Empires Apart

by Brian Landers

  The primacy of the dollar and the capital transfers that go with it reinforce, and are reinforced by, the other imperial bonds that the United States has established around the world. The Observer quoted one prominent Harvard economist delicately warning that if the Euro ever weakened the status of the dollar it ‘could complicate international military relationships’. As with most economic arguments it is possible to look at these monetary transfers through the other end of the economic telescope. Rather than arguing that America spends more than it earns, and therefore must be sucking in wealth from Asia and Europe, America’s leading investment guru, the billionaire Warren Buffet, argues that the wealth transfers are in the opposite direction. In his words the trade imbalances are the ‘force-feeding of American wealth to the rest of the world’. Buffet famously lives a modest life in a smallish home in Omaha, Nebraska. For him wealth is not what you spend but what you own. By buying US shares and bonds, says Buffet, foreigners are buying American assets. As these assets last for ever, while the money received by America in return is quickly spent, it is the foreigners who are becoming wealthy at America’s expense, not the other way round.

  As with so much in economics, Buffet’s argument is advanced in a series of logical steps to arrive at a conclusion that defies common sense. Ask most people whether they would feel wealthier if they were given £10,000 to spend or £10,000 locked in a glass case to look at, and very few would choose the Warren Buffet option. His argument only makes sense if you believe that one day the foreigners will be able to open their glass cases, sell all their American bonds and shares and start spending the money themselves. But the sums are now so massive that nobody could afford to buy these supposed assets; if foreigners suddenly tried to unload them the markets would collapse. Collectively the foreign stockholders are locked in; America, almost entirely by accident, has created a virtuous circle for itself that mirrors a vicious circle for the rest of its empire. But that circle could unwind over time. Foreign central banks have enormous stockpiles of dollars – two-thirds held by just six countries: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and, more ominously for America, China and Russia. If the political environment changes, America’s economy could be held to ransom.

  From Invisible Empires to the Neo-Empire

  America and Russia formed their empires in the same way at roughly the same time. Then in the twentieth century corporatism changed the face of American imperialism. For a time it seemed that, in the phrase of Alexis de Tocqueville, the two empires would hold in their hands ‘the destinies of half the world’, but as the century drew to a close America emerged as the sole superpower. The United States had won out not only because of its superior military might but because its ideology had triumphed. Throughout much of the world American values were perceived to be superior – politically, ethically, economically and practically. The Russian empire was deemed to match the American on none of these attributes. For most of their history the parallels between the two empires were remarkably strong, but the modern American empire seems to epitomise what the American sociologist Seymour Lipset called ‘American exceptionalism’: the United States is in fundamental ways different to every other society. But there remains one facet of Russian history that is a uniquely valuable comparator. The outstanding feature of the American empire is one that was shared perhaps only by the Soviet empire: the denial of its own existence.

  Both empires hid from their own people. Russia installed an imperial puppet regime in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and America did the same in Iran a few years later. Both actions in any other age would not only have been regarded as ‘imperial’ by outsiders but would have been proudly proclaimed as such by the imperial power. In the twentieth century such proclamations were unthinkable, with the result that Russian soldiers sent to crush the 1968 uprising in Prague were genuinely taken aback by the popular hostility they encountered, and most Americans were similarly unprepared when Iranians stormed the US embassy in 1979 and held their diplomats hostage. The Soviet and American empires were unique in that their people stared uncomprehending at the realities of imperial power partly because they were shocked at the very idea of empire. Britons had been outraged by such imperial infamies as the Amritsar massacre, but they understood that theirs was an empire. For ideological reasons the new imperialists denied even that: the two sets of imperialists and their minions defined ‘imperialism’ so that it only covered the other side.

  Algeria, hosting the 1973 Non-Aligned Conference, attacked both Russian and American imperialism, prompting Fidel Castro to launch into a spirited denial of Russian imperialism. ‘How can the Soviet Union be labelled imperialist?’ he asked. ‘Where are its monopoly corporations? Where is its participation in multinational companies? What factories, what mines, what oilfields does it own in the underdeveloped world? What worker is exploited in any country of Asia, Africa or Latin America by Soviet capital?’ Similarly apologists for US imperialism deny not just the crude military manifestations of the imperial dream but the whole commercial substructure on which the modern American empire is built.

  During the second Iraq War an opinion poll found that a higher percentage of Americans than at any time since the end of the Vietnam War asserted that the United States ‘should mind its own business’. The problem is that America’s business is now global. Minding America’s business no longer implies isolationism; it means making sure that foreign governments and citizens keep their ‘surplus’ assets rolling into America’s coffers. America’s human citizens can only carry on minding their own business in the narrow sense meant by the poll’s respondents if the US government acts abroad to mind the business of its corporate citizens. Protecting its corporate citizens may or may not mean invading Iraq, but it certainly means opting out of international treaties, protecting and subsidising domestic industries while stopping other governments doing the same, and where necessary directly intervening in the politics of nations around the globe. All these are activities that America’s critics describe as ‘imperialist’, but they are only the superficial manifestations of a much deeper ideological ‘empire’ created by the relentless, and quite innocent, ideological indoctrination carried out as the values of American institutions and corporations are transferred to the rest of the world. The distinguishing characteristic of the more controversial and informal ‘cultural’ imperialism that some claim to see is that it is not imposed by evil foreign aggressors but has become embedded in the everyday lives of the new commercial colonies. Much of the world now accepts American values as their own.

