which, Esso
should be emphasized, would need to
be available at prices lower than those
established in free exchange with inde-
pendent peoples if the cost of conquest
© 2005 by Niall Ferguson
1 Dominic Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire
and Its Rivals (London: John Murray, 2000), xiv.
18
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Limits of
(& alter-
natives to)
American
empire
Tavolo 1
An imperial typology
Metropolitan
system
Self-interested
objectives
Public goods
Methods of
rule
Economic
system
Cui bono?
Sociale
character
Tyranny
Sicurezza
Peace
Military
Plantation
Ruling elite
Genocidal
Aristocracy
Oligarchy
Democracy
Communi-
cations
Land
Raw
materiali
Trade
Bureaucracy
Feudal
Investment
Settlement
Mercantilist
Legge
ngos
Market
Governance
Firms
Mixed
Treasure
Education
Manpower
Conversion
Delegation
to local
elites
Planned
Gerarchico
Converting
Assimilative
Metro-
politan
populace
Settlers
Local elites
Tutto
inhabitants
Rents
Health
Taxation
and colonization were to be justi½ed.2
Allo stesso tempo, an empire may provide
public goods–that is, intended or unin-
tended bene½ts of imperial rule flowing
not to the rulers but to the ruled and be-
yond to third parties: less conflict, more
trade or investment, improved justice
or governance, better education (Quale
may or may not be associated with reli-
gious conversion, something we would
not nowadays regard as a public good),
or improved material conditions.
The fourth column tells us that impe-
rial rule can be implemented by more
than one kind of functionary: soldiers,
civil servants, settlers, voluntary associa-
zioni, ½rms, and local elites can in differ-
ent ways impose the will of the center on
the periphery. There are almost as many
varieties of imperial economic systems,
2 For an attempt at a formal economic theory
of empire, see Herschel I. Grossman and Juan
Mendoza, “Annexation or Conquest? The Eco-
nomics of Empire Building,” nber Working
Paper No. 8109 (Febbraio 2001).
ranging from slavery to laissez-faire,
from one form of serfdom (feudalism)
to another (the planned economy).
Nor is it by any means a given that the
bene½ts of empire should flow simply
to the metropolitan society. It may only
be the elites of that society–or colonists
drawn from lower income groups in the
metropole, or subject peoples, or the
elites within subject societies–that reap
the bene½ts of empire.
Finalmente, the social character of an em-
pire–to be precise, the attitudes of the
rulers toward the ruled–may vary. A
one extreme lies the genocidal empire
of National Socialist Germany, intent on
the annihilation of speci½c ethnic groups
and the deliberate degradation of others.
At the other extreme lies the Roman Em-
pire, in which citizenship was obtainable
under certain conditions regardless of
ethnicity. In the middle lies the Victori-
an Empire, in which inequalities of
wealth and status were mitigated by a
general (though certainly not unquali-
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Niall
Ferguson
SU
imperialism
½ed) principle of equality before the law.
The precise combination of all these var-
iables determines, among other things,
the geographical extent–and of course
the duration–of an empire.
All told, there have been no more than
seventy empires in history, if The Times
Atlas of World History is to be believed.
The question is whether the United
States should be numbered among them.
Applying the typology set out in the ta-
ble, it is certainly not dif½cult to charac-
terize the United States as an empire. It
goes without saying that it is a liberal de-
mocracy and market economy (Anche se
its polity has some illiberal characteris-
tic, and its economy a surprisingly high
level of state intervention). It is primari-
ly concerned with its own security and
maintaining international communica-
tions and, secondarily, with ensuring
access to raw materials. It is also in the
business of providing a limited number
of public goods: peace, by intervening
against some bellicose regimes and in
some civil wars; freedom of the seas and
skies for trade; and a distinctive form of
conversion usually called Americaniza-
zione, which is carried out less by old-
style Christian missionaries than by the
exporters of American consumer goods
and entertainment. Its methods of for-
mal rule are primarily military in charac-
ter; its methods of informal rule rely
heavily on corporations and nongovern-
mental organizations and, in some cases,
local elites.
Who bene½ts from this empire? Some
would argue, with the economist Paul
Krugman, that only its wealthy elite
does–speci½cally, that part of its weal-
thy elite associated with the Republican
Party and the oil industry.3 The conven-
3 Paul Krugman, The Great Unraveling: Losing
Our Way in the New Century (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2003).
tional wisdom on the Left is that the
United States uses its power, wittingly or
unwittingly, to shore up the position of
American corporations and the regimes
(usually corrupt and authoritarian) Quello
are willing to do the same.4 The losers
are the impoverished majorities in the
developing world. Others would claim
that many millions of people around the
world have bene½ted in some way from
the existence of America’s empire (non
least the Western Europeans, Japanese,
and South Koreans who were able to
prosper during the Cold War under the
protection of the American empire by
invitation); and that the economic los-
ers of the post–Cold War era, particular-
ly in sub-Saharan Africa, are victims not
of American power, but of its absence.
For the American empire is limited in its
extent: It conspicuously lacks the vora-
cious appetite for territorial expansion
overseas that characterized the empires
of the Western European seaboard. Even
when it conquers, it resists annexation–
one reason why the durations of its off-
shore imperial undertakings have tended
to be, and will in all probability continue
to be, relatively short.
How different is the American empire
from previous empires? Like the ancient
Egyptian Empire, it erects towering edi-
½ces in its heartland, though these house
the living rather than the dead. Like the
Athenian Empire, it has proved adept at
leading alliances against rival powers.
Like the empire of Alexander, it has stag-
gering geographical range. Like the Chi-
nese Empire that arose in the Chi’in era
and reached its zenith under the Ming
dynasty, it has united the lands and peo-
ples of a vast territory and has forged
4 For two recent diatribes, see Michael Mann,
Incoherent Empire (London: Verso, 2003), E
Chalmers A. Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire:
Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004).
