Empires Apart (74 page)

Fukuyama was right to argue that in the court of public opinion liberal democracy had triumphed and communism dismally failed.
American-style democracy and communism both promised to create the most just and most productive society imaginable; the difference was that one delivered and one did not. The prophecy of de Tocqueville that Russia and America were each destined to hold in their hands ‘the destinies of half the world' had seemed eerily prescient at the start of the twentieth century; but by the century's end it seemed that one pair of hands would hold the whole world.

CHAPTER 15

PAX AMERICANA

The road from Roanoke meandered through history to arrive in Baghdad. American troops approached Iraq with the same mixture of arrogance and ignorance that had characterised Englishmen sailing across the Atlantic in the opposite direction more than four hundred years before. Collective certainty eclipsed individual fears. They faced the unknown buttressed with the knowledge that God was on their side and that the natives would succumb to the justice of their cause and the power of their guns. The second Iraq War was not just an imperfect copy of the first but a copy of countless other wars down the years. Army reservists marching proudly off to invade Iraq mirrored the Kentucky militia marching off to invade Canada in 1812. ‘Waist Deep in the Big Muddy', the despairing cry of the Vietnam War, became ‘Waist Deep in the Big Sandy'.

America emerged the undisputed victor from the titanic struggle between the two great twentieth-century empires, but Fukuyama was wrong: history did not end. The fateful wartime meeting of US president and Arab monarch aboard the USS
Quincy
had triggered a series of events that would lead fifteen fanatics obsessed with the American ‘occupation' of their Saudi homeland to murderous martyrdom on 9/11. The American response demonstrated the bipolarity that is fundamental to America's imperial world view: Bush II announced to the rest of the world that ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.' Invading
Iraq became part of the ‘war on terror' just as invading Grenada had been part of the ‘war on communism'. The one demonstrated the power of the United States to those who dared to attack the World Trade Centre; the other responded similarly to the attack on the marine barracks in Beirut.

George Santayana, paraphrasing Edmund Burke, claimed that ‘Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.' It is a maxim repeated so often that it has become conventional wisdom. And yet history never repeats itself exactly. There are parallels between the invasions of Canada, Grenada and Iraq, but there are far more differences. The early Puritans sending mercenaries to murder the natives of Mystic are not totally dissimilar from twentieth-century Americans sending their air force to ‘bomb Vietnam back into the stone age' or wreak ‘shock and awe' on the citizens of Baghdad – but they are not identical. More importantly there is no causal link. It is no more logical to say that the United States invaded Afghanistan ‘because' it had previously invaded countries like Mexico or the Philippines than it would be to say that Afghanistan was invaded by America ‘because' it had previously been invaded by Britain and Russia. Historical parallels are matters of subjective perception, not undisputed fact. The apparent repetitions in history say as much about how history comes to be written as about the events themselves. Santayana also said, more originally, ‘History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.'

The history of the American empire is more subjective than most histories because it is not even an established fact that there is or ever has been an American empire. Nevertheless much of the twentieth century can be characterised as a Tale of Two Empires, and by the end of the century one stood alone. The Russian empire had disappeared from the map – but its ideology lingered on: President Putin publicly lamented the break-up of the USSR, his government continued to act as if it were an imperial power, a colonial war dragged on in Chechnya, and in everyday language the lost colonies were termed the ‘near abroad' to differentiate them from the real abroad. In trying to re-establish Russian imperial authority in the Caucasus and elsewhere, Russia now seems to
be following just that policy of ‘determined opportunism' that America followed in establishing its own empire.

The ideologies that colour perceptions may arise from history, but they do not change in step with historical realities. The leaders of Britain and France continued to strut the world stage long after Suez punctured their imperial dreams, convinced that the trappings of yesteryear guaranteed them starring roles. In the United States, as in Russia, the ideology of empire continued to evolve while at its core remaining unchanged. It is this imperial ideology – unspoken because unconscious – that has guided the American nation from Roanoke to Baghdad.

Lenin and Stalin claimed to have a vision of a community of nations bound together not by force but by a common ideology: communism. They failed to achieve this vision. Many of America's Founding Fathers proclaimed a similar vision of a world united by a common ideology: democracy. At least within the American hegemon they succeeded. The American empire is bound together by economic ties and military alliances, but above all by this common ideology.

Right from its inception ideology was uniquely important to the American empire. The Russian people have a common Slavic ethnicity, a unique language, centuries of imperial history, and a territory whose borders may have been mobile but have always been relatively clear. The United States was born a melting pot with virtually no history and a borrowed language. Above all it had no sense of its territory. The Founding Fathers were agreed that their vision went far beyond the boundaries of the existing thirteen colonies – one of the reasons for the American Rebellion itself was the attempt by George III to limit colonial expansion – but how far beyond? The Ohio Valley? The Mississippi? The Canadian colonies? The Pacific? Or even further? With no instinctive patriotism linked to race or place, there evolved a patriotism linked to ideals. American greatness derived from American democracy. America deserved its empire not because Americans were superior to everyone else
but because their form of government was superior. The global success of the United States rests in large part on its ability to convince itself and its followers around the world that Fukuyama was right to proclaim that democracy is ‘the final form of human government'.

