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Colossus
– The Rise and Fall of the American Empire,
Niall Ferguson, Penguin Books, 2004, 20 pounds
(UK). Reviewed by Phil Hearse
Niall
Ferguson’s book and TV series Empire
argued the case for the immensely progressive
role of the British Empire. His new book (and
TV series) follows up with a staunch defense
of American empire, together with a prediction
that it is likely to fail, because modern Americans
lack the imperial spirit and virtues formerly
displayed by the British. More precisely, his
argument can be summarised as follows:
* America is of course an empire,
like Britain and Rome before it, but it is caught
in hypocritical self-denial.
* American empire (and imperialism
in general) is a good thing; it helps economic
development, and American ‘liberal’
empire is likely to bring peace and democracy
as well.
* For American imperialism to work properly,
‘arms length’ control is insufficient
for proper military domination, and totally
inadequate for nation building. Empire needs
American soldiers and administrators across
the world. He quotes Seneca, “Wheresoever
the Roman conquers, he inhabits.”
* A properly functioning empire of this
kind is unlikely because of a) the hypocritical
denial of the US’s imperial role b) the
fact that top American graduates all want to
become successful business people and lead comfortable
middle class lives at home c) the American army
is just too small d) Americans are still just
too squeamish about military casualties and
e) the US is facing a financial crunch in the
next decade or so, as the baby boomers reach
retirement and demand lavish Medicare and pensions,
damn them!
Ferguson
has got a lot of rave reviews in the right-wing
US and British media, and makes his argument
the more dramatic by taking it to its logical,
and totally absurd, conclusion. But it is unlikely
that any influential people in the US foreign
policy or military elite take his arguments
very seriously. The idea that the United States
could embark on the construction of a vast territorial
empire, with multiple colonies directly ruled
by Washington, is a recipe for economic, political
and military suicide by the world’s major
capitalist power.
You don’t have to be a genius to see why
this is the case. Occupation of Iraq is becoming
increasingly damaging at home and abroad; imagine
the effects of 20 simultaneous Iraqs! The political
impossibility of such a wild adventure boils
down to this: colonial rule has already existed
in the world, it was gradually defeated and
is now utterly discredited among the vast majority
of the world’s population.
The entire political history of the 20th Century
cannot be undone by the wave of Ferguson’s
polemical wand. Any clear-sighted America political
or military leader must surely say Ferguson’s
proposal is a recipe for revolution abroad and
political uproar at home, which would make the
difficult 1960s look like a tea party.
In any case, Ferguson misunderstands the purpose
of American imperialism, its relatively successful
current mode of operation (despite Iraq), and
therefore what its optimum mode of functioning
is for achieving its own very narrowly defined
objectives, which are not at all the same as
Ferguson’s.
How does Ferguson come to such extreme conclusions?
His key chapter is entitled “The Case
for Liberal Empire”, which starts with
the proposition that the experiment with decolonisation
and national independence has ‘failed’.
The obvious fact that crisis in the third world
since de-colonisation has been caused by continued
and deepening economic plunder by world imperialism
escapes Ferguson. For him, it is simply that
the natives have been unable to rule themselves.
In the second half of the 20th century:
“..the world embarked on an epochal experiment,
an experiment to test the hypothesis that it
was imperialism that caused both poverty and
wars and that self-determination would ultimately
pave the way to prosperity and peace. That hypothesis
has been largely proved false. The coming of
political independence has brought prosperity
to only a minority of former colonies. And although
former imperial powers no longer fight one another,
decolonisation has in many cases been followed
by recurrent conflict between newly independent
states and, even more often, within them.”
(p173).
Not only that, former colonies have often been
economic failures and ruled by brutal dictatorships.
And it is “not convincing” to blame
the problems of ex-colonies or their former
masters. Surely there has been enough time to
get thing going by now?
This list of arguments, careful readers will
note, does not answer the question he poses
for himself – why has the experiment with
national independence ‘failed’?
Ferguson then has another stab at an answer
(pp176-199): partly economic development has
been affected by unfair trade, and for this
the former colonies can be blamed, for example
because of the EU’s protectionist agricultural
policy. But that is not the key thing, the real
reason is political:
“Most poor countries stay poor because
they lack the right institutions – not
least the right institutions to encourage investment.
Because they are not accountable to their subjects,
autocratic regimes are more prone to corruption
than those in which is the rule of law is well
established. Corruption in turn inhibits economic
development…Moreover, poor countries are
more likely to succumb to civil wars than rich
one making them poorer still. In the absence
of nonviolent means of bringing dictators to
account, political violence is more likely to
occur.” (p181)
Ferguson doesn’t explain what it is that
has inhibited these backward children in the
ex-colonies from behaving like proper liberal-democratic
grown-ups. This is territory into which Ferguson
doesn’t stray, because the racist underpinnings
of it are glaringly obvious.
