This is a book about the United States as an empire:1 its territorial origins shortly after its birth as a nation-state (Part I), its consolidation as a semiglobal project after the Second World War (Part II), and its current retreat (Part III). Since the book argues that the main reasons for this change are internal rather than external, the implications can be seen as positive: the United States will not be as important in and to the world as before, but its new role will be more consistent with a majority of its citizens’ aspirations. Retreat from empire does not necessarily imply the decline of the nation-state. Indeed, it can even strengthen the nation-state if the retreat is due mainly to internal factors.
The book is not—at least not primarily—about domestic affairs, although these do impinge on international relations in all sorts of ways. It is not a social or economic history, although both are intimately related to the operations of American empire.2 It is therefore more like an imperial history, although it is not a conventional one, as it does not have an end date.
An imperial history cannot be written unless the country in question is an empire, and there are still, in America, plenty of empire deniers. The United States was born in opposition to empire, it was said, and therefore was anti-imperialist from birth. Its republican status precluded an empire with its implications of an emperor or constitutional monarch. A nation committed to freedom, it was argued, could never accept the subordinate status assigned to subjects in imperial systems.
Yet there have been three moments since the War of Independence when the country’s imperial status has been widely accepted. The first relates to the generation of the Founding Fathers, for whom the terms “republic” and “empire” were not contradictory, and who used “empire” freely, if loosely. The second corresponds to the period after 1898 when the United States took possession of numerous former Spanish colonies. The third coincides with the “unipolar” moment after the Cold War when the United States no longer faced what it claimed had been an existential threat.
In between these three moments, there were long periods when the idea of the United States as an empire seemed alien to most Americans. And yet, in truth, the nation has been an empire ever since 1783, when it signed the Treaty of Paris, acquiring in the process a vast tract of territory over which none of the former thirteen colonies had exercised sovereignty and which was already inhabited by other peoples. Indeed, the arrangements adopted for this newly acquired land fit very well into even the narrowest definition of “empire” employed in the Oxford English Dictionary: “An extensive territory under the control of a supreme ruler . . . , often consisting of an aggregate of many separate states or territories. In later use also: an extensive group of subject territories ultimately under the rule of a single sovereign state.”
As the territories gradually became states (many having to wait more than fifty years to do so), the territorial dimension of US empire became less important, although it has not entirely disappeared even today. In its place came an empire that was not geographically constrained and which I call a semiglobal empire.3 This empire is different from its territorial predecessor. It relies much more on institutional control and the influence of nonstate actors (NSAs); however, it must be able to back this up with military force to be credible. In the worlds of Charles Maier, perhaps the foremost scholar of American empire,
Empire does not mean just the accumulation of lands abroad by conquest. And it does not mean just the imposition of authoritarian regimes on overseas territories. Empire is a form of political organization in which the social elements that rule in the dominant state—the “mother country” or the “metropole”—create a network of allied elites in regions abroad who accept subordination in international affairs in return for the security of their position in their own administrative unit (the “colony” or, in spatial terms, the “periphery”). . . . They intertwine their economic resources with the dominant power, and they accept and even celebrate a set of values and tastes that privilege or defer to the culture of the metropole.4
Maier’s definition draws attention to an important point that is often forgotten in debates about the American empire: the role of foreign elites. Even if all US citizens denied their country was an empire, unlikely though that might be, its status would still be a moot point if elites in other parts of the world continued to treat it as if it were. In other words, there are two sides to American empire, and both must be taken into account.
Of course, no definition on its own can ever persuade all skeptics that the United States has been, and still is, an empire. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for example, responded to a foreign reporter in 2003, “We don’t seek empires. We’re not imperialistic. We never have been. I can’t imagine why you’d even ask the question.”5
Since US troops were beginning their long occupation of Iraq at the time he uttered these words, Rumsfeld clearly had in mind a very narrow definition of empire involving permanent and direct political control of the “periphery” without the cooperation of foreign elites. This, however, is a definition that most scholars today find too restrictive, since it ignores the flexibility with which empires have always operated.
Americans are prepared to concede that the United States occupies a hegemonic position in the world, but many are still not willing to call this empire. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., for example, claimed in 2005, “Of course we enjoy an informal empire—military bases, status-of-forces agreements, trade concessions, multinational corporations, cultural penetrations, and other favors. But these are marginal to the subject of direct control. . . . In their days of imperial glory, Rome, London, Paris, despite slow and awkward lines of communication, really ruled their empires. Today communication is instantaneous. But despite the immediacy of contact, Washington, far from ruling an empire in the old sense, has become the virtual prisoner of its client states.” 6
Leaving aside the ambiguity of Schlesinger’s accepting that the United States has “client states” while denying its imperial status, it is clear he also has in mind a narrow definition of empire that involves political control of states exercised through metropolitan officials rather than foreign elites. Yet the empires to which he refers—Roman, British, and French—also used indirect forms of control over other territories where it suited them and still did not hesitate to intervene where necessary.
