Colossus (56 page)

6
. Kolko and Kolko,
Limits of Power
. Also Kolko,
Politics of War
; Kolko,
Roots of American Foreign Policy
; Kolko,
Vietnam
. For a good example of the way Vietnam encouraged talk of American empire, see Buchanan, “Geography of Empire.” See also Magdoff,
Age of Imperialism
; McMahon, Limits of Empire; Swomley,
American Empire
. The odd contrarian defended American imperialism in the 1960s: see Liska,
Imperial America
; Steel,
Pax Americana
. One was even a Frenchman: Aron,
Imperial Republic
.

7
. Tucker and Hendrickson,
Imperial Temptation
, pp. 53, 211.

8
. Johnson,
Blowback
; Blum,
Rogue State
; Hudson,
Super Imperialism
. See also Smith,
American Empire
.

9
. See, for example, Eric Hobsbawm, “America’s Imperial Delusion,”
Guardian
, June 14, 2003. Predictable commentaries have also come from Edward Said and Noam Chomsky.

10
. Vidal,
Decline and Fall of the American Empire
.

11
. Patrick Buchanan,
Republic
, p. 6. See also idem, “What Price the American Empire?,”
American Cause
, May 29, 2002.

12
. Prestowitz,
Rogue Nation
.

13
. See, e.g., Bacevich,
American Empire
, p. 243: “Although the U.S. has not created an empire in any formal sense … it has most definitely acquired an imperial problem …. Like it or not, America today
is
Rome, committed irreversibly to the maintenance and, where feasible, expansion of an empire that differs from every other empire in history. This is hardly a matter for celebration; but neither is there any purpose served by denying the facts.” See also Rosen, “Empire,” p. 61: “If the logic of an American empire is unappealing, it is not at all clear that the alternatives are that much more attractive.” For a superbly nuanced and subtle contribution to the debate, see Maier, “American Empire?”

14
. Quoted in Bacevich,
American Empire
, p. 219.

15
. Ibid., p. 203.

16
. Thomas E. Ricks, “Empire or Not? A Quiet Debate over U.S. Role,”
Washington Post
, August 21, 2001.

17
. Max Boot, “The Case for an American Empire,”
Weekly Standard
, October 15, 2001.

18
. Boot,
Savage Wars
, p. xx: “Unlike nineteenth-century Britain, twenty-first century America does not preside over a formal empire. Its ‘empire’ consists not of far-flung territorial possessions but of a family of democratic, capitalist nations that eagerly seek shelter under Uncle Sam’s umbrella.” However, Boot later adds that “the U.S. has more power than Britain did at the height of its empire, more power than any other state in modern times;” p. 349. On the distinctly mixed reception of Kipling’s poem, see Gilmour,
Long Recessional
, pp. 124–29.

19
. Kaplan,
Warrior Politics
.

20
. Emily Eakin, “It Takes an Empire,”
New York Times
, April 2, 2002.

21
. Ibid.

22
. Dinesh D‘Souza, “In Praise of an American Empire,”
Christian Science Monitor
, April 26, 2002.

23
. Mallaby, “Reluctant Imperialist,” p. 6. Cf. Pfaff, “New Colonialism.” For similar arguments in favor of European neo-imperialism, see Cooper, “Postmodern State.”

24
. Ignatieff,
Empire Lite
, pp. 3, 22, 90, 115, 126. See, however, “Why Are We in Iraq? (And Liberia? And Afghanistan?),”
New York Times Magazine
, September 6, 2003.

25
. Kurth, “Migration,” p. 5.

26
. James Atlas, “A Classicist’s Legacy: New Empire Builders,”
New York Times
, May 4, 2003, Section 4, p. 4.

27
. “Interdicting North Korea,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 28, 2003, p. A12.

28
. Max Boot, “Washington Needs a Colonial Office,”
Financial Times
, July 3, 2003.

29
. Quoted in Bacevich,
American Empire
, p. 44.

30
. “Strategies for Maintaining U.S. Predominance,” Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Summer Study, August 1, 2001, esp. p. 22.

31
. Priest,
Mission
, p. 70.

32
. Ferguson,
Empire
, p. 370. For a suggestive discussion, see Williams,
Empire as a Way of Life
, p. ix.

33
. Quoted in Bacevich,
American Empire
, p. 242.

34
. Quoted in Mead,
Special Providence
, p. 6.

35
. Speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, 1999, quoted in
Washington Post
, August 21, 2001.

