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June
11, 2003
After Winning the
War
The
Empire Expands Wider and Still Wider
By ERIC HOBSBAWM
The present world situation is quite unprecedented.
The great global empires that have been seen before, such as
the Spanish in the 16th and 17th centuries, and notably the British
in the 19th and 20th centuries, bear little comparison with what
we see today in the United States empire. The present state of
globalisation is unprecedented in its integration, its technology
and its politics.
We live in a world so integrated, where
ordinary operations are so geared to each other, that there are
immediate global consequences to any interruption--SARS, for
instance, which within days became a global phenomenon, starting
from an unknown source somewhere in China. The disruption of
the world transport system, international meetings and institutions,
global markets, and even whole economies, happened with a speed
unthinkable in any previous period.
There is the enormous power of a constantly
revolutionised technology in economics and above all in military
force. Technology is more decisive in military affairs than ever
before. Political power on a global scale today requires the
mastery of this technology, combined with an extremely large
state. Previously the question of size was not relevant: the
Britain that ran the greatest empire of its day was, even by
the standards of the 18th and 19th century, only a medium-sized
state. In the 17th century, Holland, a state of the same order
of size as Switzerland, could become a global player. Today it
would be inconceivable that any state, other than a relative
giant--however rich and technologically advanced it was--could
become a global power.
There is the complex nature of today's
politics. Our era is still one of nation-states--the only aspect
of globalisation in which globalisation does not work. But it
is a peculiar kind of state wherein almost every one of the ordinary
inhabitants plays an important role. In the past the decision-makers
ran states with little reference to what the bulk of the population
thought. And during the late 19th and early 20th century governments
could rely on a mobilisation of their people which is, in retrospect,
now quite unthinkable. Nevertheless, what the population think,
or are prepared to do, is nowadays more directed for them than
before.
A key novelty of the US imperial project
is that all other great powers and empires knew that they were
not the only ones, and none aimed at global domination. None
believed themselves invulnerable, even if they believed themselves
to be central to the world--as China did, or the Roman empire
at its peak. Regional domination was the maximum danger envisaged
by the system of international relations under which the world
lived until the end of the cold war. A global reach, which became
possible after 1492, should not be confused with global domination.
The British empire in the 19th century
was the only one that really was global in a sense that it operated
across the entire planet, and to that extent it is a possible
precedent for the American empire. The Russians in the communist
period dreamed of a world transformed, but they knew well, even
at the peak of the power of the Soviet Union, that world  domination was beyond them,
and contrary to cold war rhetoric they never seriously tried
such domination.
But the differences between today's US
ambitions and those of Britain of a century and more ago are
stark. The US is a physically vast country with one of the largest
populations on the globe, still (unlike the European Union) growing
due to almost unlimited immigration. There are differences in
style. The British empire at its peak occupied and administered
one quarter of the globe's surface (1). The US has never actually
practised colonialism, except briefly during the international
fashion for colonial imperialism at the end of the 19th century
and the beginning of the 20th century. The US operated instead
with dependent and satellite states, notably in the Western hemisphere
in which it almost had no competitors. Unlike Britain, it developed
a policy of armed intervention in these in the 20th century.
Because the decisive arm of the world
empire was formerly the navy, the British empire took over strategically
important maritime bases and staging-posts worldwide. This is
why, from Gibraltar to St Helena to the Falklands Islands, the
Union Jack flew and still flies. Outside the Pacific the US only
began to need this kind of base after 1941, but they did it by
agreement with what could then genuinely be called a coalition
of the willing. Today the situation is different. The US has
become aware of the need directly to control a very large number
of military bases, as well as indirectly to continue to control
them.
There are important differences in the
structure of the domestic state and its ideology. The British
empire had a British, but not a universal, purpose, although
naturally its propagandists also found more altruistic motives.