20
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Limits of
(& alter-
natives to)
American
empire
them into a nation. Like the Roman
Empire, it has a system of citizenship
that is remarkably open: Purple Hearts
and U.S. citizenship were conferred
simultaneously on a number of the sol-
diers serving in Iraq last year, just as
service in the legions was once a route
to becoming a civis romanus. Infatti,
with the classical architecture of its
capital and the republican structure
of its constitution, the United States is
perhaps more like Rome than any previ-
ous empire–albeit a Rome in which the
Senate has thus far retained some hold
on would-be emperors. In its relation-
ship with Western Europe, pure, the Unit-
ed States can sometimes seem like a sec-
ond Rome.
Yet in its capacity for spreading its
own language and culture–at once
monotheistic and mathematical–the
United States also shares features of
the Abassid caliphate established by the
heirs of Mohammed. And though it is
sometimes portrayed as the heir as well
as the rebellious product of the Western
European empires that arose in the six-
teenth century and persisted until the
twentieth–in truth the United States
has as much, if not more, in common
with the great land empires of Central
and Eastern Europe. In practice, its polit-
ical structures are sometimes more remi-
niscent of Vienna or Berlin than they are
of the Hague, capital of the last great im-
perial republic, or London, hub of the
½rst Anglophone empire.
To those who would still insist on
American exceptionalism, the historian
of empires can only retort: as exception-
al as all the other sixty-nine empires.
It is perfectly acceptable to say in some
circles that the United States is an em-
pire–provided that you deplore the fact.
It is also acceptable to say in other circles
that American power is potentially bene-
½cent–provided that you do not de-
scribe it as imperial. What is not allowed
is to say that the United States is an em-
pire and that this might not be wholly
bad.
In my book Colossus, I set out to do just
Quello, and thereby succeeded in antago-
nizing both conservative and liberal crit-
ics. Conservatives repudiated my con-
tention that the United States is and, In-
deed, has always been an empire. Liber-
als were dismayed by my suggestion that
the American empire might have posi-
tive as well as negative attributes. As in
Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, so in the
United States today, it seems to be ex-
pected “That every boy and every gal /
That’s born into the world alive / Is
either a little Liberal, / Or else a little
Conservative!” But I am afraid my book
is neither. Here, in a simpli½ed form, È
what it says: that the United States has
always been, functionally if not self-con-
sciously, an empire; that a self-conscious
American imperialism might well be
preferable to the available alternatives;
but that ½nancial, human, and cultural
constraints make such self-conscious-
ness highly unlikely; and that therefore
the American empire, insofar as it con-
tinues to exist, will remain a somewhat
dysfunctional entity.
By self-conscious imperialism, please
note, I do not mean that the United
States should unabashedly proclaim it-
self an empire and its president an em-
peror. I merely mean that Americans
need to recognize the imperial charac-
teristics of their own power today and,
if possible, to learn from the achieve-
ments and failures of past empires. It
is no longer sensible to maintain the
½ction that there is something wholly
unique about the foreign relations of
the United States. The dilemmas that
America faces today have more in com-
mon with those of the later Caesars
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Niall
Ferguson
SU
imperialism
than with those of the Founding
Fathers.5
Allo stesso tempo, Tuttavia, the book
makes clear the grave perils of being an
“empire in denial.” Americans are not
wholly oblivious to the imperial role
their country plays in the world–but
they dislike it. “I think we’re trying to
run the business of the world too much,"
a Kansas farmer told the British author
Timothy Garton Ash in 2003, “like the
Romans used to.”6 To such feelings of
unease, American politicians respond
with a categorical reassurance: “We’re
not an imperial power,” declared Presi-
dent George W. Bush last April, “We’re
a liberating power.”7
Of all the misconceptions that need
to be dispelled here, this is perhaps
the most obvious: that simply because
Americans say they do not do empire,
there cannot be such a thing as Ameri-
can imperialism. As I write, American
troops are engaged in defending govern-
ments forcibly installed by the United
States in two distant countries, Afghan-
istan and Iraq. They are likely to be there
for some years to come; even President
Bush’s Democratic rival John Kerry
implied last September that if he were
elected, NOI. forces would be withdrawn
from Iraq within four years–not, In
other words, the day after his inaugura-
tion.8
5 It is symptomatic that John Lewis Gaddis
interprets the present predicament of the
United States with reference to John Quincy
Adams: Gaddis, Surprise, Sicurezza, and the Amer-
ican Experience (Cambridge, Massa.: Harvard
Stampa universitaria, 2004).
6 Timothy Garton Ash, Free World: Why a Cri-
sis of the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our
Time (London: Allen Lane, 2004), 102.
7 Text of President Bush’s speech, The New
York Times, April 13, 2004.
8 David M. Halb½nger and David E. Sanger,
Iraq, Tuttavia, is only the frontline of
an American imperium that, like all the
great world empires of history, aspires
to much more than just military domi-
nance along a vast and variegated strate-
gic frontier.9 On November 6, 2003, In
his speech to mark the twentieth anni-
versary of the National Endowment for
Democracy, President Bush set out a
vision of American foreign policy that,
for all its Wilsonian language, strongly
implied the kind of universal civilizing
mission that has been a feature of all the
great empires:
The United States has adopted a new poli-
cy, a forward strategy of freedom in the
Middle East . . . . The establishment of a
free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East
will be a watershed event in the global
democratic revolution . . . . The advance of
freedom is the calling of our time; it is the
calling of our country . . . . We believe that
liberty is the design of nature; we believe
that liberty is the direction of history. Noi
believe that human ful½llment and excel-
lence come in the responsible exercise of
liberty. And we believe that freedom–
the freedom we prize–is not for us alone,
it is the right and the capacity of all man-
kind.10
He restated this messianic credo in his
speech to the Republican National Con-
vention in September of 2004:
“Bush and Kerry Clash Over Iraq and a Time-
table," Il New York Times, settembre 7, 2004.
