|
|
|
Book Review
| Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors. By Charles S. Maier. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. 373 pp. $27.95, ISBN 0-674-02189-4.)
|
| Is the United States an empire? Was it ever? And if it is not, nor ever has been, should it become one? What, in any case, is an empire? Charles S. Maier's masterly essay confronts these questions with great panache, erudition, and an historical vision that ranges from ancient Assyria to the Soviet Union. It is time, he says, "to examine what empires are, and what they do and whether the United States has come to share the traits and behavior that marked the others" (p. 3). He refrains from stating outright whether he believes the United States to be an empire, because he claims to have found "such assertions so polarizing that readers never get past the definition" (ibid.). Thirty pages later, however, he provides what amounts to a definition. Empires are "a particular form of state organization in which elites of differing ethnic or national units defer to and acquiesce in the political leadership of the dominant power" (p. 33). Empires are about bringing peace, religious conformity, and civilization—as conceived by the imperialists—and about the spread of cultures and technologies, usually from the metropolis outward, but sometimes vice versa. They also, at some point in their histories, invariably find themselves compelled to impose their will by force. They are the expression—however defined—of the desire to expand. The United States, it is clear, has some of these features but by no means all of them. It attempts, with limited success, to export a political ideology, democracy, to often-reluctant recipients. It exports certain aspects of its culture and its technologies, but not for any obvious political purpose. And it probably absorbs far more than it exports. Since 1945, the United States has also had a massive military presence around the globe, a fact that has frequently been taken as a clear marker of both imperial power and imperialistic intent. But, if that interpretation is correct, then that power and intent has proved remarkably inefficient as a means of imposing American political will. Guantanamo is, after all, in Cuba. What American military power achieved in the twentieth century was protection for a transatlantic alliance, "against a far more oppressive domination"—that of the Soviet Union (p. 242). |
. . . |
There are about 756 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
