Imperialism and the United States: Responses to Michael Walzer
Rule, James B.
NO, THE OVERWEENING geopolitical role assumed by this administration isn't —. exactly like the British Empire—or the Roman, the Ottoman or the Inca empires, for that matter. No, the hard-right...
...At least, I hope so...
...Any country tempted to do so now has to fear a fate like Iraq's...
...All sorts of countervailing influences were simply brushed aside...
...In fact, imperial fantasies run deep in this country's political culture...
...At stake here is the underlying effect of Washington's unilateralism in undercutting prospects for a world less dominated by the zero-sum state system that has ordered world affairs for centuries...
...No one really imagines that the United States would now welcome a prompt transition to popular democracy in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Algeria, any more than it would have done a few decades ago in many South American countries...
...so let us support American power, and implore that it be used wisely, at least most of the time...
...No serious candidate for the presidency," thundered Senator John Kerry's spokesperson, "has ever before suggested that he would compromise or tolerate an erosion of America's military supremacy...
...We should be putting forward a distinctive vision of America as a supportive participant in an array of multilateral global problemsolving structures...
...It will take years of political liberalization before enough moderate political leaders emerge to offer an alternative to the Islamists and the regime...
...True, America has been willing to give crucial support for democratic institutions, as in Germany and Japan after the Second World War...
...We can identify our vision simply as the diametrical opposite to the neo-conservative fantasies animating this country's foreign policy today...
...But neither of these eventualities sounds like a winning suit with the American public—and quite properly not...
...In short, regimes may be politically retrograde, brutally repressive, and armed with those infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction, and still enjoy American support—if only they don't dare to declare themselves "against us," rather than "with us...
...This contradiction strikes me as loaded with political dynamite for the Bush administration...
...Some persist in placing DISSENT / Winter 2004 n 97 ARGUMENTS their faith in American policy as a force for democracy around the world...
...It should not be difficult for the occupiers to leave Iraq with a less brutal government than the one blown away by American military might last spring—for that much, we can be glad...
...Instead, people like us should be 98 n DISSENT / Winter 2004 seeking a 180-degree turn in American geopolitical strategy, starting with significant downsizing of America's aggressive military capabilities, and supporting the very attenuation of national sovereignties that this administration is trying to combat...
...Where democracy would pose problems for America's struggle for geopolitical supremacy, it is readily sacrificed—in Chile in the 1970s, for example, or South Africa in the apartheid era...
...This is a vision of a less militarized, and less militaristic America—a national self-image of a country that does not need to be a global hegemon in order to be secure...
...Cheering for the "good America" won't help much, if the structures that give scope to the other America remain untouched...
...Dissent authors such as Mitchell Cohen, 96 n DISSENT / Winter 2004 Paul Berman, Suzanne Nossel, and Michael Walzer have had a good deal to say about America's world role in recent editions...
...It is a scandal that this outrageously trumped up exercise in aggressive unilateralism received support in the pages of this magazine...
...The worst of it is that these baleful trends threaten to scuttle what could be a historic opportunity for the world—the chance to make a quantum jump beyond the destructive limitations of the system of interstate rivalry that has prevailed for centuries...
...Pursuing such a vision would obviously call for vast change—in distribution of political power in this country, obviously, but also in the mind-set of ordinary Americans...
...It is striking how resiliently such ideas persist in the face of inconsistent evidence...
...the stomach for imperialism," he writes (Dissent, Fall 2003...
...Good...
...And the way for a country to get itself defined as a threat is to defy Washington on a matter that it declares vital...
...Much the same holds true today...
...Dean's statement, the Kerry campaign charged, raised "serious questions about [Dean's] capacity to serve as commander in chief...
...They want a world where America always ultimately dominates in the application of geopolitical power—forever, presumably...
...Lacking evidence of such a threat, Washington can manufacture it to order, and no friendly ARGUMENTS skepticism or critical scrutiny at home or abroad will matter...
...media, the regime in Washington strong-armed some allies into complicity, sneered at those who resisted, and did everything possible to undercut the efforts and the standing of the United Nations...
...Against the better judgment both of the region and of the world community, the United States in a matter of weeks dismantled a regime halfway around the world...
...Even countries that once would have been knee-jerk clients of Washington dug in their heels over the Iraq operations—partly out of a new responsiveness to domestic opinion within these countries...
...Americans don't have the capacity, or...
...Democratic regimes may well be preferable to the alternatives, for American policymakers, if only they support larger power aspirations of this country, such as the containment of communism...
...We should be supporting collective, multilateral processes for resolving big-power conflicts and other troubles in the geopolitical order—even when they run counter to declared American interest...
...the availability of alternate avenues for mediating the conflict between the two countries...
...Does this sound like an imperial stance to you...
...As with his other lapses into straight-speaking, candidate Dean recanted, and his campaign got back onto the well-worn rails of foreignpolicy orthodoxy...
...These include affordable universal health care...
...The United States now arrogates to itself the option of making or breaking regimes around the world, without regard for the effect of its actions on existing alliances, treaties, or supra-national institutions...
...Last April, presidential candidate Howard Dean made what should have passed as a matter-of-fact observation: the United States, he noted, "won't always have the strongest military...
...The aim of this exercise of naked power— more than any concern about oil, certainly more than the phony threat of weapons of mass destruction, more than the fate of democracy in Iraq—was to send a message...
...Such a shift to a less competitive, less destructive international order is no longer merely a utopian possibility, as I argued in these pages in Fall 2002 ("Dissenting from the American Empire...
...To wit: don't cross America on matters it declares to be its vital interest...
...A corollary of this vision is increased multilateral responsibility for world order, so that the United States no longer need play the role of world specialist in military enforcement...