The quotes from Rumsfeld and Schlesinger are representative of the empire deniers in the United States that wish to fight back against those legions of authors who claim that America after the Cold War, and especially after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, had become the new Rome and needed to accept its imperial burden with good grace. These “imperial enthusiasts,” as they have been called, include subjects as well as citizens of the empire, demonstrating once again the importance of foreign elites.7
The imperial enthusiasts have tried to strip “empire” of its pejorative connotations, but they still give it a normative content. So do their opponents, the imperial critics, for whom empire leads to the corruption of democratic values and is ultimately self-defeating. Thus, all the participants in the modern empire debate have tended to define it as a good or bad thing rather than approaching it objectively.
That was not always the case. In his book The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, first published in 1959, William Appleman Williams employed a notion of empire that—he argued—reflected more accurately the path of US history since independence. Williams’s thesis was subject to attack and counterattack by countless specialists, but the concept of empire survived and even led to the foundation of a school of diplomatic history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison—a rare privilege for a scholar.
Thanks to the pioneering work of Williams, imperial history now has a place in the mainstream of academic life in the United States. Indeed, there is even an American Empire Project that produces a wide range of publications on contemporary US affairs.8 And “empire” has penetrated the daily lexicon not just of cultural studies and esoteric journals but also of business and the media. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world “American empire” has never gone out of fashion.
Why did the United States become an empire so soon after its birth as an independent state? It was not forced to do so. America was not dragged reluctantly into an imperial role by land-hungry settlers, although some have tried to argue this was the case. It did not acquire an empire in a fit of absentmindedness, as has been claimed for Great Britain. And it did not at first need an empire to support its model of capitalism.
The United States was born in an imperial age. Independent countries aspiring to greatness therefore needed to define themselves as empires. The Founding Fathers, never doubting the new state’s potential grandeur, spoke with one voice on the country’s imperial destiny, as did their counterparts in Brazil and Mexico following independence.9 Powerful European states were the same, with Germany and Italy seeking empires soon after unification, toward the end of the nineteenth century.
Empires were supposed to confer commercial advantage, provide political influence, and shape international dynamics. The British, Dutch, French, and Russian empires largely achieved this and provided useful models for other aspirants. Yet imperial success could not be secured without military prowess, diplomatic skill, and economic growth. That the project succeeded in the United States, while failing in many other aspiring empires, was a consequence of the ruthlessness of the American model in the first century after independence. The details of how it did this, however, would need to be the subject of another book, as it takes us into the realm of domestic and military affairs.
Empires based mainly on territory have now largely disappeared. Why did the same not happen to the United States? The answer is that America’s territorial empire would be replaced by something much more ambitious: an empire based on institutions that would allow the United States to set the international rules of the game that others would then follow. Powerful countries have always aspired to achieve this—the gold standard of imperial rule—but only the United States has been in a position fully to carry it out. It would have required a forbearance of biblical proportions for America not to have pursued this opportunity at the end of the Second World War.
Empires, of which there have been many in world history, can take many forms. The first is territorial, where land is acquired and where the occupants do not receive the same rights as the metropole’s citizens. The United States has been an empire in this sense since 1783, when it acquired vast territories through the Treaty of Paris that were administered in a different fashion to the states of the union. Although most territories subsequently became states, there was often a long lag, and some territories under US control have never become states.
The second version of empire is informal. This is when the imperial state exerts such an influence on other countries that their sovereignty is severely compromised. The countries concerned can be protectorates or client states. In the case of protectorates, the imperial state exercises formal control over some aspects of state policy, while in the case of client states there is no need; client states are happy to follow the lead of the imperial power without the need for formal limitations on their sovereignty.
Most empires have had an informal component. The ancient ones did so, as have the more modern European ones. The United States is no exception, and there are plenty of countries that can easily be defined as American protectorates or client states. An informal empire can be imposed by force, but more often it comes about through attraction. Weaker countries instinctively gravitate toward those with more power—in all the senses of that word.
The third form of empire is institutional, and is much rarer. This is where a single nation-state exerts such an influence on the rules under which all nations interact with each other that it can be said to exercise a global empire. The key to this dimension of empire is world leadership, since the imperial power must not only set the rules but also enforce them. No country has ever truly achieved global domination, so the height of imperial ambition has been a semiglobal empire. The United Kingdom achieved this briefly after the Napoleonic Wars, and the United States after the Second World War.