36
. Quoted in Bacevich,
American Empire
, p. 201.

37
. “Transcript of President Bush’s Speech,”
New York Times
, February 26, 2003.

38
. Transcript from the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State,
http:usinfo.state.gov
.

39
. “Transcript of President Bush’s Remarks on the End of Major Combat in Iraq,”
New York Times
, p. A16.

40
. Colin L. Powell, “Remarks at The Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University,”
http:www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/23836.htm.

41
. Minxin Pei, “The Paradoxes of American Nationalism,”
Foreign Policy
, May–June 2003, p. 32.

42
. However, see Davies,
First English Empire
.

43
. Zelikow, “Transformation,” p. 18.

44
. Schwab, “Global Role.” “American empire,” in the words of Michael Mandelbaum, “was given up in the twentieth century:” Mandelbaum,
Ideas
, p. 87.

45
. Kupchan,
End
, p. 228.

46
. Mandelbaum,
Ideas
, p. 88.

47
. Bobbitt,
Shield of Achilles
. Bobbitt sees imperialism as a thing of the past, having been one of the “historic, strategic and constitutional innovations” of the “state-nation” in the two centuries between 1713 and 1914.

48
. I am extremely grateful to Graham Allison for inviting me to open this series. This book owes much to the rigorous and constructive criticism of the seminar’s participants.

49
. See, e.g., Kagan,
Paradise and Power
, p.88; Kupchan,
End
, p. 266.

50
. Johannson, “National Size,” p. 352n.

51
. A hegemonic power was “a state … able to impose its set of rules on the interstate system, and thereby create temporarily a new political order,” and which offered “certain extra advantages for enterprises located within it or protected by it, advantages not accorded by the ‘market’ but obtained through political pressure”: Wallerstein, “Three Hegemonies,” p. 357.

52
. This notion can be traced back to Charles Kindleberger’s seminal work on the interwar world economy, which described a kind of “interregnum” after British hegemony, but before American. See Kindleberger,
World in Depression
.

53
. See, e.g., Kennedy,
Rise and Fall
.

54
. Calleo, “Reflections.” See also Rosecrance, “Croesus and Caesar.”

55
. O’Brien, “Pax Britannica.”

56
. Gallagher and Robinson, “Imperialism of Free Trade.”

57
. See Robert Freeman Smith, “Latin America,” pp. 85–88. Cf. Cain and Hopkins,
British Imperialism
.

58
. Lieven,
Empire
, p. xiv.

59
. See for an attempt at a formal economic theory of empire, Grossman and Mendoza, “Annexation or Conquest?”

60
. Davis and Huttenback,
Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire.

61
. Lundestad,
American “Empire
.”

62
. Zakaria,
Future of Freedom
, esp. p. 162.

63
. Krugman,
Great Unravelling
, passim.

64
. See Kupchan,
End
, p. 153.

65
. For some recent examples, see Joseph Nye, “The New Rome Meets the New Barbarians: How America Should Wield Its Power,”
Economist
, March 23, 2002; Jonathan Freedland, “Rome, AD … Rome DC,”
Guardian
, September 18, 2002; Robert Harris, “Return of the Romans,”
Sunday Times
, August 31, 2003.

66
. American Samoa, Baker Island, Guam, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Island, Navassa Island, Northern Mariana Is-lands, Palmyra Atoll, Puerto Rico, Vir-gin Islands and Wake Island.

67
. Joseph Curl, “U.S. Eyes Cuts at Germany, S. Korea Bases,”
Washington Times
, February 12, 2003.

68
.
Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2002
, table 495.

69
. Transcript in
New York Times
, February 26, 2002.

70
. Ian Traynor, “How American Power Girds the Globe with a Ring of Steel,”
Guardian
, April 21, 2003.

71
. Paul Kennedy, “Power and Terror,”
Financial Times
, September 3, 2002.

72
. Gregg Easterbrook, “American Power Moves Beyond the Mere Super,”
New York Times
, April 27, 2003.

73
. Kennedy,
Rise and Fall of the Great Pow-ers
, p. 519.

74
. Porter (ed.),
Atlas of British Overseas Expansion,
p. 120.

75
. See, e.g., O’Hanlon, “Come Partly Home, America.”

76
. I am grateful to Dr. Christopher Bassford of the National War College for drawing this map to my attention.

77
. Priest,
Mission
, p. 73.

78
. The term
great power
is yet another euphemism. At the time it was current, all the five states designated as such—Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria and the German Reich—were or possessed empires.