Imperial Perspectives (Part II)

by Jim Miles

2005

This is the second in the Imperial Perspectives series. It looks at modern concepts of how the empire is made legitimate by current American political and ideological writers and the difficulties they face in this self-justification. Current arguments about how America “deserves” its power, how America fights a “just war”, and the concepts of a “lesser evil” are all used to support imperial excesses.

II. Legitimacy of Empire

While some academics recognize the empire’s shortcomings, they take a similar if different tack than Kagan’s “transcendent perfection” and rely on the idea, as Stephen Walt, Dean of International Affairs at Harvard University describes it, “other countries may envy America’s position….but they should not question that the United States deserves to be where it is.” [1] He does not say why they deserve this recognition directly, but proceeds to argue about the legitimacy of this power, not because it is true, but because it matters – it matters “because America’s ability to elicit active cooperation from other states is impaired when others see the U.S. position of primacy…as undesirable, short-sighted or morally dubious.”

This of course is a true statement but does not support the idea that they deserve to be where they are, it simply supports the internal political idea that Americans should be able to ‘elicit’ – a polite word for many things in the realm of military, economic, and political manipulation – support from others. He discusses the “elites” of foreign countries who might support them but do not because of popular support against the American way and finally finishes with the idea that the “tarnished image may also affect the competitive position of U.S. firms in overseas markets.” [2] All of which is true but in no way supports their deserving of being in a primal position. They have it, they can keep it depending on the means they are willing to use, but they will never deserve it as no empire before them deserved it. It has been built on the legs and backs of far too many disenfranchised peoples.

Empire’s Success

In his work Colossus, Niall Ferguson tries to argue why the empire is a good thing but ends up, if one reads it carefully enough, supplying reasons why empires are not based on positive human values and positive redemptive qualities but are there based on three rules for a successful empire, although he does not quite rationalize them this way. [3] The first reason could be summed up with the political phrase “It’s the economy stupid” – it’s all about money, our economy cannot succeed without continuing outside investment for consumption and without our control of foreign resources for our use.

Another attribute of a successful empire is another trite phrase, fully valid, “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” – the only successful colonies – apart from his examples of Germany and Japan, which were not truly colonies and in some sense are still occupied – are those without those nasty natives still around to get antsy about their rights and their heritage. So Canada and Australia were successful colonies as was America – even if it did separate from its motherland – because the clear majority of those primitive non-Christian savages were removed completely from existence.

India and Africa on the other hand were unsuccessful colonies because there was never enough might and will to eliminate the millions of peoples required to take absolute control of the land and its resources. That is only referencing the British Empire but similar examples can be found in other empires, with Zaire under the control of the Belgian monarchy and most of Latin America under the yoke of the Spanish monarchy.

The third pre-requisite for a successful empire is a third triteness, might is right. In order to be successful, we need to stay longer and be more forceful and this attitude is being played out by Bush and his cronies in Iraq today, (and with Sharon in Israel) , a little more force, a little more time and we’ll have it all under control. If that fails, we still have the nuclear option, although it would be better to let Israel do that for us.

Just Wars

All those arguments for the legitimacy of the empire, except for a light transcendent touch by Kagan, do not even touch upon a fourth significant factor, the religious validation of the empire as evinced by George Bush, who, “Speaking spontaneously, without the aid of advisers or speechwriters…put a word on the new American purpose that both shaped it and gave it meaning. “This crusade,” he said, “this war on terrorism.” Crusade.” [4] The empire was now in a battle of good versus evil, light against dark, modernity versus tribalism, Christians battling the Muslim hordes.

This Christian philosophy of empire reaches well back to the very first occupiers of the American shores who saw the natives as primitive, heathen, if sometimes noble, savages. It excuses and has excused many actions in the name of a greater good, a greater god, but only greater in the minds of the conquerors and not in the eyes of the displaced, diseased, and the dead. It creates the strangely convoluted arguments about ‘just wars’ and ‘lesser evils’ that give permission to one side to use whatever force is necessary to ‘do unto others’ but to not have them ‘do unto you’, rather torturous academic twists and lies that give permission for murder in the name of empire.

Of the many proponents of ‘just war’ Jean Bethke Elshtain wallows in the ‘evil’ trap, using the word frequently in her arguments for war. She also parrots Bush in his ignorance of the reasons why the Islamicists ‘hate us’ as “They loathe us because of who we are and what our society represents,” [5] again a true statement but mainly in the context of what the U.S does overseas is in full contradiction of their stated magnificence and strong moral intentions at home. She describes terror as “killing directed against all ideological enemies indiscriminately and outside the context of war between combatants…enemies can be legitimately killed no matter what they are doing, where they are, or how old they are.” [6] She does not define her phrase “outside the context of war”, leaving it as an unsupported generalization that wills her reader into agreement by deftly shuffling its meaning aside. As there are truly no rules of war, even though many of the so called ‘civilized’ nations try to write them for their own apologetics, all war becomes terror, all actions of terror are warlike and the two cannot truly be separated, they are not conjoined twins but one and the same thing.