The United States is therefore an empire in all three forms. Why, then, can it be said to be in retreat? It is not primarily the territorial dimension. The retreat from territorial empire took place a long time ago, both through the incorporation of territories as states (e.g., Hawaii) and through decolonization (e.g., the Philippines). The territorial empire is now very small in relation to the size of the United States and is not expected to change significantly in the future. Indeed, the only change that might happen in the next twenty years is the conversion of the territory of Puerto Rico into a state. Thus, the territorial empire will remain of limited importance.
The informal empire, on the other hand, is currently shrinking and will continue to do so. This is partly because of the rise of nationalism in many parts of the informal empire, but also because of US reluctance to accept the costs (in all senses) of keeping these countries in line. Techniques of control, from muscular diplomacy to military force, that were widely used during the Cold War are now employed more sparingly. The informal empire is still important, but it is much less extensive than it was twenty years ago.
The shrinking of the informal empire is not especially controversial in the United States and can easily be explained as a consequence of the end of the Cold War. It is the retreat from institutional empire that causes the greatest anxiety among some sections of the populace. Yet it is inevitable. Other countries are now reluctant to let America establish and enforce the rules of the game, while the United States itself is increasingly unable to exercise the global leadership that once came so naturally.
The world is therefore in transition, and America will occupy a less important role in the future. This does imply a decline in the geopolitical importance of the United States, and there will inevitably be a relative decline as well in its economic and financial strength. Yet this need not be an absolute decline and will not be unless the transition is very badly managed indeed. That, of course, depends not only on the United States itself but also on some of the external actors.
The United States became a territorial empire immediately after the War of Independence, and in the following years acquired an imperial mindset (inherited in part from its former British rulers). The expansion across the North American continent was made possible by the acquisition of territories in which Native Americans (“Indians”) and non-Anglo settlers were living in significant numbers. These territories were governed—until they joined the Union—in a manner similar to that in some colonies in contemporary European empires.
When territories joined the Union, a process that could take many decades, they ceased to be colonies and became part of the nation-state. However, the territorial empire continued to expand, going “offshore” after the Mexican-American War (1846–48). By the end of the Spanish-American War (1898), the United States had acquired several territories in the Asia-Pacific region and in the Caribbean, and would soon exercise control over part of Central America. In addition, Liberia in West Africa was a US colony until independence was declared in 1847, after which it became an American protectorate.
The process of land acquisition ended in the twentieth century and the territorial empire slowly shrank to its current modest proportions. However, the imperial mentality remained unaffected. The First World War and its aftermath provided the United States with a significant opportunity to expand its informal empire, especially in the Americas and the Middle East, while the end of the Second World War marked the beginning of a serious attempt at global hegemony. This ambition was never fully achieved as a result of resistance from the Soviet Union, China, and some of the nonaligned states, but America did become a semiglobal empire underpinned by international institutions, military bases, and NSAs.
This empire is now in retreat. With the benefit of hindsight we can identify intimations of its mortality even before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The scale of retreat was temporarily concealed by the unipolar moment the United States enjoyed in the decade before the second invasion of Iraq (2003), when it appeared to face no major competitor. However, subsequent events have confirmed that the retreat of the empire has continued. This process will not be reversed.
Empires can retreat for internal or external reasons. Although external factors may become more important in the future, particularly in relation to competition with China, the root causes of US retreat from empire are internal. The imperial mindset is slowly withering, and in the process the United States may succeed eventually in becoming “merely” a nation-state. This is not guaranteed, however, and the risks of violent conflict associated with a long retreat from empire are considerable.