9 On the signi½cance of the frontier in imperial
history, see Charles S. Maier, Among Empires:
American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (forth-
coming).
10 Remarks by the president at the twentieth
anniversary of the National Endowment for
Democracy, novembre 6, 2003,
22
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Limits of
(& alter-
natives to)
American
empire
The story of America is the story of ex-
panding liberty: an ever-widening circle,
constantly growing to reach further and
include more. Our nation’s founding com-
mitment is still our deepest commitment:
In our world, and here at home, we will
extend the frontiers of freedom . . . . We are
working to advance liberty in the broader
Middle East because freedom will bring a
future of hope and the peace we all want
. . . . Freedom is on the march. I believe in
the transformational power of liberty:
The wisest use of American strength is
to advance freedom.11
To the majority of Americans, Esso
would appear, there is no contradiction
between the ends of global democratiza-
tion and the means of American military
power. As de½ned by their president, IL
democratizing mission of the United
States is both altruistic and distinct from
the ambitions of past empires, Quale (so
it is generally assumed) aimed to impose
their own rule on foreign peoples.
The dif½culty is that President Bush’s
ideal of freedom as a universal desidera-
tum rather closely resembles the Vic-
torian ideal of civilization. Freedom
means, on close inspection, the Ameri-
can model of democracy and capitalism;
when Americans speak of nation build-
ing, they actually mean state replicating,
in the sense that they want to build po-
litical and economic institutions that are
fundamentally similar to their own.12
They may not aspire to rule; but they do
aspire to have others rule themselves in
the American way.
Yet the very act of imposing freedom
simultaneously subverts it. Just as the
11 President Bush’s speech to the Republican
National Convention, The New York Times, Sep-
tember 2, 2004.
12 See Francis Fukuyama, State-Building: Gover-
nance and World Order in the 21st Century (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004).
Victorians seemed hypocrites when they
spread civilization with the Maxim gun,
so there is something ½shy about those
who would democratize Fallujah with
the Abrams tank. President Bush’s dis-
tinction between conquest and libera-
tion would have been entirely familiar
to the liberal imperialists of the early
1900S, who likewise saw Britain’s far-
flung legions as agents of emancipation
(not least in the Middle East during and
after World War I). Equally familiar to
that earlier generation would have been
the impatience of American of½cials to
hand over sovereignty to an Iraqi gov-
ernment sooner rather than later. Indi-
rect rule–which installed nominally
independent native rulers while leaving
British civilian administrators and mili-
tary forces in practical control of ½nan-
cial matters and military security–was
the preferred model for British colonial
expansion in many parts of Asia, Africa,
and the Middle East. Iraq itself was an
example of indirect rule after the Hashe-
mite dynasty was established there in
the 1920s.
The crucial question today is whether
or not the United States has the capabili-
ties, both material and moral, to make a
success of its version of indirect rule.
The danger lies in the inclination of
American politicians, eager to live up to
their own emancipatory rhetoric as well
as to bring the boys back home, to un-
wind their overseas commitments pre-
maturely–in short, to opt for premature
decolonization rather than sustained in-
direct rule. Unfortunately, history shows
that the most violent time in the history
of an empire often comes at the moment
of its dissolution, precisely because–as
soon as it has been announced–the
withdrawal of imperial troops unleashes
a struggle between rival local elites for
control of the indigenous armed forces.
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Niall
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imperialism
But is the very concept of empire an
anachronism? A number of critics have
argued that imperialism was a discreet
historical phenomenon that reached its
apogee in the late nineteenth century
and has been defunct since the 1950s.
“The Age of Empire is passed,” declared
The New York Times as L. Paul Bremer III
left Baghdad:
The experience of Iraq has demonstrated
. . . that when America does not disguise
its imperial force, when a proconsul leads
an “occupying power,” it is liable to ½nd
itself in an untenable position quickly
Abbastanza. There are three reasons: the peo-
ple being governed do not accept such a
form of rule, the rest of the world does not
accept it and Americans themselves do
not accept it.13
In supporting the claim that empire is
defunct, one reviewer of Colossus cited
nationalism as “a much more powerful
force now than it was during the heyday
of the Victorian era.”14 Another cited
“the tectonic changes wrought by inde-
pendence movements and ethnic and
religious politics in the years since the
end of World War II.”15 Meanwhile, UN
favorite argument of journalists is–per-
haps not surprisingly–that the power
of the modern media makes it impossi-
ble for empires to operate as they did in
the past, because their misdeeds are so
quickly broadcast to an indignant world.
Such arguments betray a touching
naivety about both the past and the pres-
ent. Primo, empire was no temporary con-
13 Roger Cohen, “‘Imperial America’ Retreats
from Iraq," Il New York Times, Luglio 4, 2004.
14 Daniel Drezner, “Bestriding the World, Sort
Di,” The Wall Street Journal, Giugno 17, 2004.
15 Michiko Kakutani, “Attention De½cit Disor-
der in a Most Peculiar Empire,” The New York
Times, May 21, 2004.
dition of the Victorian age. Empires, COME
we have seen, can be traced as far back as
recorded history goes; Infatti, most his-
tory is the history of empires precisely
because empires are so good at record-
ing, replicating, and transmitting their
own words and deeds. It is the nation-
state–an essentially nineteenth-century
ideal–that is the historical novelty and
that may yet prove to be the more
ephemeral entity. Given the ethnic het-
erogeneity and restless mobility of man-
kind, this should not surprise us. On
close inspection, many of the most suc-
cessful nation-states started life as em-
pires: what is the modern United King-
dom of Great Britain and Northern Ire-
land if not the legatee of an earlier Eng-
lish imperialism?