I circle this argument again back to the Indian ‘wars’ with its indiscriminate and violent killing of women and children as well as combatants (remember Wounded Knee, if not, you should), and back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and any mass bombing of any city by any country, and back to Sherman’s march through the south, and back to the centuries of slave ownership followed by a century of missing civil rights, all of these people and many more becoming ‘homo sacer’, outside divine law (or moral law) and outside juridical law, giving their lives no meaning and making them simply objects to be done away with. [7] Towards the end of her reasoning Elshtain turns towards Michael Ignatieff for support of her ‘empire’ arguments as they are “groping toward…an image of the world’s greatest superpower taking on an enormous burden and doing so with a relatively, though not entirely, selfless intent.” [8] This is a return to the White Man’s burden, with a rationalized selflessness but a practical power grab of resources and markets. Groping is certainly an accurate description, reminiscent of a blind man in a dark cave trying to find his way out, although that analogy does disservice to the blind as their capabilities of listening and hearing what is going on and interpreting it correctly are vastly superior to the just warriors and politicians that currently lead the American empire.

Good versus Evil

The concept of evil is further discussed in The Lesser Evil by Ignatieff who manages to twist some logic around the concept of a lesser evil, essentially meaning that the bad things we do are not as bad as the things being done to us, and are being done for a good cause. Punishment is brutal, but it’s good for you, and we hurt with you. It almost comes down to “this hurts me more than it hurts you, because I am morally correct.” Or as Ignatieff puts it, “The evil that is characteristic of democracies usually results from the blindness of good intentions.” [9] The image of groping returns, of those ignorant leaders, wilfully ignorant leaders, rationalizing their conduct based on ‘good’ and ‘evil’, without wanting to, without having the courage to, perhaps without having the ability to, examine the world from another person’s perspective. In his notes to the preface, Ignatieff acknowledges having “benefited greatly” from Elshtain’s Just War – he touches only briefly on the religious polemics of terror, but the support of Elshtain and the very use of the word evil indicates that religion, despite American denial of a Holy War, plays a largely unstated part in the argument.

The final case of religious support for the empire in its current formulation comes from the extreme right, the fundamentalist Christians who see in the development of Eretz Israel (essentially all the land claimed by Israel as its god given covenant) the beginning of the end time prophecies. There are many proponents of this perspective, the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, those who argue for the ultimate legitimacy of the American Empire as it leads to the second coming of Christ. Relying on the prophetic mythology or superstitions of the Bible, the empire stretches towards Israel as “Prophecy declares that Jerusalem will be united and in Jewish hands when the Messiah comes. The battle being fought over Jerusalem is not politics – it’s prophecy.” [10] That the American Christian right and the Israeli lobby in America are, for the time being, working together for this apocalyptic ending is well recorded and well beyond a description of it being a conspiracy theory.

From biblical prophetic legitimacy, revolving back to empire as just and deserving, as a force for economic development and the advancing of liberal values globally, as a protector of the week and downtrodden, as a means of eliminating poverty globally with its economic supra-national corporatism, it is time to take a turn back towards the nation as it was founded, a nation that was born of insurrections and revolution yet has safeguards against that within itself as much as it can. Right from the beginning ‘what has been done’ speaks much more loudly than ‘what you are saying.’ It has been the same throughout history within all civilizations that flourished then diminished or mutated.

Notes

[1] Walt Stephen M. Taming American Power – The Global Response to U.S. Primacy. W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2005. p. 171, (italics in the original).
[2] Ibid, p. 176-8.
[3] See the book review "Colossus – The Price of America's Empire. Niall Fergusson, Penguin Press, New York, 2004" at www.palestinechronicle.com.
[4] Carroll, James. Crusade – Chronicles of an Unjust War. Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2005. p. 02, italics in original.
[5] Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Just War Against Terror – The Burden of American Power in a Violent World. Basic Books, New York, 2003. p. 03.
[6] Ibid, p.18.
[7] Gregory, Derek. The Colonial Present. Blackwell Publishing. Malden Maine, U.S.A., 2004. p. 62-3.
[8] Elshtain, p. 166.
[9] Ignatieff, Michael. The Lesser Evil – Political Ethics in an Age of Terror. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004. p.12.
[10] Evans, Michael D. The American Prophecies – Ancient Scriptures Reveal Our Nation's Future. Warner Faith, New York, 2004. p. 245.

© Jim Miles. Used with permission.