...Consider the position that the Bush regime has staked...
...But what matters is not so much the words we choose as what we see at stake...
...But the notion that Americans can promptly create a stand-alone regime that is both democratic and pluralistic and pro-American requires a leap of faith suitable only for crackpot optimists...
...In her Summer 2003 Dissent article, Suzanne Nossel details many developments that, as I see them, represent straws in the wind in this direction...
...For them, a democratic Iraq (the supposed result of America's invasion) will surely be worth the price in terms of battered alliances, a weakened United Nations, and other casualties of unilateralism...
...WE IN DISSENT should be working for a foreign policy precisely the opposite of that underlying the Iraq invasion...
...Or one can imagine the United States withdrawing from Iraq within a year, thus setting the stage for one or another form of authoritarian Islamic government, more or less intensely unfriendly to its American benefactors...
...So yes, as Nossel and Walzer remind us, diversity in the community of nations is alive...
...American foreign policy has many modes, from George W. Bush to Jimmy Carter to Woodrow Wilson...
...But there is resistance to this thesis, even among those who think of themselves as belonging on the left...
...JAMES B. RULE is at work on a book on privacy protection in America and abroad...
...quality education for all young people, always aimed at equal opportunity— and on and on...
...In this vision, national resources and national attention should be redirected from the quest for eternal supremacy abroad to tasks required to make America truly strong at home...
...indeed, even when we have misgivings about specific outcomes...
...No, the hard-right regime in Washington does not always succeed in browbeating American allies and extracting active support for its high-handed overseas policies...
...A New York Times op-ed piece by Kenneth Pollack, a top foreign-policy planner in the Clinton administration, gives the point away...
...There are some good ideas in all these contributions, though it will be apparent that I appreciate some of them more than others...
...But—a great, big but—the unilateralist directions now dominating America's foreign policy are dangerous, menacing, and corrosive to values that the left should be first to defend...
...We need to recognize the differences, and be clear about just how far to one extreme this administration is leading us...
...The absence, of credible proof that Iraq posed an immediate threat to the United States...
...One can well imagine a scenario in which Iraq remains for the indefinite future a costly, murderous, overseas colony of the United States...
...Having defanged any potential protest from our elected representatives and forestalled critical comment from the U.S...
...It strains credulity to suggest that creation of democracy in that country represents a key ultimate aim of the American invasion...
...Only America can take the lead in disseminating democracy around the world, these thinkers aver...
...In one way, the situation in America today makes our task easy...
...These convictions, if sincere, are stunningly naïve, especially regarding a fractious country with no traditions of pluralism or tolerance for ethnic and regional differences...
...Immediately the opposition pounced on him for wandering off the imperial reservation...
...Me, too...
...And yes, the rest of the world is showing all sorts of healthy and innovative counter-currents...
...Think of it—these words were spoken on behalf of one of the Democratic Party lapdogs who abdicated in advance any possibility of a critical stance regarding Bush's invasion of Iraq...
...In other words, if the cost of democracy is an unfriendly government, that cost is too great for the United States...
...the opposition of the United Nations and of most neighboring countries...
...But thumbing one's nose at Washington on matters Washington declares vital is an invitation to membership in the Axis of Evil, with implications for regime life expectancy that now need no further explanation...
...These include the rise in number and importance of nongovernmental organizations as actors on the world stage, the rising significance of supranational and transnational structures, and the growing importance of democratic public opinion in setting directions for national policy...
...Like the enduring belief in the Loch Ness monster, they stand as an embarrassing monument to the human will to believe...
...Need I point out that these traditional aims of the democratic left would be far closer to attainment in this country, were not such a large portion of our national treasure devoted to maintaining military supremacy...
...But it is a disaster for the left simply to constitute itself as a sort of Consumer Reports panel for the applications of American geopolitical might, giving thumbs-up or thumbs-down to specific episodes...
...Indeed, history may well portray the unilateralist extremes of this regime as a desperate effort to head off a gathering global trend in the opposite direction...
...and the destructive effects of unilateral action on American alliances—none of these considerations ultimately mattered...
...DISSENT / Winter 2004 • 99...
...It is imperative that we on the left not follow...
...AND SO WITH IRAQ...
...serious efforts at sustainable environmental and energy policies...
...We should be supporting such processes because, on balance, they strengthen the kind of geopolitical order that best suits humane, egalitarian, and democratic values...
...We ought to be helping people envision a world where national dominance is less and less necessary for national well-being...
...Writing in October 2003, on democratizing tendencies in Saudi Arabia, he temporizes, . . . if we could magically create democracy in Saudi Arabia tomorrow, we would probably find Islamic fundamentalists elected by overwhelming margins...
...Thus I confess to skepticism concerning Walzer's anodyne words on the subject...
...For public consumption, Bush administration spokespeople would have us believe that such a creation process is about as straightforward and predictable as baking a cake...
...But none of these authors seems to see in the current geopolitical situation the drama that I do—or to recognize how diametrically opposed the current directions emanating from Washington are for the values that ought to animate the left...
...But the fact is, none of this stopped the United States from invading Iraq...
...Again, I don't deny that the United States has made significant contributions to pluralism and democracy at specific historical junctures— or even that this country might repeat the performance, given the right cues...
...This country will invade and destroy any regime bracketed as an actual or potential threat to America...
...our pubARGUMENTS lic commitment to democracy makes imperial rule very hard to justify . . . " This has the ring of pathologically wishful thinking...
...What people like us should be heralding is that these developments add up to a historic opportunity for the left—and that high-handed exercises in unilateralism, such as the disastrous, aggressive war against Iraq, countervail diametrically against this possibility...
Vol. 51 • January 2004 • No. 1