Secondly, it is a fantasy that the age
of empire came to an end in a global
springtime of the peoples after 1945. On
the contrary, World War II merely saw
the defeat of three would-be empires
(the German, Japanese, and Italian) by
an alliance between the old Western
European empires (principally the Brit-
ish, since the others were so swiftly beat-
en) and the newer empires of the Soviet
Union and the United States. Though
the United States subsequently ran, for
the most part, an empire by invitation,
to the extent that it was more a hegemon
than an empire, the Soviet Union was
and remained until its precipitous de-
cline and fall a true empire. Inoltre,
the other great Communist power to
emerge from the 1940s, the People’s
Republic of China, remains in many re-
spects an empire to this day. Its three
most extensive provinces–Inner Mon-
golia, Xinjiang, and Tibet–were all ac-
quired as a result of imperial expansion,
and China continues to lay claim to Tai-
wan as well as numerous smaller islands,
to say nothing of some territories in
Russian Siberia and Kazakhstan.
24
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Limits of
(& alter-
natives to)
American
empire
Empires, in short, are always with us.
Nor is it immediately obvious why the
modern media should threaten their
longevity. The growth of the popular
press did nothing to weaken the British
Empire in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries; on the contrary, IL
mass-circulation newspapers tended to
enhance the popular legitimacy of the
empire. Anyone who watched how
American television networks covered
the invasion of Iraq ought to understand
that the mass media are not necessarily
solvents of imperial power. As for na-
tionalism, it is something of a myth that
this was what brought down the old em-
pires of Western Europe. Far more lethal
to their longevity were the costs of ½ght-
ing rival empires–empires that were
still more contemptuous of the principle
of self-determination.16
Another common misconception is
that the United States can and should
achieve its international objectives–
above all, its own security–as a hege-
mon rather than an empire, relying on
‘soft’ as much as on ‘hard’ power.17
Closely allied to this idea are the as-
sumptions that there will always be less
violence in the absence of an empire and
that the United States would therefore
make the world a safer place if it brought
home its troops from the Middle East.
One way to test such arguments is to
ask the counterfactual question: Would
American foreign policy have been more
effective in the past four years–or, if you
prefer, would the world be a safer place
today–if Afghanistan and Iraq had not
been invaded? In the case of Afghani-
stan, there is little question that soft
16 See my Empire: The Rise and Demise of the
British World Order and the Lessons for Global
Energia (New York: Basic Books, 2003).
17 See Joseph Nye, The Paradox of American
Energia (New York: Oxford University Press,
2002).
power would not have suf½ced to oust
the sponsors of Al Qaeda from their
stronghold in Kabul. In the case of Iraq,
it is surely better that Saddam Hussein is
the prisoner of an interim Iraqi govern-
ment rather than still reigning in Bagh-
dad. Open-ended ‘containment’–which
was effectively what the French govern-
ment argued for in 2003–would, on bal-
ance, have been a worse policy. Policing
Iraq from the air while periodically ½ring
missiles at suspect installations was cost-
ing money without solving the problem
posed by Saddam. Sanctions were doing
nothing but depriving ordinary Iraqis.
As for the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food
Programme, we now know that it was
simply breeding corruption while bol-
stering Saddam’s economic position.
In short, regime change was right;
arguably, the principal defect of Ameri-
can policy toward Iraq was that the task
was left undone for twelve years. Those
who fret about the doctrine of preemp-
tion enunciated in the president’s Na-
tional Security Strategy should bear in
mind that the overthrow of Saddam was
as much ‘postemption’ as preemption,
since Saddam had done nearly all the
mischief of which he was capable some
time before March of 2003. Nel frattempo,
those who persist in imagining that the
United Nations is a substitute for the
United States when it comes to dealing
with murderous rogue regimes should
simply contemplate the United Nations’
lamentably sluggish and ineffectual re-
sponse to the genocide currently being
perpetrated in the Sudanese region of
Darfur. Events there furnish an unfortu-
nate reminder of the United Nations’
failures in Rwanda and Bosnia in the
1990S.
Yet it would be absurd to deny that
much of what has happened in the past
year–to say nothing of what has been
revealed about earlier events–has tend-
Dædalus Spring 2005
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Niall
Ferguson
SU
imperialism
ed to undermine the legitimacy of the
Bush administration’s policy. To put it
bluntly: What went wrong? And has the
very notion of an American empire been
discredited?
The ½rst seed of future troubles was the
administration’s decision to treat sus-
pected Al Qaeda personnel captured in
Afghanistan and elsewhere as “unlawful
enemy combatants” beyond both Amer-
ican and international law. Prisoners
were held incommunicado and inde½ni-
tely at Guantánamo Bay. As the rules
governing interrogation were chopped
and changed, many of these prisoners
were subjected to forms of mental and
physical intimidation that in some cases
amounted to torture.18 Indeed, Justice
Department memoranda were written to
rationalize the use of torture as a matter
for presidential discretion in times of
war. Evidently, some members of the
administration felt that extreme mea-
sures were justi½ed by the shadowy na-
ture of the foe they faced, as well as by
the public appetite for retribution after
the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001.
