The American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the development by the Bush
administration of a new national security strategy provoked an enormous volume of
commentary--a flood of books, essays, op-eds--on the theme of American empire.
The
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, wrote one critic, “produced a dangerous change
in the thinking of some of our leaders, who began to see our republic as a genuine
empire, a new Rome, the greatest colossus in history, no longer bound by international
law, the concerns of allies, or any constraints on its use of military force.”
The question
urgently demanding attention, wrote another critic, “is not whether the United States has
become an imperial power” but “what sort of empire [Americans] intend theirs to be.”
It was not only critics of the Iraq war who found “empire” to be the most apt label
for what the United States had become. Neo-conservative supporters of the Bush
administration did so as well. Columnist Max Boot, the author of a book of military
history celebrating America’s participation in “small wars,” insisted that “Afghanistan
and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration
once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.”
conservatives such as Charles Krauthammer and Tom Donnelly (the latter of the Project
for a New American Century) agreed that it was time to come out of the closet on the
subject of American empire. Of the supporters of the Iraq war, however, perhaps the most
brazen was British historian Niall Ferguson, who not only came out of the closet but
nearly burned down the house. His argument, as he noted in Colossus: The Price of
1
This essay is based on the introductory chapters (1-3) of a book manuscript. The Table of Contents is
appended at the end of the essay.
2
Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, New
York: Metropolitan Books, 2004, p. 3.
3
Andrew Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy,
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002, p. 244.
4
Max Boot, ‘The Case for American Empire’, The Weekly Standard, 2001, vol. 007, issue 005.
2
Convention