  On 1 September 2004 Chechen guerrillas seized a Russian school on the first day of the new school year. Hundreds of terrified children and adults were victims of one of the most barbaric hostage seizures in modern history. On the second night the sound of explosions sent fresh waves of anguish through the thousands of relatives and friends surrounding the school. The world’s media descended on North Ossetia, and all over the world people were gripped by the unfolding horror of terrorism on the scale of 9/11. On the morning television in Britain, however, the school siege warranted only third place. Considered more important were a report that Hurricane Frances was expected to hit Florida later that day and the main story: a speech given by President Bush II in New York as part of his re-election campaign. To the British media a perfectly ordinary party political speech and a storm warning on the other side of the Atlantic were more newsworthy than a unique human tragedy on the other side of Europe. (Even later in the day, when the hostage crisis disintegrated into tragedy and pictures of the blood-soaked corpses of murdered children were being beamed on to the world’s TV screens, British TV broke off to cross over to New York and report that former US president Bill Clinton had been admitted to hospital with chest pains and was being visited by his wife.) There are many ways to explain this apparently bizarre sense of priorities: the technical ease of getting comprehensive TV coverage from the US, an underlying sympathy with all things American, an instinctive lack of sympathy (goi
ng back to Châlons) with all things east European, a simple preference for TV interviews with people speaking the same language. The reasons for devoting so much more time to America than to Russia on that particular morning are unimportant; the fact is that it happened. Britons woke up to a diet of US news reinforcing US priorities and values. The images presented to them were Bush II claiming to be rescuing the world from terror, not Putin struggling to do the very same thing. In one very small way Britain was exhibiting its position as part of the American empire.

  This was illustrated more dramatically in the American invasion of Iraq. Troops from client states like Britain, Spain, Italy and Australia joined America’s war in much the same way as troops from Russia’s client states joined the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia – because they saw the world through the same ideological prisms. Since its first attacks on the Barbary pirates the United States has been able to persuade other nations that its interests are the same as theirs. America’s allies reimbursed $54bn of the $61bn cost of the first Gulf War. Although the US was unable to garner such financial support for the second war, British troops continued in their role as America’s ghurkhas.

  While most western leaders would deny that the invasion of Iraq was an act of ‘imperialism’ some Americans hailed it as what came to be called ‘neo-imperialism’. Neo-imperialists argue that the fundamental objective of American foreign policy must be the security of the homeland and that this can only be achieved by possessing, and being willing to use, overwhelming military superiority. Such a doctrine is of course not at all ‘neo’; it incorporates the conviction of the early Puritans that Americans are a specially chosen people, with the confidence in their own invulnerability that emerged after the Mystic Massacre, the ability to manufacture ‘threats to security’ like those used to justify the invasion of Florida and the doctrines of total war personified by Sherman in the Civil War.

  Like America’s traditional imperialism, its neo-imperialism is fundamentally military, but its proponents do not see it that way. They picture an empire that everyone would want to join, an alliance of democracies aspiring to the American way of life and over whom the United States would exercise a benign tutelage. In the words of William Seward, secretary of state after the Civil War, the American empire would ‘expand not by force of arms but by attraction’.

  The belief that US imperialism is qualitatively different from everybody else’s goes right back to the Monroe Declaration and beyond, to the yearning for empire that contributed to the revolutionary fervour of America’s Founding Fathers. America gained its liberty by force and Americans instinctively understand the yearning of other people for ‘national liberation’. What they so often cannot understand is that for other nations liberty includes the right not to live as Americans live. Time after time the US has helped people struggle against oppression, only to find that those they have helped refuse to live by the rules America wants them to follow. That these guerrillas turn against the very forces that helped create them was astonishing to US strategists in Afghanistan as it had been to their predecessors in the Philippines a century earlier. Prestowitz comments that Americans ‘are simply not good imperialists’ because they are too eager to be liked.

  From a historical perspective, what is odd is that Prestowitz sees today’s American imperialism as new. He himself was a member of the Reagan administration that invaded Grenada. The US has always sought to impose its will on the world by military means if other means are unsuccessful; why this imperialism appears to be ‘neo’ is because for most of the twentieth century military force has not been necessary; corporate power has been sufficient. In the period between the end of the Spanish-American War and the end of the cold war it was easy to believe that American imperialism had died. It is with hindsight that the continuities between the classic imperialism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the ‘new’ imperialism of the twenty-first century can be seen. But hindsight requires accurate history, and that in turn requires the distortions of ideology to be stripped away.

