The adolescent empire.

• Author: Kurth, James
• Position: American foreign policy

America and the Imperial Idea

The principal foreign policy initiative of the second Clinton administration is the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to include the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary. These old and much-abused nations, having been historically a part of Mitteleuropa or Central Europe and having passed through a forty-year confinement within Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe, now seek to become part of Western Europe or even of the North Atlantic community. In support of this undertaking, there has formed a group of foreign policy leaders and specialists from different NATO countries whose name is, appropriately, the New Atlantic Initiative. In May 1996 they gathered for a conference, the Congress of Prague, in that most ancient and beautiful of Central European capitals.

I had attended and enjoyed the Congress of Prague, both the Congress and the Prague parts, and I was now sitting in the late afternoon of a fine spring day on a bench in the main square of another ancient and beautiful Bohemian town, Kutna Hora, some fifty kilometers east of the Czech capital.

Kutna Hora is now small, but it still has within it a splendid ensemble of Renaissance and baroque buildings, monuments to the time when its vast silver mines provided the financial basis, not only for magnificent churches, monasteries, palaces, and the town square in which I was sitting, but for an entire empire, that of the Habsburgs. The Habsburgs were the first to believe that the master of Bohemia was the master of Europe, and the silver mines of Kutna Hora were a big part of the reason. The Habsburg Empire fought and won many battles to keep the town and its mines in its domain, and it succeeded in doing so right down until 1918.

But in the twentieth century, Kutna Hora experienced the rule of two other empires, that of Nazi Germany, when the town found itself in the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, and that of the Soviet Union, when it found itself in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Needless to say, these empires left no architectural legacies comparable to that of the Habsburgs.

Now, it seemed, a fourth empire, that of America, was about to extend its protection over Kutna Hora and over the Czech Republic in which it now found itself. Indeed, in a sense, the American empire had already extended its "soft power" there with its popular culture. For as the sun dipped beneath the lofty spires and gabled roofs above the old square, I heard the sound of rap music coming from the boom boxes carried by adolescent boys wearing baseball caps and baggy pants.

A Tale of Two Tales

Thus, in the twentieth century, three great empires have been the masters of Bohemia, and now a fourth great power, also perhaps an empire in its own way, is preparing to extend its power - and promising to extend its peace and prosperity - over Bohemia and the other ancient lands of Central Europe. But unlike the earlier empires, the United States is extending its realm with the full concurrence and even urging of the Central European peoples themselves, of whom perhaps the most welcoming are the people of Bohemia. From the perspective of the Central Europeans at this historical moment, and from the perspective of the Americans themselves, American power has nothing in common with empire. There is much to be said for this view, and Americans never cease to say it.

From the perspective of other Europeans on other occasions, however, American power has been the last in a grand parade of empires that have marched through the past half-millennium that constitutes the modern age. This age could be said to have begun with Columbus' discovery of the New World, and it has culminated five centuries later with a New World country - the United States of America - as the world's hegemonic and imperial power. As we will see, there is much to be said for this view too.

The story of American power in international affairs, then, is really a tale of two tales: an American tale, the story of a democratic republic and the steady spread of its universal values; and a European tale, the story of an American empire and the steady spread of its imperial idea.

Americans, of course, have rarely been comfortable with the notion that their role in international affairs might be an imperial one. The United States was born in a war of independence by the American colonies against the British Empire, the greatest empire of the time. It fought a second war of independence, the War of 1812, against that imperial power, and throughout the nineteenth century it thought of itself as the American republic standing up to the European empires, with the British one continuing as the principal threat. Americans saw their successive expansions during the nineteenth century as territorial annexations that were clearly natural - even "manifest destiny" - rather than imperial acquisitions, which made subjects of foreign peoples in far-flung lands. The acquisition of the Philippines (and other Pacific territories) and of Puerto Rico (and other Caribbean territories) during the 1890s was in fact very similar to the overseas acquisitions of the European empires at the time. Most Americans were so uncomfortable with this reality, however, that they soon began to call it something else (the Commonwealth of the Philippines, later followed by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; the quick granting of formal independence to Cuba and Panama).

The rhetoric and even policies of President Woodrow Wilson in the First World War and President Franklin Roosevelt in the Second World War were explicitly anti-colonial in their visions of what the shape of the postwar world should be. This led to ongoing tensions with the allies, Britain and France, who possessed the two largest overseas empires in the world. And although the United States itself acquired more overseas territories in the course of these wars (the Danish West Indies, which became the U.S. Virgin Islands, in the First World War; Micronesia and other Pacific islands in the Second World War), Americans never thought of these acquisitions as part of an empire. Indeed, since these acquisitions cannot fit into any American self-concept, they have almost never thought about them at all.

Finally, in the aftermath of the Second World War and with the advent of the Cold War, American power and presence extended throughout the Free World (especially Western Europe, Northeast Asia, and Latin America), if not the entire globe. That power and presence has extended even farther in the aftermath of the Cold War. Yet at no time during these five decades have either the public officials or the common public in the United States ever referred to their country as an empire or to their role as an imperial one. Even terms that are softer (and more precise), such as hegemony and sphere of influence, have been applied to the United States only by academic specialists in international affairs. The American terms for its international role have been "collective security", "treaty organizations" or alliances, "international institutions", "trade associations", and "the advancement of human rights." If America is an empire, it has to be the least explicit one in history.

It is simple, however, to compose an account of the U.S. role in international affairs that shows its similarity with various European empires. In the past many Europeans, Latin Americans, and East Asians have often done so. At the present time, it is true, many Europeans want the United States to extend its military and economic role into Central and Eastern Europe (the enlargement of NATO and the investment of capital), and discussion about an American empire is impolitic and subdued. Similarly, many Latin American elites currently want the United States to expand its economic role in their region in particular ways (the enlargement of NAFTA and, again, the investment of capital). Here, too, it is currently impolitic to indulge in discussions of "American imperialism" that came so naturally to so many generations of Latin Americans up until about a decade ago.

All this will change with time. There are bound to be disappointments with this or that aspect of the expanded American role in Europe and in Latin America, and this will inevitably generate a revival of discussions about an American empire in those places. While the Chinese, too, are sure to develop their own analyses of the United States in imperial perspective, for the sake of brevity we shall refer to accounts that stress the similarities between the United States and the European empires simply as the European tale.

In this version of the tale, the American experience is not just compared with the overseas and formal empires of Britain, France, and Spain. Comparisons are also made with the informal versions of these overseas empires and with the overland empires of Prussia and Russia. Distinctions and differences that are important in the American tale are far less prominent in the European one. This is the case with the difference between overseas and overland expansion, and between formal and informal rule.

In the European tale, the nineteenth-century overland annexations of the United States (especially the Louisiana Purchase and the southwestern annexations after the Mexican War) were reminiscent of the eighteenth-century overland annexations by Prussia (especially in Poland) and the several-century overland annexations of Russia (again in Poland, but also in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Siberia). On this view, the major difference between the American "Westward Movement" and the German "Drive to the East" is merely one of direction. (Germans and Russians have sometimes added that while they may have exploited the peoples that they conquered, the Americans largely exterminated them.)

More relevant in our time, however, is what the European tale says about the twentieth century. Here, the important idea is that...