In Defense of Empire

It can ensure stability and protect minorities better than any

other form of order. The case for a tempered American
imperialism.
Robert D. Kaplan
Mar 19 2014, 9:06 PM ET

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In June 1941, during the festival of Shavuot, a mob of Arab
soldiers and tribesmen led a pogrom in the Jewish quarter of
Baghdad, murdering well over 180 men, women, and children. The
pogrom, known locally as the Farhud (looting), was documented
by the late Baghdadi Jew and Middle East specialist Elie Kedourie
in his 1970 book The Chatham House Version and Other MiddleEastern Studies. Kedourie blamed British authorities for failing
to protect the Jews, despite having taken over responsibility for
Mesopotamia from the Ottoman Empire more than two decades
earlier.
He
explained
that
the
Jews
could
cheerfully
acknowledge the right of conquest, whether exercised by the
Ottomans or by the British, because their history had taught
them that there lay safety. But the British failure to enforce
the law and provide imperial order was the kind of transgression
that
ethnic
and
religious
minorities
could
ill
afford:
traditionally, imperialism itself, most notably that of the
Hapsburgs and the Ottomans, had protected minorities from the
tyranny of the majority. It wasnt imperialism per se that
Kedourie railed against, but weak, ineffectual imperialism.
To be sure, the British had their hands full in Mesopotamia in
1941: given the tendency of the Arab masses toward anti-Western
and anti-Zionist ideologies (a tendency that was itself at least
in part a reaction to British dominance), colonial authorities
were desperate to keep Nazi influence out of the Middle East. As
a result, the British ambassador opted for a lighter hand when at
a certain point he ought to have used a heavier one. Be that as
it may, what is not at issue, as Kedourie correctly stated, is
the responsibility that conquest historically carried with it.
Throughout history, governance and relative safety have most
often been provided by empires, Western or Eastern. Anarchy
reigned in the interregnums. To wit, the British may have failed
in Baghdad, Palestine, and elsewhere, but the larger history of
the British Empire is one of providing a vast armature of
stability, fostered by sea and rail communications, where before
there had been demonstrably less stability. In fact, as the

Harvard historian Niall Ferguson has argued, the British Empire

enabled
a
late-19thand
early-20th-century
form
of
globalization, tragically interrupted by a worldwide depression,
two world wars, and a cold war. After that, a new form of
globalization took root, made possible by an American naval and
air presence across large swaths of the Earth, a presence of
undeniably imperial dimensions. Globalization depends upon secure
sea lines of communication for trade and energy transfers:
without the U.S. Navy, thered be no globalization, no Davos,
period.
But imperialism is now seen by global elites as altogether evil,
despite empires having offered the most benign form of order for
thousands of years, keeping the anarchy of ethnic, tribal, and
sectarian war bands to a reasonable minimum. Compared with
imperialism, democracy is a new and uncertain phenomenon. Even
the two most estimable democracies in modern history, the United
States and Great Britain, were empires for long periods. As both
a dream and a fact the American Empire was born before the United
States, writes the mid-20th-century historian of westward
expansion Bernard DeVoto. Following their initial settlement, and
before their incorporation as states, the western territories
were nothing less than imperial possessions of Washington, D.C.
No surprise there: imperialism confers a loose and accepted form
of sovereignty, occupying a middle ground between anarchy and
full state control.
Ancient empires such as Rome, Achaemenid Persia, Mauryan India,
and Han China may have been cruel beyond measure, but they were
less cruel and delivered more predictability for the average
person than did anything beyond their borders. Who says
imperialism is necessarily reactionary? Athens, Rome, Venice, and
Great Britain were the most enlightened regimes of their day.
True, imperialism has often been driven by the pursuit of riches,
but that pursuit has in many cases resulted in a hard-earned
cosmopolitanism. The early modern empires of Hapsburg Austria and
Ottoman Turkey were well known for their relative tolerance and
protection of minorities, including the Jews. Precisely because
the Hapsburg imperialists governed a mlange of ethnic and
religious groups stretching from the edge of the Swiss Alps to
central Romania, and from the Polish Carpathians to the Adriatic
Sea, they abjured ethnic nationalism and sought a universalism
almost postmodern in its design. What followed the Hapsburgs were
mono-ethnic
states
and
quasi-democracies
that
persecuted
minorities and helped ease the path of Nazism.
All of these empires delivered more peace and stability than the
United Nations ever has or probably ever could. Consider, too,
the American example. The humanitarian interventions in Bosnia
and Kosovo, and the absence of such interventions in Rwanda and
Syria, show American imperialism in action, and in abeyance.
This interpretation of empire is hardly novel; indeed, it is
captured in Rudyard Kiplings famous 1899 poem, The White Mans