All of this the Supreme Court rightly
denounced in its stinging judgment de-
livered in June of 2004. As the justices
put it, not even the imperatives of resist-
ing “an assault by the forces of tyranny”
could justify the use by an American
president of “the tools of tyrants.” Yet
power corrupts, and even small amounts
of power can corrupt a very great deal. It
may not have been of½cial policy to flout
the Geneva Conventions in Iraq, but not
enough was done by senior of½cers to
protect prisoners held at Abu Ghraib
18 By the end of August of 2004, there had
been around 300 allegations of mistreatment
of detainees; 155 had so far been investigated,
of which 66 had been substantiated. See The
giornale di Wall Street, agosto 26, 2004.
from gratuitous abuse–what the inquiry
chaired by James Schlesinger called
“freelance activities on the part of the
night shift.”19 The photographic evi-
dence of these activities has done more
than anything else to discredit the claim
of the United States and its allies to
stand not merely for an abstract liberty
but also for the effective rule of law.
Secondo, it was more than mere exag-
geration on the part of Vice President
Cheney, the former cia Chief George
Tenet, E, ultimately, President Bush
himself–to say nothing of Prime Minis-
ter Tony Blair–to claim they knew for
certain that Saddam Hussein possessed
weapons of mass destruction. It was, we
now know, a downright lie that went far
beyond what the available intelligence
indicated. What they could legitimately
have said was this: “After all his eva-
sions, we simply can’t be sure whether
or not Saddam Hussein has got any
wmd. So, on the precautionary princi-
ple, we just can’t leave him in power
inde½nitely. Better safe than sorry.” But
that was not enough for Cheney, who
felt compelled to make the bald asser-
tion that “Saddam Hussein possesses
weapons of mass destruction.” Bush
himself had doubts, but was reassured
by Tenet that it was a “slam-dunk
case.”20 Other doubters soon fell into
line. Still more misleading was the ad-
ministration’s allegation that Saddam
was ‘teaming up’ with Al Qaeda.
Sketchy evidence of contact between the
two was used to insinuate Iraqi complic-
ity in the 9/11 attacks, for which not a
shred of proof has yet been found.
Third, it was a near disaster that re-
sponsibility for the postwar occupation
19 Ibid.
20 Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York:
Simone & Schuster, 2004), 249.
26
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Limits of
(& alter-
natives to)
American
empire
of Iraq was seized by the Defense De-
partment, intoxicated as its principals
became in the heat of their blitzkrieg.
The State Department had spent long
hours preparing a plan for the aftermath
of a successful invasion. That plan was
simply junked by Secretary Rumsfeld
and his close advisers, who were con-
vinced that once Saddam had gone, Iraq
would magically reconstruct itself after a
period of suitably ecstatic celebration at
the advent of freedom.
As one of½cial told the Financial Times
last year, Under Secretary Douglas Feith
led
a group in the Pentagon who all along felt
that this was going to be not just a cake-
walk, it was going to be 60–90 days, UN
flip-over and hand-off, a lateral or whatev-
er to . . . the inc [Iraqi National Congress].
The dod [Department of Defense] could
then wash its hands of the whole affair
and depart quickly, smoothly and swiftly.
And there would be a democratic Iraq that
was amenable to our wishes and desires
left in its wake. And that’s all there was to
it.21
When General Eric Shinseki, the army
chief of staff, stated in late February of
2003 that “something of the order of
several hundred thousand soldiers”
would be required to stabilize postwar
Iraq, he was brusquely put down by De-
puty Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
as “wildly off the mark.” Wolfowitz pro-
fessed himself “reasonably certain” that
the Iraqi people would “greet us as liber-
ators.” Such illusions were not, it should
be remembered, con½ned to neoconser-
vatives in the Pentagon. Even General
Tommy Franks was under the impres-
sion that it would be possible to reduce
troop levels to just ½fty thousand after
21 “The Best-laid Plans?” Financial Times,
agosto 3, 2003.
eighteen months. It was left to Colin
Powell to point out to the president that
regime change had serious–not to say
imperial–implications. The Pottery
Barn rule, he suggested to Bush, era
bound to be applicable to Iraq: “You
break it, you own it.”22
Fourth, American diplomacy in 2003
was like the two-headed Pushmepullyou
in Doctor Doolittle: it pointed in opposite
directions. On one side was Cheney, dis-
missing the United Nations as a negligi-
ble factor. On the other was Powell, In-
sisting that any action would require
some form of un authorization to be
legitimate.
It is possible that one of these ap-
proaches might have worked. It was,
Tuttavia, hopeless to try to apply both.
Europe was in fact coming around as a
consequence of some fairly successful
diplomatic browbeating. No fewer than
eighteen European governments signed
letters expressing support of the im-
pending war against Saddam. Yet the
decision to seek a second un resolu-
tion–on the ground that the language of
Resolution 1441 was not strong enough
to justify all-out war–was a blunder
that allowed the French government to
regain the initiative by virtue of its per-
manent seat on the un Security Council.
Despite the fact that more than forty
countries declared their support for the
invasion of Iraq and that three (Britain,
Australia, and Poland) sent troops, IL
threat of a French veto, delivered with a
Gallic flourish, created the indelible im-
pression that the United States was act-
ing unilaterally–and even illegally.23
22 Woodward, Plan of Attack, 150, 270.
23 See the remarks of un Secretary General
Ko½ Annan in an interview with the bbc in
September of 2004,
Dædalus Spring 2005
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Niall
Ferguson
SU
imperialism
All these mistakes had one thing in
common: they sprang from a failure to
learn from history. For among the most
obvious lessons of history is that an em-
pire cannot rule by coercion alone. It
needs legitimacy–in the eyes of the sub-
ject people, in the eyes of the other Great
Powers, E, above all, in the eyes of the
people back home.
Did those concerned know no histo-
ry? We are told that President Bush was
reading Edward Morris’s Theodore Rex
as the war in Iraq was being planned;
presumably he had not got to the part
where the American occupation sparked
off a Filipino insurrection. Before the
invasion of Iraq, Deputy National Secu-
rity Adviser Stephen Hadley was heard
to refer to a purely unilateral American
invasion as “the imperial option.” Did
no one else grasp that occupying and try-
ing to transform Iraq (with or without
allies) was a quintessentially imperial
undertaking–and one that would not
only cost money but would also take
many years to succeed?
