An Empire in Denial: The Limits of US Imperialism

It used to be only foreigners and those on fringes of US politics who referred to Empire. Invariably, they did so in order to criticize United Since attack on World Trade Center in September 2001, however, there has been a growing volume of more serious writing on subject of an American empire. The phrase is now heard both in polite academic company and in mainstream public debate. The striking thing is that not all those who now openly use term do so pejoratively. A number of commentators--notably Max Boot, Thomas Donnelly, Robert Kaplan, and Charles Krauthammer--seem to relish idea of a US imperium. Today there is only one empire,James Kurth of Swarthmore College declared in a recent article in Natonal Interest, the global empire of United States. Officially, however, United States remains an empire in denial. In words of US President George Bush during his presidential election campaign in 2000: America has never been an empire. We may be only great power in history that had chance, and refused--preferring greatness to power, and justice to glory. Freud defined denial as a primitive psychological defense mechanism against trauma. Perhaps it was therefore inevitable that, in aftermath of September 11 attacks, US citizens would deny their country's imperial character more vehemently than ever. It may nevertheless be therapeutic to determine precise nature of this American Empire--since empire it is, in all but name. Military Pre-eminence Imperial denial may simply be a matter of semantics. Many post-war writers about US power have used words like hegemon to convey idea that US overseas influence is great but not imperial. There are other useful alternatives to term empire, including unipolarity, global leadership, and the only superpower. Define term narrowly enough, and United States can easily be excluded from category. Suppose empire is taken to mean the forcible military occupation and governance of territory whose citizens remain permanently excluded from political representation. By that definition, American Empire is laughably small. The United States accounts for around 6.5 percent of world's surface, but its 14 formal dependencies add up to a mere 0.007 percent. In demographic terms, United States and its dependencies account for barely five percent of world's population, whereas British ruled between one-fifth and one-quarter of world's population at zenith of their empire. Yet this narrow definition of empire is as simplistic as it is convenient. To begin with, expansion of original 13 US states westwards and southwards in course of 19th century was itself a quintessentially imperialist undertaking. In both US and British empires, indigenous populations were vanquished, expropriated and marginalized. The people living in newer states were all ultimately enfranchised, but so were settler populations of large tracts of British Empire: responsible government was, after all, granted to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The only substantial difference between two processes of white settlement was that United States absorbed most of its new territories--even Alaska and Hawaii--into its federal system, whereas British never did more than toy with idea of imperial federation. In any case, US empire is--and can afford to be--much less concerned with acquisition of large areas of overseas territory, than Britain's was. The United States has few formal colonies, but it possesses a great many small areas of territory within notionally sovereign states that serve as bases for its armed services. Before deployment of troops for invasion of Iraq, US military had around 752 military installations located in more than 130 countries. …

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