So the abolition of the slave trade was used to justify British
naval power, as human rights today are often used to justify
US military power. On the other hand the US, like revolutionary
France and revolutionary Russia, is a great power based on a
universalist revolution--and therefore based on the belief that
the rest of the world should follow its example, or even that
it should help liberate the rest of the world. Few things are
more dangerous than empires pursuing their own interest in the
belief that they are doing humanity a favour.
THE basic difference is that the British
empire, although global (in some senses even more global than
the US now, as it single- handedly controlled the oceans to an
extent to which no country now controls the skies), was not aiming
at global power or even military and political land power in
regions like Europe and America. The empire pursued the basic
interests of Britain, which were its economic interests, with
as little interference as possible. It was always aware of the
limitations of Britain's size and resources. After 1918 it was
acutely aware of its imperial decline.
But the global empire of Britain, the
first industrial nation, worked with the grain of the globalisation
that the development of the British economy did so much to advance.
The British empire was a system of international trade in which,
as industry developed in Britain, it essentially rested on the
export of manufactures to less developed countries. In return,
Britain became the major market for the world's primary products
(2). After it ceased to be the workshop of the world, it became
the centre of the globe's financial system.
Not so the US economy. That rested on
the protection of native industries, in a potentially gigantic
market, against outside competition, and this remains a powerful
element in US politics. When US industry became globally dominant,
free trade suited it as it had suited the British. But one of
the weaknesses of the 21st century US empire is that in the industrialised
world of today the US economy is no longer as dominant as it
was (3). What the US imports in vast quantities are manufactures
from the rest of the world, and against this the reaction of
both business interests and voters remains protectionist. There
is a contradiction between the ideology of a world dominated
by US-controlled free trade, and the political interests of important
elements inside the US who find themselves weakened by it.
One of the few ways in which this weakness
can be overcome is by the expansion of the arms trade. This is
another difference between the British and US empires. Especially
since the second world war, there has been an extraordinary degree
of constant armament in the US in a time of peace, with no precedent
in modern history: it may be the reason for the dominance of
what President Dwight Eisenhower called the "military industrial
complex". For 40 years during the cold war both sides spoke
and acted as though there was a war on, or about to break out.
The British empire reached its zenith in the course of a century
without major international wars, 1815-1914. Moreover, in spite
of the evident disproportion between US and Soviet power, this
impetus to the growth of the US arms industry has become much
stronger, even before the cold war ended, and it has continued
ever since.
The cold war turned the US into the hegemon
of the Western world. However, this was as the head of an alliance.
There was no illusion about relative power. The power was in
Washington and not anywhere else. In a way, Europe then recognised
the logic of a US world empire, whereas today the US government
is reacting to the fact that the US empire and its goals are
no longer genuinely accepted. There is no coalition of the willing:
in fact the present US policy is more unpopular than the policy
of any other US government has ever been, and probably than that
of any other great power has ever been.
The Americans led the Western alliance
with a degree of courtesy traditional in international affairs,
if only because the Europeans should be in the front line in
the fight against the Soviet armies: but the alliance was permanently
welded to the US by dependence on its military technology. The
Americans remained consistently opposed to an independent military
potential in Europe. The roots of the long-standing friction
between the Americans and the French since the days of De Gaulle
lie in the French refusal to accept any alliance between states
as eternal, and the insistence on maintaining an independent
potential for producing hi-tech military equipment. However,
the alliance was, for all its strains, a real coalition of the
willing.
Effectively, the collapse of the Soviet
Union left the US as the only superpower, which no other power
could or wanted to challenge. The sudden emergence of an extraordinary,
ruthless, antagonistic flaunting of US power is hard to understand,
all the more so since it fits neither with long-tested imperial
policies developed during the cold war, nor the interests of
the US economy. The policies that have recently prevailed in
Washington seem to all outsiders so mad that it is difficult
to understand what is really intended. But patently a public
assertion of global supremacy by military force is what is in
the minds of the people who are at present dominating, or at
least half-dominating, the policy-making in Washington. Its purpose
remains unclear.