Had policymakers troubled to consid-
er what befell the last Anglophone occu-
pation of Iraq they might have been less
surprised by the persistent resistance
they encountered in certain parts of the
country during 2004. For in May of 1920
there was a major anti-British revolt
there. This happened six months after
a referendum (in practice, a round of
consultations with tribal leaders) SU
the country’s future, and just after the
announcement that Iraq would become
a League of Nations mandate under
British trusteeship rather than continue
under colonial rule. Strikingly, neither
consultation with Iraqis nor the promise
of internationalization suf½ced to avert
an uprising.
In 1920, as in 2004, the insurrection
had religious origins and leaders, but it
soon transcended the country’s ancient
ethnic and sectarian divisions. The ½rst
anti-British demonstrations were in the
mosques of Baghdad, but the violence
quickly spread to the Shiite holy city of
Karbala, where British rule was de-
nounced by Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi
al-Shirazi, the historical counterpart of
today’s Shiite ½rebrand, Moktada al-
Sadr. At its height, the revolt stretched
as far north as the Kurdish city of Kirkuk
and as far south as Samawah.
Then, as in 2004, much of the violence
was more symbolic than strategically
signi½cant–British bodies were mutilat-
ed, much as American bodies were at
Fallujah. But there was a real threat to
the British position. The rebels system-
atically sought to disrupt the occupiers’
infrastructure, attacking railways and
telegraph lines. In some places, British
troops and civilians were cut off and be-
sieged. By August of 1920 the situation in
Iraq was so desperate that the general in
charge appealed to London not only for
reinforcements but also for chemical
weapons (mustard gas bombs or shells),
Anche se, contrary to historical legend,
these turned out to be unavailable and so
were never used.24
This brings us to the second lesson the
United States might have learned from
the British experience: reestablishing
order is no easy task. In 1920 the British
eventually ended the rebellion through a
combination of aerial bombardments
and punitive village-burning expedi-
zioni. Even Winston Churchill, then the
minister responsible for the Royal Air
Force, was shocked by the actions of
some trigger-happy pilots and vengeful
24 Daniel Barnard, “The Great Iraqi Revolt:
The 1919–20 Insurrections Against the British
in Mesopotamia,” paper presented at the Har-
vard Graduate Student Conference in Interna-
tional History, April 23, 2004,
28
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Limits of
(& alter-
natives to)
American
empire
ground troops. And despite their over-
whelming technological superiority,
British forces still suffered more than
two thousand dead and wounded. More-
Sopra, the British had to keep troops in
Iraq long after the country was granted
full sovereignty. Although Iraq was de-
clared formally independent in 1932,
British troops remained there until 1955.
Is history therefore repeating itself,
with one Anglophone empire unwitting-
ly reenacting its predecessor’s Meso-
potamian experiment in indirect rule?
For all the talk there was in June of re-
storing full sovereignty to an interim
Iraqi government, President Bush made
it clear that he intended to “maintain
our troop level . . . as long as necessary,"
and that U.S. troops would continue to
operate “under American command.”
This implied something signi½cantly less
than full sovereignty. For if the new Iraqi
government did not have control over a
well-armed foreign army in its own terri-
tory, then it lacked one of the de½ning
characteristics of a sovereign state: UN
monopoly over the legitimate use of vio-
lence. That was precisely the point made
in April by Marc Grossman, under secre-
tary of state for political affairs, during
congressional hearings on the future of
Iraq. In Grossman’s words, “The ar-
rangement would be, I think as we are
doing today, that we would do our very
best to consult with that interim govern-
ment and take their views into account.”
But American commanders would still
“have the right, and the power, and the
obligation” to decide on the appropriate
role for their troops.25
There is, in principle, nothing inher-
ently wrong with limited sovereignty; In
25 “White House Says Iraq Sovereignty Could
Be Limited," Il New York Times, April 22,
2004.
both West Germany and Japan sover-
eignty was limited for some years after
1945. Sovereignty is not an absolute but a
relative concept. Infatti, it is a common
characteristic of empires that they con-
sist of multiple tiers of sovereignty. Ac-
cording to what Charles Maier has called
the “fractal geometry of empire,” the ov-
erarching hierarchy of power contains
within it multiple scaled-down versions
of itself, none fully sovereign. Again,
Tuttavia, there is a need for American
policymakers and voters to understand
the imperial business they are now in.
For this business can have costly over-
heads. The problem is that for indirect
rule–or limited sovereignty–to be suc-
cessful in Iraq, Americans must be will-
ing to foot a substantial bill for the occu-
pation and reconstruction of the coun-
try. Unfortunately, in the absence of a
radical change in the direction of U.S.
½scal policy, their ability to do so is set
to diminish, if not to disappear.