  It is a commonplace that communist ideologists saw only what they wanted to see, distorting reality to fit their preconceptions. What is less commonly accepted is that to some extent everyone does so. Even as informed an observer of Russian history as Robert Daniels could write: ‘There is no American comparison with the way the Soviets enforce conformity to the official ideology, deny any discrepancy between theory and reality, and claim that the current interpretation of theory is the version that has always been valid.’ And yet American leaders have repeatedly claimed that their vision of democracy has descended unchanged from the men who fought for independence from Britain, men who in fact were fighting to be allowed to continue to own slaves, to conquer the territory of their neighbours and to protect themselves against corporate power. The ideology of democracy in America has changed almost beyond recognition, and at each step those with alternative interpretations have been sidelined or even persecuted.

  The Lessons of History

  History is written from the moment it starts. Participants put an immediate spin on events and motives. Contemporary observers have their own agendas and each generation adds its own gloss. Historical balance tips one way or another as preoccupations change. Democracy is a fundamental part of the American ideology, so its history is taught in every school. On the other hand terrorising natives is no longer part of American life and memories of it have long disappeared. It is unsurprising, therefore, that American history texts devote much more attention to the town hall meetings in New England than to the Mystic Massacre. History may be consciously falsified, but more commonly unacceptable memories simply fade away.

  Not only are ideologically unacceptable realities written out of history, but ideologically acceptable myths are written in. Kevin Phillips points out how the Confederate version of the civil war has become the accepted wisdom in large parts of the United States; for example, Kentucky is now regarded as a southern state and contains seventy-two Confederate monuments and just two Union monuments, but in reality Kentucky was overwhelmingly pro-northern: 90,000 men from the state fought to abolish slavery, against 35,000 fighting to defend it.

  The impact of ideology on perceptions of history is illustrated by the impact of religion. Modern religious fundamentalists worry that society is becoming increasingly irreligious. American fundamentalists strive to return their nation to its original beliefs, to a time when all men were God-fearing and the only law was the Bible. While it is true that the original settlers in Massachusetts and Connecticut were often what today would be called fundamentalist, this was not true of most early colonists, whether in the south or in places like Maine, Rhode Island and New York. Religious observance has actually increased: 17 per cent of Americans stated some religious adherence in 1776, rising to 34 per cent in 1850, 45 per cent in 1890, 56 per cent in 1926, 62 per cent in 1980 and 63 per cent in 2000. Each morning American schoolchildren repeat a ‘pledge of allegiance’, which includes a commitment to ‘one nation under God’. This sounds like a phrase redolent of history, but in fact the words ‘under God’ were only added in 1954. One modern poll found that three out of five Americans believe in the literal truth of the story of Noah’s Ark; by contrast, seven of the nine Founding Fathers had doubts about the divinity of Jesus.

  Professional historians seek to strip away the accretions of ages but add their own preconceptions and bias. They face an often overwhelming need to demonstrate that their efforts are ‘relevant’, that history has lessons to teach. Attempts are made to interpret history to justify contemporary actions or political programmes. Russian history provides numerous examples. In the mid-nineteenth century there were fierce arguments about the origins of peasant communes. Westernisers argued that Russian peasants like everyone else were inherently individualists, and that communes were a tsarist imposition to make tax collection easier. The nationalistic Slavophiles argued that the communes had always existed and that communal living demonstrated the superio
rity of Russian culture over the atomised culture of the west. Purportedly the debate was about historical fact, but the arguments were based on political prejudice rather than historical research.

  There is an inevitable temptation for historians to use their expertise to smooth the road of progress. The most explicit western proponent of the view that history and historians exist to serve the purpose of the state was John Robert Seeley, the British historian whose religious views provoked the ire of Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Russian ideologue of autocracy. Seeley claimed that history should be seen as a science whose function was to solve political problems. In his case the solution that history produced to many of the world’s problems was British imperialism. (Nowadays Seeley is remembered, if he is remembered at all, neither for his views on religion nor his views on the role of historians but for a single remark: that Britain had acquired its empire ‘in a fit of absence of mind’, a comment sometimes applied, wholly inappropriately, to the United States.)

  The historian Richard Pipes did much to change the west’s perception of tsarism (and in the process incurred the wrath of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who angrily disputed the parallels Pipes drew between tsarism and Stalinism). In later life Pipes agreed to head a commission for President Reagan that investigated the Soviet Union’s supposed ultra-secret and ultra-effective missile programme. The commission found no evidence for such a programme for the simple reason that it did not exist (as the Soviet specialists at the CIA told Pipes at the time, and as was to be proved definitively when the Soviet empire finally collapsed and its research secrets were revealed). Nevertheless Pipes, using his claimed expertise in understanding the Russian mind, developed the novel theory that as the Soviets wanted such a programme to exist it must indeed exist or be close to existing. On this basis Reagan commissioned the enormously expensive Star Wars programme to meet this non-existent threat. (The parallels with the imaginary weapons of mass destruction used to justify the invasion of Iraq are obvious.)