The concept of empire has been considered since ancient times. The Roman historians Livy and Tacitus argued the empire formed not on the basis of force, but the capacity to present force as being in the service of right and peace. The empire was not born of its own will, but rather called into being and constituted on the basis of its capacity to resolve conflicts. Machiavelli argued that the expansion of the empire was rooted in the internal trajectory of the conflict that it was destined to resolve. Thus the first task of the empire was to reinforce the legitimacy of its power.
In the 18th century, the concept of empire was refreshed to reflect European colonialism, which expanded European power until the 20th century. It was encapsulated in the form of imperialism, an extension of the sovereignty of the European nation-states beyond their own boundaries, where nearly all of the world’s territories could be parceled out and coded in European colors.
Along came the Great War, bursting open the conflict between the great powers, tearing Europe apart. The aftermath of World War II gave rise to two global superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union. It set in motion the fight for sovereignty across the world, putting an end to European imperialism. Then for the first time in the 1980’s, transpacific trade equaled transatlantic trade, placing North America the center of gravity in the world. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, the U.S. became the single most powerful nation. Today, the U.S. has the largest economy, the largest military power, its troops deployed in over 150 countries, and its Navy controls all of the world’s oceans.
In Empire, the authors Hardt & Negri hypothesized that the modern empire is a new global form of sovereignty, composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule. In contrast to imperialism, Empire establishes no territorial center of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. Its apparatus of rule is decentralized and deterritorializing. It manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command. The distinct national colors of the imperialist map have merged and blended into the imperial global rainbow.
That the United States has been the largest financial and military contributor to international organizations for the purpose of world order keeping, including the UN, the World Bank, and the IMF, demonstrates that it is the ultimate authority within the new Empire system. The American founders were inspired by the ancient imperial model. They believed they were creating on the other side of the Atlantic a new empire with open, expanding frontiers, where power would be distributed effectively in networks. This imperial idea has survived and matured throughout the history of the U.S. constitution and has emerged on a global scale in its fully realized form.
Cultures live in three states – barbarism, civilization, and decadence. Barbarians believe the customs of their village to be the laws of nature. Anyone not conforming to their customs is beneath contempt, warranted of redemption or destruction. Decadents cynically believe that nothing is better than anything else, nothing is worth fighting for, and skepticism undermines self-certainty. Civilized people are able to balance the two contradictory thoughts. They believe that there are truths and that their cultures approximate those truths, but hold open the possibility for errors. In The Next 100 Years, George Friedman argues that the U.S. is in its young and barbaric phase. Ever since its birth, the country has been mired in wars and conflicts. After the Revolutionary War, the war of 1812 was again fought against Great Britain, followed with the war against Mexico 34 years later. After the Civil war came the long struggle with Indigenous nations. Then there was the Spanish-American war in 1898. After WWI and WWII, the U.S. saw 16 years fighting wars in Asia, including Korea and Vietnam. In the 21st century, the U.S. has continuously fought wars in the Middle East. After Korea, General Douglas MacArthur, hardly a pacifist, warned Americans to avoid such adventures. Regardless, the U.S. continued to wade in, expecting that each time would be different. Except for Desert Storm, the U.S. has failed to win a war since WWII.
Yet, in the quest for global power, we risk losing our moral virtues of the Republic. A most glaring example is presidential power over foreign policy, which has increased over the years, despite the constitutions limiting the president’s authority to the command of the military. Treaties, appointments, and actual declaration of war require congressional approval. Treaties today are conducted in secrecy, and presidents routinely declare war without congressional approval. Congress has approved war only 5 times, but presidents have sent U.S. forces into conflicts around the world many more times. The president’s power on the world stage is almost beyond checks and balances, limited only by his skill in exercising that power. Machiavelli, in The Prince, wrote that, “You must know, then, that there are two methods of fighting, one with laws, the other with force: the first one is proper to man, the second to beasts.” Maturity is to transition from an obsessive foreign policy to a balanced and nuanced exercise of power. Beyond diplomacy, one must only fight wars in order to win. Fighting wars out of rage is impermissible for a country with such vast power and interests.
Machiavelli saw the concept of the empire inherently tied to the expansive concept of freedom. Expansive government was pushed forward by the contention between the social and political forces of the Republic. But in this dialectic of freedom is where elements of corruption and destruction reside, leading to the fall of the empire. In the same vein of thought, Hardt & Negri argue that crisis and decline are internally characteristic of the empire. “It is midnight in a night of specters. Both the new reign of Empire and the new immaterial and cooperative creativity of the multitude move in shadows, and nothing manages to illuminate our destiny ahead. Nonetheless, we have acquired a new point of reference, and tomorrow perhaps a new consciousness, which consists in the fact that Empire is defined by crisis, that its decline has always already begun, and that consequently every line of antagonism leads toward the event and singularity.”
Published in 1837, Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History already anticipated the end of European imperialism and perceived America as “the country of the future, and its world-historical importance has yet to be revealed in the ages which lie ahead…It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical arsenal of old Europe.” The question whether America is on its way to decline has been present for at least a century. Near the collapse of communism in the last century, it was declared in the film, The Decline of the American Empire, that “signs of the empire’s decline are everywhere. Society despises its own institutions. The birth rate keeps dropping. Men refuse to serve in the army. The national debt is out of control. The work week is getting shorter. The bureaucracies are rampant. The elites are in decay. With the collapse of the Marxist-Leninist dream, no model exists of which we can say, ‘This is how we want to live.’ In our personal lives, unless one is a mystic or a saint, there are no models to live by. Our very existence is being eroded.”
But not everyone concurs. George Friedman, in The Next 100 years, believes that the next few hundred years will be the American Age, and this century belongs to the United States. Who may dream of brand new silk roads fashioning the Andes, Sierra Madre, and the Grand Canyon, erecting lost civilizations once again?
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