From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Wed 11 Dec 2002 - 05:30:25 GMT
Imperialism
Superpower dominance, malignant and benign.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, December 10, 2002, at 1:42 PM PT
In the lexicon of euphemism, the word "superpower" was always
useful because it did little more than recognize the obvious. The
United States of America was a potentate in itself and on a global
scale. It had only one rival, which was its obvious inferior, at least
in point of prosperity and sophistication (as well as a couple of
other things). So both were "empires," in point of intervening in
some countries whether those other countries liked it or not, and
in arranging the governments of other countries to suit them. Still,
only a few Trotskyists like my then-self were so rash as to
describe the Cold War as, among other things, an inter-imperial
rivalry.
The United States is not supposed, in its own self-image, to be an
empire. (Nor is it supposed, in its own self-image, to have a class
system”but there you go again.) It began life as a rebel colony
and was in fact the first colony to depose British rule. When
founders like Alexander Hamilton spoke of a coming American
"empire," they arguably employed the word in a classical and
metaphorical sense, speaking of the future dominion over the rest
of the continent. By that standard, Lewis and Clark were the
originators of American "imperialism." Anti-imperialists of the
colonial era would not count as such today. That old radical
Thomas Paine was forever at Jefferson's elbow, urging that the
United States become a superpower for democracy. He hoped that
America would destroy the old European empires.
This perhaps shows that one should beware of what one wishes
for because, starting in 1898, the United States did destroy or
subvert all of the European empires. It took over Cuba and the
Philippines from Spain (we still hold Puerto Rico as a "colony" in
consequence) and after 1918 decided that if Europe was going to
be quarrelsome and destabilizing, a large American navy ought to
be built on the model of the British one. Franklin Roosevelt spent
the years 1939 to 1945 steadily extracting British bases and
colonies from Winston Churchill, from the Caribbean to West
Africa, in exchange for wartime assistance. Within a few years of
the end of World War II, the United States was the regnant or
decisive power in what had been the Belgian Congo, the British
Suez Canal Zone, and”most ominously of all”French
Indochina. Dutch Indonesia and Portuguese Angola joined the list
in due course. Meanwhile, under the ostensibly anti-imperial
Monroe Doctrine, Washington considered the isthmus of Central
America and everything due south of it to be its special province
in any case.
In the course of all this”and the course of it involved some
episodes of unforgettable arrogance and cruelty”some American
officers and diplomats did achieve an almost proconsular status,
which is why Apocalypse Now is based on Joseph Conrad's Heart
of Darkness. But in general, what was created was a system of
proxy rule, by way of client states and dependent regimes. And
few dared call it imperialism. Indeed, the most militant defenders
of the policy greatly resented the term, which seemed to echo
leftist propaganda.
But nowadays, if you consult the writings of the conservative and
neoconservative penseurs, you will see that they are beginning to
relish that very word. "Empire”Sure! Why not?" A good deal of
this obviously comes from the sense of moral exaltation that
followed Sept. 11. There's nothing like the feeling of being in the
right and of proclaiming firmness of purpose. And a revulsion
from atrocity and nihilism seems to provide all the moral backup
that is required. It was precisely this set of emotions that Rudyard
Kipling set out not to celebrate, as some people imagine, but to
oppose. He thought it was hubris, and he thought it would end in
tears. Of course there is always some massacre somewhere or
some hostage in vile captivity with which to arouse opinion. And
of course it's often true that the language of blunt force is the only
intelligible one. But self-righteousness in history usually supplies
its own punishment, and a nation forgets this at its own peril.
Unlike the Romans or the British, Americans are simultaneously
the supposed guarantors of a system of international law and
doctrine. It was on American initiative that every member nation
of the United Nations was obliged to subscribe to the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Innumerable treaties and
instruments, descending and ramifying from this, are still binding
legally and morally. Thus, for the moment, the word
"unilateralism" is doing idiomatic duty for the word
"imperialism," as signifying a hyper-power or ultra-power that
wants to be exempted from the rules because”well, because it
wrote most of them.
However, the plain fact remains that when the rest of the world
wants anything done in a hurry, it applies to American power. If
the "Europeans" or the United Nations had been left with the task,
the European provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo would
now be howling wildernesses, Kuwait would be the 19th province
of a Greater Iraq, and Afghanistan might still be under Taliban
rule. In at least the first two of the above cases, it can't even be
argued that American imperialism was the problem in the first
place. This makes many of the critics of this imposing new order
sound like the whimpering, resentful Judean subversives in The
Life of Brian, squabbling among themselves about "What have the
Romans ever done for us?"
I fervently wish that as much energy was being expended on the
coming Ethiopian famine or the coming Central Asian drought as
on the pestilence of Saddam Hussein. But, if ever we can leave the
Saddams and Milosevics and Kim Jong-ils behind and turn to
greater questions, you can bet that the bulk of the airlifting and
distribution and innovation and construction will be done by
Americans, including the new nexus of human-rights and
humanitarian NGOs who play rather the same role in this
imperium that the missionaries did in the British one (though to
far more creditable effect).
A condition of the new imperialism will be the specific promise
that while troops will come, they will not stay too long. An
associated promise is that the era of the client state is gone and
that the aim is to enable local populations to govern themselves.
This promise is sincere. A new standard is being proposed, and
one to which our rulers can and must be held. In other words, if
the United States will dare to declare out loud for empire, it had
better be in its capacity as a Thomas Paine arsenal, or at the very
least a Jeffersonian one. And we may also need a new word for it.
Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/?id=2075261
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