Is it likely to be successful? The world
is too complicated for any single state to dominate it. And with
the exception of its military superiority in hi-tech weaponry,
the US is relying on diminishing, or potentially diminishing,
assets. Its economy, though large, forms a diminishing share
of the global economy. It is vulnerable in the short term as
well as in the long term. Imagine that tomorrow the Organisation
of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to put all its bills
in euros instead of in dollars.
Although the US retains some political
advantages, it has thrown most of them out of the window in the
past 18 months. There are the minor assets of American culture's
domination of world culture, and of the English language. But
the major asset for imperial projects at the moment is military.
The US empire is beyond competition on the military side and
it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. That does
not mean that it will be absolutely decisive, just because it
is decisive in localised wars. But for practical purposes there
is nobody, not even the Chinese, within reach of the technology
of the Americans. But here there will need to be some careful
consideration on the limits of technological superiority.
Of course the Americans theoretically
do not aim to occupy the whole world. What they aim to do is
to go to war, to leave friendly governments behind them and go
home again. This will not work. In military terms, the Iraq war
was very successful. But, because it was purely military, it
neglected the necessities of what to do if you occupy a country--running
it, maintaining it, as the British did in the classic colonial
model of India. The model "democracy" that the Americans
want to offer to the world in Iraq is a non- model and irrelevant
for this purpose. The belief that the US does not need genuine
allies among other states, or genuine popular support in the
countries its military can now conquer (but not effectively administer)
is fantasy.
THE war in Iraq was an example of the
frivolity of US decision- making. Iraq was a country that had
been defeated by the Americans and refused to lie down: a country
so weak it could be easily defeated again. It happened to have
assets--oil--but the war was really an exercise in showing international
power. The policy that the crazies in Washington are talking
about, a complete re- formulation of the entire Middle East,
makes no sense. If their aim is to overthrow the Saudi kingdom,
what are they planning in its place? If they were serious about
changing the Middle East we know the one thing they have to do
is to lean on the Israelis. Bush's father was prepared to do
this, but the present incumbent in the White House is not. Instead
his administration has destroyed one of the two guaranteed secular
governments in the Middle East, and dreams of moving against
the other, Syria.
The emptiness of the policy is clear
from the way the aims have been put forward in public relations
terms. Phrases like "axis of evil", or "the road
map" are not policy statements, but merely sound bites that
accumulate their own policy potential. The overwhelming newspeak
that has swamped the world in the past 18 months is an indication
of the absence of real policy. Bush does not do policy, but a
stage act. Officials such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz
talk like Rambo in public, as in private. All that counts is
the overwhelming power of the US. In real terms they mean that
the US can invade anybody small enough and where they can win
quickly enough. This is not a policy. Nor will it work. The consequences
of this for the US are going to be very dangerous. Domestically,
the real danger for a country that aims at world control, essentially
by military means, is the danger of militarisation. The danger
of this has been seriously underestimated.
Internationally, the danger is the destabilising
of the world. The Middle East is just one example of this destabilisation--far
more unstable now than it was 10 years ago, or five years ago.
US policy weakens all the alternative arrangements, formal and
informal, for keeping order. In Europe it has wrecked the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation--not much of a loss; but trying
to turn NATO into a world military police force for the US is
a travesty. It has deliberately sabotaged the EU, and also systematically
aims at ruining another of the great world achievements since
1945, prosperous democratic social welfare states. The widely
perceived crisis over the credibility of the United Nations is
less of a drama than it appears since the UN has never been able
to do more than operate marginally because of its total dependence
on the Security Council, and the use of the US veto.