In the ½rst four years of the Bush pres-
idency, total federal outlays rose by an
estimated $530 billion, UN 30 percent in- crease. This increase can only be partly attributed to the wars the administration has fought; higher defense expenditures account for just 30 percent of the total increment, whereas increased spending on health care accounts for 17 per cento, that on Social Security and that on in- come security for 16 percent apiece, and that on Medicare for 14 percent.26 The reality is that the Bush administra- tion has increased spending on welfare by rather more than spending on war- fare. Nel frattempo, even as expenditure has risen, there has been a steep reduction in the federal government’s revenues, 26 These are my own calculations based on “Budget of the United States Government," 2005 historical tables,
trillion tax cut over ten years and the
$38 billion tax rebate of the Economic Growth and Tax Reform Reconciliation Act in 2001, continuing with the Job Creation and Worker Assistance Act in 2002, and concluding with the reform of the double taxation of dividend income in 2003. With a combined value of $188
billion–equivalent to around 2 per cento
del 2003 national income–these tax
cuts were signi½cantly larger than those
passed in Ronald Reagan’s Economic
Recovery Tax Act of 1981.28 The effect of
this combination of increased spending
and reduced revenue has been a dramat-
ic growth in the federal de½cit. Bush
inherited a surplus of around $236 bil- lion from the ½scal year 2000. At the time of writing, the projected de½cit for 2004 era $521 billion, representing a
swing from the black into the red of
three-quarters of a trillion dollars.29
Government spokesmen have some-
times defended this borrowing spree as a
stimulus to economic activity. There are
good reasons to be skeptical about this,
Tuttavia, not least because the principal
bene½ciaries of these tax cuts have been
the very wealthy. Vice President Cheney
belied the macroeconomic argument
when he justi½ed the third tax cut in the
following candid terms: “We won the
midterms. This is our due.”30 Another
Cheney aphorism that is bound to be
quoted by future historians was his as-
sertion that “Reagan proved de½cits
don’t matter.”31 But Reagan did nothing
of the kind. The need to raise taxes to
bring the de½cit back under control was
one of the key factors in George H. W.
Bush’s defeat in 1992; in turn, the sys-
tematic reduction of the de½cit under
Bill Clinton was one of the reasons long-
term interest rates declined and the
economy boomed in the late 1990s.
The only reason that, under Bush jun-
ior, de½cits have not seemed to matter is
the persistence of low interest rates over
the past four years, which has allowed
Bush–in common with many American
households–to borrow more while pay-
ing less in debt service. Net interest pay-
ments on the federal debt amounted to
just 1.4 percent of the gdp last year,
whereas the ½gure was 2.3 percent in
2000 E 3.2 percent in 1995.32
Yet this persistence of low long-term
interest rates is not a result of ingenuity
on the part of the U.S. Treasury. It is in
part a consequence of the willingness
of the Asian central banks to buy vast
quantities of dollar-denominated securi-
ties such as ten-year Treasury bonds,
with the primary motivation of keeping
their currencies pegged to the dollar, E
the secondary consequence of funding
27 “Budget of the United States Government,"
2005, table 1.3,
28 “Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush Tax Cuts
in Historical Perspective,"
30 Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W.
Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul
O’Neill (New York: Simone & Schuster, 2004),
291.
31 Ibid.
29 “Economic Report of the President,” table
B-81,
32 Congressional Budget Of½ce, The Budget and
Economic Outlook, Gennaio 2005.
30
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Limits of
(& alter-
natives to)
American
empire
the Bush de½cits.33 It is no coincidence
that more than half the publicly held
federal debt is now in foreign hands–
more than double the proportion of ten
years ago.34 Not since the days of tsarist
Russia has a great empire relied so heavi-
ly on lending from abroad. The trouble
is that these flows of foreign capital into
the United States cannot be relied on
inde½nitely, especially if there is a likeli-
hood of rising de½cits in the future. E
that is why the Bush administration’s
failure to address the fundamental ques-
tion of ½scal reform is so important. IL
reality is that the of½cial ½gures for both
the de½cit and the accumulated federal
debt understate the magnitude of the
country’s impending ½scal problems be-
cause they leave out of account the huge
and unfunded liabilities of the Medicare
and Social Security systems.35
The United States bene½ts signi½cant-
ly from the status of the dollar as the
world’s principal reserve currency; it is
one reason why foreign investors are
33 See Michael P. Dooley, David Folkerts-Lan-
dau, and Peter Garber, “An Essay on the Re-
vived Bretton Woods System,” nber Working
Paper No. 9971 (settembre 2003), and “The
Revived Bretton Woods System: The Effects of
Periphery Intervention and Reserve Manage-
ment on Interest Rates and Exchange Rates in
Center Countries,” nber Working Paper No.
10332 (Marzo 2004).
34 Treasury Bulletin, Giugno 2004,
Munter, “Most Treasuries in Foreign Hands,"
Financial Times, Giugno 14, 2004.
35 Vedere, most recently, Peter G. Peterson, Run-
ning on Empty: How the Democratic and Republi-
can Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What
Americans Can Do About It (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2004). According to the
April 2004 report of the Medicare trustees, IL
system’s obligations to future retirees are un-
funded by $62 trillion; see Joe Liebermann,
“America Needs Honest Fiscal Accounting,"
Financial Times, May 25, 2004.
prepared to hold such large volumes of
dollar-denominated assets. But reserve-
currency status is not divinely ordained;
it could be undermined if international
markets took fright at the magnitude of
America’s still latent ½scal crisis.36 A de-
cline in the dollar would certainly hurt
foreign holders of U.S. currency more
than it would hurt Americans. But a shift
in international expectations about U.S.
½nances might also bring about a sharp
increase in long-term interest rates,
which would have immediate and nega-
tive feedback effects on the federal de½-
cit by pushing up the cost of debt serv-
ice.37 It would also hurt highly geared
American households, especially the ris-
ing proportion of them with adjustable-
rate mortgages.38
Empires need not be a burden on the
taxpayers of the metropolis; Infatti,
many empires have arisen precisely in
order to shift tax burdens from the cen-
ter to the periphery. Yet there is little
sign that the United States will be able to
achieve even a modest amount of ‘bur-
den sharing’ in the foreseeable future.
During the Cold War, American allies
contributed at least some money and
considerable manpower to the mainte-
nance of the West’s collective security.
But those days are gone. At the Demo-
36 Niall Ferguson, “A Dollar Crash? Euro
Trashing,” The New Republic, Giugno 21, 2004.