Burden, which is not, as is commonly assumed, a declaration of

racist aggression, but of the need for America to take up the
cause of humanitarianism and good government in the Philippines
at the turn of the 20th century. From Romes widespread offer of
citizenship to its subject peoples, to Frances offer of a
measure of equality to fluent Francophone Africans, to Britains
arrangement of truces among the Yemeni tribes, to the epic array
of agricultural and educational services provided by the
Europeans throughout their tropical domainsBritains Indian
Civil Service stands outimperialism and enlightenment (albeit
self-interested) have often been inextricable.
The first post-imperial American presidency since World War II
telegraphs nothing so much as exhaustion.
However patronizing this may sound, the European imperialists
could be eminently practical men, becoming proficient at the
native languages and enhancing area expertise. Nazis and
Communists, by contrast, were imperialists only secondarily; they
were primarily radical utopians who sought racial and ideological
submission. Thus, the critique that imperialism constitutes evil
and nothing more is, broadly speaking, lazy and ahistorical,
dependent as it often is on the very worst examples, such as the
Belgians in the 19th-century Congo and the Russians throughout
modern history in Eurasia.
Nevertheless, the critique that imperialism constitutes bad
American foreign policy has serious merit: the real problem with
imperialism is not that it is evil, but rather that it is too
expensive and therefore a problematic grand strategy for a
country like the United States. Many an empire has collapsed
because of the burden of conquest. It is one thing to acknowledge
the positive attributes of Rome or Hapsburg Austria; it is quite
another to justify every military intervention that is considered
by elites in Washington.
Thus, the debate Americans should be having is the following: Is
an imperial-like foreign policy sustainable? I use the term
imperial-like because, while the United States has no colonies,
its global responsibilities, particularly in the military sphere,
burden it with the expenses and frustrations of empires of old.
Caution: those who say such a foreign policy is unsustainable are
not necessarily isolationists. Alas, isolationism is increasingly
used as a slur against those who might only be recommending
restraint in certain circumstances.
Once that caution is acknowledged, the debate gets really
interesting. To repeat, the critique of imperialism as expensive
and unsustainable is not easily dismissed. As for the critique
that imperialism merely constitutes evil: while that line of
thinking is not serious, it does get at a crucial logic regarding
the American Experience. That logic goes like this: America is
unique in history. The United States may have strayed into empire
during the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the resultant war in
the Philippines. And it may have become an imperial Leviathan of

sorts in the wake of World War II. At root, however, the United
States was never meant to be an empire, but rather that
proverbial city on a hill, offering an example to the rest of the
world rather than sending its military in search of dragons to
slay.
This, as it happens, is more or less the position of the Obama
administration. The first post-imperial American presidency since
World War II telegraphs nothing so much as exhaustion with world
affairs. Obama essentially wants regional powers (such as Japan
in Asia, and Saudi Arabia and Israel in the Middle East) to rely
less on the United States in maintaining local power balances.
And he wants to keep Americas enemies at bay through the use of
inexpensive drones rather than the deployment of ground forces.
Secretary of State John Kerrys energetic diplomacy vis--vis
Iran and Israel-Palestine might seem like a brave effort to set
the Middle Easts house in order, thereby facilitating the socalled American pivot to Asia. And yet, Kerry appears to be
neglecting Asia in the meantime, and no one believes that Iran,
Israel, or Palestine will suffer negative consequences from the
U.S. if negotiations fail. Once lifted, the toughest sanctions on
Iran will not be reinstated. Israel can always depend on its
legions of support in Congress, and the Palestinians have nothing
to fear from Obama. The dread of imperial-like retribution that
accompanied Henry Kissingers 1970s shuttle diplomacy in the
Middle East is nowhere apparent. Kerry, unlike Kissinger, has
articulated no grand strategy or even a basic strategic
conception.
Rather than Obamas post-imperialism, in which the secretary of
state appears like a lonely and wayward operator encumbered by an
apathetic White House, I maintain that a tempered imperialism is
now preferable.
No other power or constellation of powers is able to provide even
a fraction of the global order provided by the United States.
U.S. air and sea dominance preserves the peace, such as it
exists, in Asia and the Greater Middle East. American military
force,
reasonably
deployed,
is
what
ultimately
protects
democracies as diverse as Poland, Israel, and Taiwan from being
overrun by enemies. If America sharply retrenched its air and sea
forces, while starving its land forces of adequate supplies and
training, the world would be a far more anarchic place, with
adverse repercussions for the American homeland.
Rome, Parthia, and Hapsburg Austria were great precisely because
they gave significant parts of the world a modicum of imperial
order that they would not otherwise have enjoyed. America must
presently do likewise, particularly in East Asia, the geographic
heartland of the world economy and the home of American treaty
allies.
This by no means obliges the American military to repair complex

and populous Islamic countries that lack critical components of

civil society. America must roam the world with its ships and
planes, but be very wary of where it gets involved on the ground.
And it must initiate military hostilities only when an
overwhelming national interest is threatened. Otherwise, it
should limit its involvement to economic inducements and robust
diplomacydiplomacy that exerts every possible pressure in order
to prevent widespread atrocities in parts of the world, such as
central Africa, that are not, in the orthodox sense, strategic.
That, I submit, would be a policy direction that internalizes
both the drawbacks and the benefits of imperialism, not as it has
been conventionally thought of, but as it has actually been
practiced throughout history.