How is the world to confront--contain--the
US? Some people, believing that they have not the power to confront
the US, prefer to join it. More dangerous are those people who
hate the ideology behind the Pentagon, but support the US project
on the grounds that, in the course of its advance, it will eliminate
some local and regional injustices. This may be called an imperialism
of human rights. It has been encouraged by the failure of Europe
in the Balkans in the 1990s. The division of opinion over the
Iraq war showed there to be a minority of influential intellectuals,
including Michael Ignatieff in the US and Bernard Kouchner in
France, who were prepared to back US intervention because they
believe it is necessary to have a force for ordering the world's
ills. There is a genuine case to be made that there are governments
that are so bad that their disappearance will be a net gain for
the world. But this can never justify the danger of creating
a world power that is not interested in a world that it does
not understand, but is capable of intervening decisively with
armed force whenever anybody does anything that Washington does
not like.
Against this background we can see the
increasing pressure on the media--because in a world where public
opinion is so important, it is also hugely manipulated (4). Attempts
were made in the Gulf war, 1990-91, to avoid the Vietnam situation
by not letting the media near the action. But these did not work
because there were media, for example CNN, actually in Baghdad,
reporting things that did not fit the story Washington wanted
told. This time, in the Iraq war, control again did not work,
so the tendency will be to find yet more effective ways. These
may take the form of direct control, maybe even the last resort
of technological control, but the combination of governments
and monopoly proprietors will be used to even greater effect
than with Fox News (5), or Silvio Berlusconi in Italy.
How long the present superiority of the
Americans lasts is impossible to say. The only thing of which
we are absolutely certain is that historic ally it will be a
temporary phenomenon, as all these other empires have been. In
the course of a lifetime we have seen the end of all the colonial
empires, the end of the so- called Thousand Year Empire of the
Germans, which lasted a mere 12 years, the end of the Soviet
Union's dream of world revolution.
There are internal reasons why the US
empire may not last, the most immediate being that most Americans
are not interested in imperialism or in world domination in the
sense of running the world. What they are interested in is what
happens to them in the US. The weakness of the US economy is
such that at some stage both the US government and electors will
decide that it is much more important to concentrate on the economy
than to carry on with foreign military adventures (6). All the
more so as these foreign military interventions will have to
be largely paid for by the Americans themselves, which was not
the case in the Gulf war, nor to a very great extent in the cold
war.
Since 1997-98 we have been living in
a crisis of the capitalist world economy. It is not going to
collapse, but nevertheless it is unlikely that the US will carry
on with ambitious foreign affairs when it has serious problems
at home. Even by local business standards Bush does not have
an adequate economic policy for the US. And Bush's existing international
policy is not a particularly rational one for US imperial interests--and
certainly not for the interests of US capitalism. Hence the divisions
of opinion within the US government.
The key issue now is what will the Americans
do next, and how will other countries react? Will some countries,
like Britain--the only genuine member of the ruling coalition--go
ahead and back anything the US plans? Their governments must
indicate that there are limits to what the Americans can do with
their power. The most positive contribution so far has been made
by the Turks, simply by saying there are things they are not
prepared to do, even though they know it would pay. But at the
moment the major preoccupation is that of--if not containing--at
any rate educating or re-educating the US. There was a time when
the US empire recognised limitations, or at least the desirability
of behaving as though it had limitations. This was largely because
the US was afraid of somebody else--the Soviet Union. In the
absence of this kind of fear, enlightened self- interest and
education have to take over.
Eric Hobsbawm
is a historian; among his works is Age
of Extremes: The Shorter 20th: 1914-1991.
(1) Hobsbawm, The
Age of Empire 1875-1914, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London,
1987.
(2) Op cit.
(3) Chalmers Johnson,
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire,
Owl Books, 2001.
(4) "France protests US media plot",
International Herald Tribune, 16 May 2003.
(5) Eric Alterman, "United States:
making up the news", Le Monde diplomatique, English language
edition, March 2003.
(6) "US unemployment hits an 8-year
high", International Herald Tribune, 3 May 2003.
This essay originally appeared in Le
Monde Diplomatique.
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