The success of the American vision of corporate democracy is thanks to its claim to have four great virtues: political, ethical, economic and practical.
Politically
American democracy ensures that the power of the state is used in accordance with the will of the majority: the American model of government is in principle fundamentally representative.
Ethically
the rule of law ensures that while the will of the majority prevails the rights of the minority are honoured: American democracy is in principle fundamentally just.
Economically
free markets and limited liability corporations ensure that the production and distribution of goods and services is optimised: American capitalism is in principle fundamentally efficient.
Practically
corporatist democracy works: whether the political, ethical and economic principles are accepted or disputed, the fundamental reality is that in practice they deliver. The American Dream above all rests on the assertion that life in America is ‘better' than anywhere else, and that by following in its wake the rest of the world can achieve the same.

There are definitional problems with all four attributes, but in some ways what they mean or even whether they are true does not matter. What is important is that people believe that America's political processes will reflect their own desires, that its courts will bring justice, that its corporations will create wealth and that by being part of the American-defined ‘free world' they will have a better life. The reality is that none of these assertions is entirely true. When similar claims were made (with far less justification) by Soviet Russian leaders the rest of the world rightly scoffed. US claims are widely accepted not just because they are constantly repeated but because there is a grain of truth in all of them.

When people talk of American democracy being ‘representative' they are usually speaking philosophically not geographically, but the first obvious point to make is that America's institutions do not claim to
represent the vast quasi-empire over which the United States exerts its influence. The term ‘United States' when used in a geographical sense on official documents, acts and laws includes the fifty states plus Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa.
¹
The hundreds of millions beyond its shores whose lives are directly influenced by the actions of its government have no claim to representation.

This is not the place to debate the ‘representativeness' of contemporary political life, but history highlights two factors that are often overlooked: corporatism and corruption. In as much as corporatism has an ideology, it is firstly that corporations as much as human beings are citizens and secondly that wherever possible government should step aside and allow its corporate citizens to ‘represent' the views and desires of the wider society. To say that unelected corporate executives have often usurped the role of elected governments is not to imply some dreadful right-wing conspiracy in which crazed corporate oligarchs set out to rule the world. Corporatism is not an ideology that sprung fully formed from the pen of a Thomas Paine or Karl Marx; it evolved gradually through the activities of men, and a few women, whose intentions were usually good and whose aspirations were often noble.

Consider for example Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005. Many corporations rushed to offer assistance, among them the Anglo-American corporation Pearson, owner of the Financial Times and Penguin Books. Pearson opened call centres to help direct the relief efforts, provided temporary classrooms and donated tens of thousands of schoolbooks and computers for schoolchildren in Louisiana and Mississippi. Of course Pearson's American chief executive realised the PR benefits, but it would be churlish to believe that this was her only motivation. Pearson's actions were universally welcomed because they were fundamentally decent. But considered in purely economic terms, what had happened is that private assets belonging to shareholders, in this
case including many British pension funds, had been devoted to activities that in earlier times would have been considered a public responsibility. The British pensioners might well have been happy to give some of their pension funds to charity (although as south-east Asia was struck by a tsunami and Kashmir by one of the world's worst ever earthquakes at roughly the same time, it is not obvious that they would have chosen to give their charitable donations to American schoolchildren), but they were not consulted; indeed there is no way they could have been consulted. British pensioners were effectively taxed to help American children not by their elected representatives but by one or two well-meaning oligarchs: precisely the taxation without representation that Americans believe their revolutionary war was about.

In millions of such tiny, innocent, day-to-day episodes corporations supplement, or supplant, democracy, not just within nations but internationally. Not only do corporations increasingly take on responsibilities formerly assumed by governments, but they themselves help to determine the actions of governments.

By accepting that corporations are ‘citizens' in the same way that human beings are citizens, American democracy legitimises the role of corporations in influencing policy, including policy towards the rest of the world. Since the early days of Standard Oil corporations have sought to ensure that the US government represents their interests. There is a whole body of obscure academic analysis on the subject. For example, New York professor Benjamin Fordham conducted a detailed statistical study of the voting patterns of US senators in the 81st Congress (1949– 50). He found that those supporting Truman's policy of alliance with western European countries through NATO were more likely to have come from states with powerful export industries and/or internationally focused banks. Conversely, Truman was opposed by senators from states where firms were likely to be hit by western European imports and by senators linked to the mining corporations, who favoured a more ‘colonial' approach to foreign policy. Again this is not to suggest any secret conspiracy. America's government is ‘representative' in that it
represents the interests that are most salient in society, and corporations find it much easier to achieve such saliency than individuals.

The relationship between corporations and the state is not all one way. As with the emerging corporate autocracy in Russia, the US government makes use of corporations as an arm of foreign policy. For example, in 1991 the CIA hired a private sector company, the Rendon Group, to set up the Iraqi National Congress, bringing Iraqi exiles together in order to ‘create the conditions' that would produce a coup against Saddam Hussein. Most US government use of its corporate levers is more subtle. In November 2005 a British newspaper, the
Financial Times
, sent $4,500 from London to Iran to pay the rent on its Tehran office. The money never arrived. One of the banking intermediaries had notified the US treasury, which seized the money.