To avoid the use of the word “empire” Americans have developed an enormous lexicon of synonyms. The best known is “exceptionalism,” which is still in vogue today. Indeed, “American exceptionalism” has been a constant in US political discourse since the War of Independence, even if it has been defined in many different ways.10 It surfaced dramatically in the 2016 presidential campaign when Hillary Clinton, the candidate of the Democratic Party, gave a speech to the American Legion in which she attacked her opponent, Republican Donald Trump, for his alleged lack of commitment to American exceptionalism and at the same time made clear the link between the concept and US empire:
The United States is an exceptional nation. . . . And part of what makes America an exceptional nation, is that we are also an indispensable nation. In fact, we are the indispensable nation. People all over the world look to us and follow our lead. . . . When we say America is exceptional . . . it means that we recognize America’s unique and unparalleled ability to be a force for peace and progress, a champion for freedom and opportunity. Our power comes with a responsibility to lead. . . . Because, when America fails to lead, we leave a vacuum that either causes chaos or other countries or networks rush in to fill the void. So no matter how hard it gets, no matter how great the challenge, America must lead. . . . American leadership means standing with our allies because our network of allies is part of what makes us exceptional.11
“Leadership,” as Clinton’s speech made clear, is also a synonym for empire and is often embedded in the phrase “leadership of the free world”—or, these days, “leadership of the democratic world.” “Force for good” is a phrase that is still heard frequently (Clinton referred to “force for peace and progress,” which is the same thing) and is used to distinguish US interventions from those of other empires allegedly motivated only by narrow self-interest. And although “manifest destiny” is no longer employed, its abbreviated form “destiny” is still used by foreign elites, as in the speech by British prime minister Tony Blair to the US Congress in 2003: “I know it’s hard on America, and in some small corner of this vast country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I’ve never been to, but always wanted to go. I know out there there’s a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, ‘Why me? And why us? And why America?’ And the only answer is, ‘Because destiny put you in this place in history, in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do.’ ”12
Some of the synonyms, such as “hegemony,” sound so much like “empire” that they tend not to be used by those in public office. Other phrases are more subtle—especially “soft power”; Joseph Nye Jr. explains, “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries—admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness—want to follow it. In this sense, it is also important to set the agenda and attract others in world politics, and not only to force them to change by threatening military force or economic sanctions. This soft power—getting others to want the outcomes that you want—co-opts people rather than coerces them.”13
Soft power has often been portrayed as an alternative to empire, but in truth it is a complement. Indeed, as the quote from Nye makes clear, it simply charts a more consensual route to the semiglobal empire that America has constructed rather than one based on force alone. Yet “soft power” without “hard power” would never be sufficient to sustain an empire, so soft power can only play a complementary role.
The American empire was built by the US state. As in all empires, however, NSAs have played an important part in this process. Their presence abroad has given America a strong justification for building and defending the empire, while their own actions have spread imperial values and helped to create the conditions in which the empire could flourish.
The most important NSA has been the US multinational enterprise (MNE) that operates in so many different locations. The United States did not invent this institution, but it was taken to a new level in the twentieth century as a result of the huge size of the US economy, the opportunities for profitable investment overseas, and the strong support the MNE has usually received from the US state.
After the Second World War, US MNEs exploded in number and size. Part of this was the close relation between public spending on defense and private companies that led President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–61) at the end of his term in office to warn of the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.” Successive US governments promoted the expansion of MNEs, and political parties were rewarded with generous funding from the companies and their senior executives.
The brands of US MNEs have come to symbolize the semiglobal empire in many parts of the world and have become expressions of the US state—not just of its culture. Even in countries outside the empire, these brands are often esteemed by the population at large as symbols of liberty, making their governments reluctant to ban access to them for fear of popular resistance.
Other NSAs, however, have also been important in the process of empire building. These include the media, philanthropic foundations, think tanks, educational institutions, and religious organizations. Universities, for example, have established a strong presence in many countries through business schools, foreign campuses, and summer courses. Their scholarship programs attract the brightest students to the United States—albeit sometimes with unintended and unexpected consequences.
The culture needed for empires to flourish is complex. The educational system needs to support a national vision that justifies foreign interventions. The citizens of other countries, subjects of the empire, must be seen as less important than those of the metropole. The belief system must be widely supported. The media must be on board, and national history needs to be underpinned by a series of myths that convey a sense of cultural and racial superiority.
Until recently, American culture met these requirements with ease. Yet the consensus is now breaking down. Younger Americans no longer see their country as “exceptional” nor its actions abroad as necessarily motivated by a desire to act as “a force for good.” Racism, it can be argued, is in decline despite the hostility still displayed by many whites toward nonwhite peoples. This has reduced the willingness of the citizens to pay the “blood price” so often associated with empire. In turn, this has severely restricted the degrees of freedom enjoyed by the executive in the past.
Nor is the relationship between MNEs and the US state as close as it once was. Many US MNEs are now truly global and irked by the restrictions of a semiglobal empire. They must also pay careful attention to their operations outside the semiglobal empire (especially in China), which can put them in conflict with the US state. And the fiscal needs of the American government increasingly generate friction with US MNEs.
As the empire retreats, the question often asked about the United States is, what next? The answer must be in two parts. The first concerns what happens to the nation-state and the second what happens to global governance. The two, of course, are related, but they are conceptually separate.
When states lose their empires they can be destroyed. This happened to the Roman empire, or at least the western part of it, following the foreign invasions of the fifth century. It also happened to the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires after the First World War since the nation-states that came afterward bore little relation to their predecessors. In all of these cases, external aggression proved decisive in dismantling not just the empire but the imperial state as well.