37 See Paul Krugman, “Questions of Interest,"
The New York Times, April 20, 2004. For a differ-
ent view, see David Malpass, “Don’t Blame the
De½cits for America’s Rate Hikes,” Financial
Times, May 3, 2004.
38 Niall Ferguson, “Who’s Buried by Higher
Rates,” Fortune, Giugno 14, 2004. On the macro-
economic implications of the decline of the
American savings rate, see Lawrence H. Sum-
mers, “The United States and the Global Ad-
justment Process,” Third Annual Stavros S.
Niarchos Lecture, Institute for International
Economics, Washington, D.C., Marzo 23, 2004.
Dædalus Spring 2005
31
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Niall
Ferguson
SU
imperialism
cratic National Convention in Boston,
John Kerry pledged to “bring our allies
to our side and share the burden, reduce
the cost to American taxpayers, E
reduce the risk to American soldiers” in
order to “get the job done and bring our
troops home.” “We don’t have to go it
alone in the world,” he declared. “And
we need to rebuild our alliances.”39
Yet it is far from clear that any Ameri-
can president would be able to persuade
Europeans today to commit signi½cant
resources to Iraq. In accepting his par-
ty’s nomination, Kerry recalled how, COME
a boy, he had watched British, French,
and American troops working together
in postwar Berlin. In those days, howev-
er, there was a much bigger incentive–
symbolized by the Red Army units that
surrounded West Berlin–for European
states to support American foreign poli-
cy. It is not that the French and the Ger-
mans (or for that matter, the British)
were passionately pro-American during
the Cold War; on the contrary, Ameri-
can experts constantly fretted about the
levels of popular anti-Americanism in
Europe, on both the Left and the Right.
Nevertheless, as long as there was a
Soviet Union to the east, there was one
overwhelming argument for the unity of
the West. That ceased to be the case
½fteen years ago, when the reforms of
Mikhail Gorbachev caused the Soviet
empire to crumble. And ever since then
the incentives for transatlantic harmony
have grown steadily weaker.
For whatever reason, Europeans do
not regard the threat posed by Islamist
terrorism as suf½ciently serious to justify
unconditional solidarity with the United
States. On the contrary, since the Span-
ish general election last year, they have
acted as if the optimal response to the
39 “Kerry’s Acceptance: There Is a Right Way
and a Wrong Way to Be Strong,” The New York
Times, Luglio 30, 2004.
growing threat of Islamist terrorism is
to distance themselves from the United
States. In a recent Gallup poll, 61 per-
cent of Europeans said they thought the
European Union plays a positive role
with regard to peace in the world; just
8 percent said its role was negative. No
fewer than 50 percent of those polled
took the view that the United States
now plays a negative role.40
So the United States is what it would
rather not be: a colossus to some, a Go-
liath to others–an empire that dare not
speak its name.41 Yet what is the alterna-
tive to American empire? If, as so many
people seem to wish, the United States
were to scale back its military commit-
ments overseas, then what?
Unless one believes that international
order will occur spontaneously, it is nec-
essary to pin one’s faith on those supra-
national bodies created under U.S. Guida-
ership after World War II: the United
Nations, the International Monetary
Fund, the World Bank, and the World
Trade Organization. There is no short-
age of liberal thinkers willing to make
the case for global governance on the
basis of these institutions.42 Unfortu-
nately, their limitations are all too obvi-
ous when it comes to dealing with (A
use the now hackneyed but convenient
40 Robert Manchin and Gergely Hideg, “E.U.
Survey: Are Transatlantic Ties Loosening?"
41 “An empire that dare not speak its name” is
Charles Maier’s phrase.
42 Vedere, Per esempio, David Held, Global Cove-
nant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the
Washington Consensus (Cambridge, Massa.: Poli-
ty, 2004). Rather more pessimistic–and more
aware of medieval visions of a global ‘civil so-
ciety’–is Ian Linden, A New Map of the World
(London: Darton Longman & Todd, 2003).
32
Dædalus Spring 2005
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phrase) failed states and rogue regimes,
and with the non-state actors–above all,
terrorist organizations–that flourish in
the conditions they create. It is a sad fact
that the total budget of the United Na-
tions and all its ancillary organizations is
equal to barely 1 percent of the federal
budget of the United States.
If the United Nations tries to fashion
itself as some kind of alternative to
American power, it is bound to fail; its
only future lies in playing the role its
architects intended for it, namely, as an
agency through which the United States,
in partnership with the other Great Pow-
ers of the postwar era, can build some
measure of international consensus for
their Grosse Politik. In doing so, it will no
more prevent the United States from
behaving like an empire than the regular
meetings of the sovereigns, foreign min-
isters, and ambassadors of the Great
Powers prevented the United Kingdom
from behaving like an empire in the
nineteenth century. But it may help
American policymakers from stumbling
into that less than splendid isolation
abhorred by the later Victorian imperial-
ist.
Empires are not all bad; nor should
anyone claim that they are all good.
They are inevitably compromised by the
power they wield; they are doomed to
engender their own dissolution at home,
even as they impose order abroad. Quello
is why our expectations should not be
pitched too high. It is hard enough to be
an empire when you believe you have a
mandate from heaven. It is still harder
for the United States, which believes
that heaven intended it to free the world,
not rule it.
Sadly, there are still a few places in the
world that must be ruled before they can
be freed. Sadly, the act of ruling them
will sorely try Americans, who instinc-
tively begrudge such places the blood,
treasure, and time they consume. Yet
saddest of all, there seems to be no bet-
ter alternative available to the United
States and to the world.
Once, a hundred and sixty years ago,
America’s imperial destiny seemed man-
ifest. It has since become obscure. But it
is America’s destiny just the same.
Limits of
(& alter-
natives to)
American
empire
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Dædalus Spring 2005