This brings us to the second central assumption
of the book. Not everything, he tells us, was
good about colonialism. But in its British version,
which generally promoted free trade and free
movement of labour, everything turned out for
the best in the best of all possible worlds!
The British made money (lots of it), but in
doing so they dragged up the pitifully low standard
of living of the natives. It also brought education
and enlightenment, generally in the form of
Christianity. This promoted literacy, which
further advanced local economies. The original
motivation may have been vulgar trade, but as
the brightest and best from the British universities
trooped out to police, administer and do trade
with India, the Antipodes, the Caribbean, Africa,
Burma and the rest, the white man (and occasional
woman) assumed the role of educator and law
giver, patronising aunt and uncle, heart set
on all-round improvement of the locals.
If you believe this version of the British Empire,
it should be said, you will believe almost anything.
People who think that the British empire was
grounded on something other than economic self-interest
and exploitation don’t know anything about
how the world works. Britain’s Empire
was built on industrialisation and the Royal
Navy. The former was built on the vast proceeds
of the slave trade and the development of the
cotton industry, which among other things, required
the destruction of the Indian domestic textiles
industry, and the raw cotton from the plantations
in the southern United States – which
in turn were amply provided with Africans slaves
by the British.
Ferguson is just blind to the vast levels of
exploitation, violence and political repression
which kept the natives in their place. His version
of the British Empire is a historical myth,
and his version of the enlightened character
of the US Empire is a myth as well.
Ferguson’s complaint that US graduates
want to be mainly home-based company CEOs and
not district administrators in some sun-scorched
desert region is absolutely symptomatic of what
he doesn’t understand. And that is that
the United States is a business state, the most
completely devoted business state in history.
Its elite is interested in making profits from
world economic domination. Not only is vast
military power compatible with business objectives,
it is absolutely vital to ensuring a world open
to US business interests.
From time to time the US may see the advent
of Western-style liberal democracy in a particular
country useful, or at least useful to advocate.
But the US is absolutely not engaged in a campaign
for US- or British-style liberal democracy on
a world scale. Its judgement on these things
is solely pragmatic; what’s the best for
our own interests. From time to time (as has
occurred over China and other Asian countries)
what kind of political system or human rights
regime to advocate is a matter of dispute within
the political elite; but the basic principles
are clear. And if it means supporting dicatorships,
so be it.
Serious US political and military leaders are
generally agreed on how to deploy military and
political power to ensure US hegemony. On the
military front this means dominance of the seas,
the maintenance of hundreds of foreign bases,
topped off with covert operations, massive superiority
over all competitors and just the occasional
massive use of force as in Iraq (twice), Panama
and Granada. It is not the permanent use of
the military machine that makes it effective,
but the worldwide understanding of what it can
do when it is unleashed. This does not involve,
and cannot do, permanent occupation of dozens
of countries.
Ferguson’s arguments about why the US
is likely not to become an effective empire
of occupation are interesting. First is the
contemptuous condemnation of all those graduates
who want comfortable lives at home as business
executives instead of administering a colonial
empire.
That Ferguson could even argue such a thing
shows his complete divorce from reality. Neoliberalism
in America has massively polarised wealth, and
the 1980s boom reinforced the ranks of the petty
bourgeoisie. In the business elite there are
millions of salaried professionals who have
substantial wealth, not just high salaries but
wealth in houses, bonds and stocks, and these
people enjoy a standard of living undreamt of
in the 1950s and’60s. They are a fundamental
factor in US politics, a substantial base of
reaction, and their consumption drives a considerable
part of the economy. Being a professional in
business, or a law firm, or some sort of well-paid
government service, is open to the most talented
graduates. They will absolutely not be diverted
into picking up the white man’s burden
of administering empire. Their social situation
is substantially different to the hundreds of
thousands who went out to administer the British
Empire, who had far fewer career opportunities
at home. And they expect the American military
machine and the power of US corporations to
maintain their world position; they do not expect
to personally get their pants dirty in a jungle
or desert.
Ferguson is contemptuous too of US public opinion
and the interests of senior citizens. Like young
executives they too have gone soft, wanting
empire without the necessary sacrifices of dead
in battle and the curtailment of social security
rights. Too much Hollywood, not enough Sparta
to run a real empire!
In the end though, Ferguson has put his finger
on a long-term problem. Fulfilling American
ambitions requires global reach and clout. It
needs an empire that can enforce its will worldwide.
It does need to function like an ersatz world
government, at least at the level of setting
the limits of what others can do. That is the
problem. The US military cannot be everywhere
at once. US intelligence, high tech driven and
– despite recent events at the CIA –
with a high level of motivation, cannot be all-seeing
and all-knowing. There are huge social, political
and cultural spaces that the US Empire cannot
penetrate or dominate, where resistance will
grow. Only in the subtitle of his book does
Ferguson show any real historical insight –
The Rise and Fall of the American Empire.
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