However, the opposite can happen. When Belgium, France, Holland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom lost their empires after the Second World War, it had an exhilarating effect—after a short period of disruption—on the nation-state. All these countries had fought to retain parts of their empires, but it was resistance at home that proved crucial. The nation-state was now more comfortable in its postimperial skin, even if it would take many decades to finally shed the imperial mentality.
What will happen to America? The Vietnam War provides an illuminating experience. The United States did not withdraw from the war because of external pressure, however heroic Vietnamese resistance may have been. It withdrew because of opposition at home, and the nation-state eventually became reconciled to imperial retreat. Similarly, the semiglobal empire is retreating long before any other country, or group of countries, is ready to replace it because an increasing number of Americans are no longer comfortable with the burden it implies.
Whether America will come to regret this depends on what happens to global governance. In their magisterial book on empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri claim,
The concept of Empire is characterized fundamentally by a lack of boundaries: Empire’s rule has no limits. First and foremost, then, the concept of Empire posits a regime that effectively encompasses the spatial totality, or really that rules over the entire “civilized” world. No territorial boundaries limit its reign. Second, the concept of Empire presents itself not as a historical regime originating in conquest, but rather as an order that effectively suspends history and thereby fixes the existing state of affairs for eternity. . . . Third, the rule of Empire operates on all registers of the social order extending down to the depths of the social world.14
The United States fulfilled this role for many decades, but now a vacuum is appearing that must be filled. Candidates for the role range from the utopian to the dystopian, with the United Nations family of independent nations at one end of the spectrum and a cabal of rogue states at the other. In between are more realistic options, including a cadre of regional hegemons and a duumvirate or triumvirate involving the United States and other powers.
Of all these options, it is the prospect of a duumvirate (G2) with China that has excited the most interest: the empire in retreat joining force with the rising power to arrange the affairs of the world in an orderly fashion. At first the Chinese rejected the idea on the grounds that it conflicted with their strongly held views on national sovereignty. Premier Wen Jiabao, speaking in 2009, could not have been clearer: “Some say that world affairs will be managed solely by China and the United States. I think that view is baseless and wrong. . . . It is impossible for a couple of countries or a group of big powers to resolve all global issues. Multipolarization and multilateralism represent the larger trend and the will of people.”15
As the American imperial retreat continued, however, and China’s rise continued unabated, Chinese leaders struck a different tone. Speaking in 2012, President Xi Jinping stated, “Both sides should, from the fundamental interest of the people of the two countries and of the world, join the efforts to build up China-U.S. cooperative partnership, trying to find a completely new way for the new type of great power relations, which would be unprecedented in history and open up the future.”16
It is too early to be sure what will happen.17 Both US imperial retreat and Chinese ascent still have some distance to go, and during this time other options will surely emerge. In addition, American citizens are not comfortable with the idea of sharing global power with China even if in some areas (e.g., the threat from North Korea) they already have no choice. However, the longer it takes, the more certain we can be that other countries will wish to stake a claim. The final outcome could be very messy indeed.
Just how messy was hinted at by the US presidential campaign in 2016. In the primaries for the Democratic nomination, a paleo, or traditional, imperialist (Hillary Clinton) fought a bitter, and ultimately successful, campaign against an anti-imperialist (Bernie Sanders) who—despite his advanced age—captured the enthusiasm of American youth. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, seventeen candidates competed for the nomination, with fifteen that could be characterized as paleo-imperialists, one as a neo-isolationist (Rand Paul), and one—the eventual winner—as a neo-imperialist (Donald Trump).
Given Trump’s campaign rhetoric—Make America Great Again—some assumed he was just another paleo-imperialist. Others even argued he was a neo-isolationist in view of his negative comments on free trade agreements. Yet, although an imperialist, Trump offered a vision of empire that differed significantly from all previous administrations—one that emphasized the limitations of what America could do as a world leader and the inevitability of working with other states even if they did not share American interests, let alone values. For this reason he can be labeled a neo-imperialist.18
The 2016 presidential contest was therefore between a paleo-imperialist and a neo-imperialist, with neither candidate able to inspire a nation that is turning against empire. In the end, the neo-imperialist won, suggesting that imperial retreat will accelerate. Indeed, President Trump (2017–) soon found that his ability to shape the world in the American image was highly restricted, with other countries ever more determined to influence global proceedings.
The retreat from empire will therefore continue even as America still awaits its first “postimperial” president.19 That will happen one day, and it could be a very liberating experience for many Americans. However, the imperial mindset will take longer to shed, just as has happened in many parts of Europe. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is the hardest lesson for erstwhile imperialists to learn.