“The US has about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming, and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives.
We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. We should cease talks about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights and raising of living standards and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
US State Dept. Official George Kennan, 1948.
The United States of America is a country fairly unique in the world in that it was founded upon an idea, and an idealism. It was, indeed, a planned country, a new utopia built across the sea where all those persecuted might come to find safety. Other countries acquired their national identities slowly, and only much later put them into practice, but the United States was conceived and created in the mind of Thomas Jefferson, and sprang forth from thence almost fully grown.
The problem with the United States is that a country is not an idea, no matter how much people continue to see them as equivalent. Independent freedom to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is a fine philosophy; but a country is a far too complex beast to epitomise any one philosophy, and far too atavistic to be governed entirely by such noble-headed altruism. And what goes for countries is ten times more true when it comes to empires.
America, and the world empire it has come to inherit, then is a contradiction. It does indeed walk softly but carry a big stick, because although it needs the stick to survive, it cannot truly stomach the moral damnation that comes with swinging it as firmly as it would like. The answer to this problem is the answer that has always been used to justify swinging sticks – creating the idea that the swinging of the stick will lead, in the long run, to the saving of souls. And that those who fall in this act of redemption will no doubt feast in heaven for their efforts – or burn in hell, if they were the bad people who were oppressing the souls to begin with.
The sole redeeming factor of America’s delusion, however, is that it is a delusion that has created an empire with a conscience. Or at the very least, a need to be seen as having a conscience; a desire to be, as they say these days, politically correct. When Old England was the policeman of the world, she was a brutal one, who answered all threats with the roar of the Maxim gun, and took glory in the slaughter. America’s policing is becoming more and more like that of a modern policeman: beset by judgement from all sides, subject to constant media scrutiny and falling under an unceasing demand to be seen to always have the high moral ground, their hands are becoming more and more tied. You cannot fight an effective war when every casualty of the enemy is counted as bad press, let alone those of your own side. And without war, the empire is doomed.
America wants to be Bruce Willis, and save the day by only killing Bad People. They were founded, as Thomas Jefferson said, to wage war against any tyranny over the mind. But the public are getting more and more tired of being asked to believe that only Bad People die, and that Bruce Willis actions are free of their own kind of tyranny. America’s great gift is that it has tried very hard to at least be seen to always be fighting the Good Fight, and many times, they have managed to actually do so into the bargain. Now, however, the act is beginning to wear thin, and people can see the strings. The puppet show of playing the empire with a conscience is becoming a farce.
America’s great dream to be the moral empire has led it to a crossroads that will determine its future, and with it, the future of the world. Do they embrace their constitution, and their treasured moral high ground, or do they hang firm to their role as global policeman, and learn to love the carnage it requires? America has always believed in doing the right thing, but will they really choose that option over losing their empire, and the ability it gives them to play the policeman?
America has spent the last fifty years trying to fill both roles, but the price of walking the line is becoming increasingly more expensive, and thus more difficult to sell to the voters. Particularly now it seems that even with support of the populace, the American forces have failed to capture the man behind their most bloody military attack in history. Even when doing the right thing and being a policeman ran together, America failed to take down the outlaw everyone wanted caught. Thus 9-11 may be the beginning of the end for the American empire, as the calls come louder and stronger to ignore the world, and return to the seclusionist policies they adopted in the thirties, lest they lead to more blood loss that cannot be easily and quickly revenged.
There is, however, a third possibility, and one that seems the most likely. Regardless of this conflict, America goes on walking the line, and England goes on walking the line, and the European Community goes on walking the line, and slowly the empire becomes not the American empire, but the Western Empire. American control is ceded more and more to the UN to preserve the image of moral superiority, and they play the same charade the US has been playing for the last fifty years. We can only hope they are better at it, freed from the need to be both moral leaders and financial ones – the WTO can take over that role rather nicely instead, and indeed, run it much better.
If finance is not enough to hold this Western Empire together, however, it will not be an empire at all, just a conglomerate of warring states who only agree on the fact that they can exploit those outside their conglomerate – much like Europe was in the Renaissance. Hopefully, for a while, the battles between these jockeying superpowers can be fought primarily with “marriages” and diplomacy, with large, full scale war replaced with a constant state of minor skirmishes. But all that falls down as soon as there is a bigger prize to fight for, and in a few hundred years time, the race for empire may be beginning all over again.
Only this time, instead of tiny Portugal and massive Spain setting out to conquer the seas, we will have tiny England and massive America setting out to conquer the stars, while China, Japan and the EU rush to catch up. And it all goes around again.
We do, in fact, live in interesting times. But like so much on our television these days, it seems to be mostly repeats.