Colossus – Niall Ferguson

 

President Andrew Jackson’s professions of humanitarian intent scarcely disguised the ruthlessness of what was being done: “[This] just and humane policy recommended … [the Indians] to quit their possessions … and go to a country to the west where there is every probability that they will always be free from the mercenary influence of white men. … Under such circumstances the General Government can exercise a paternal control over their interests and possibly perpetuate their race.” (p.36).

 

To be precise, seven characteristic phases of American engagement can be discerned:

1. Impressive initial military success.

2. A flawed assessment of indigenous sentiment.

3. A strategy of limited war and gradual escalation of forces.

4. Domestic disillusionment in the face of protracted and nasty conflict.

5. Premature democratization.

6. The ascendancy of domestic economic considerations.

7. Ultimate withdrawal. (p. 48).

 

The trouble with limited war turned out to be that public patience with it was even more limited. It would take the United States another long war to learn that lesson, and this war would end not in a tie but in a humiliating defeat. The paradox of the imperial Republic was that it was the civilian political elite – along with sections of the military – that favored limited war, much more than the wider electorate. (p. 94).

 

In the words of retired General Anthony Zinni:

“There is a fundamental question that goes beyond the military. It’s, ‘What is our obligation to the world?” We preach about values, democracy, human rights, but we haven’t convinced the American people to pony up. … There’s no leadership that steps up and says, “This is the right thing to do.” … That’s the basic problem. … There’s got to be the political will and support for these things. We should believe that a stable world is a better place for us. If you had a policy and a forward-leaning engagement strategy, the U.S. would make a much greater difference to the world. It would intervene earlier and pick fights better. (p. 293).

 

Does imperial denial matter? The answer is that it does. Successful empire is seldom solely based on coercion; there must be some economic dividends for the ruled as well as the rulers, if only to buy the loyalty of indigenous elites, and these dividends need to be sustained for a significant length of time. The trouble with an empire in denial is that it tends to make two mistakes when it chooses to intervene in the state of affairs of lesser states. The first may be to allocate insufficient resources to the nonmilitary aspects of the project. The second, and the more serious, is to attempt economic and political transformation in an unrealistically short time frame. As I write, the United States would seem to be making the second of these mistakes in both Iraq and Afghanistan. By insisting – and apparently intending – that they will remain in Iraq only until a democratic government can be established “and not a day longer,” American spokespeople have unintentionally created a further disincentive for local people to cooperate with them. (p. 294-295).