Soaring Eagle: Prestige and American Empire, 1998-2003 by Tudor Onea A thesis submitted to the Department of Political Studies in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada October 2009 Copyright© Tudor Onea, 2009 Abstract What are the causes of the US foreign policy of imperial expansion between 1998 and 2003? US foreign policy in this timeframe is distinctive by its unilateralism and use of force compared to previous instances of American expansion as well as to its political line in the early 1990s. Hence, the thesis conducts an inquiry into the reasons for this transformation in American foreign policy. By contrast to the existing literature on American foreign policy, the thesis argues for an alternative hypothesis in terms of prestige-seeking on the part of the US. Despite its advantage in capabilities, the US found itself constantly unable to translate its preferences into successful outcomes in the 1990s. This discrepancy eventually created the conditions for status inconsistency, i.e. the gap between the social ranks an actor occupies in multiple social hierarchies. An actor experiencing status inconsistency will attempt to balance ranks so as to achieve eventual superiority under all hierarchies. In world politics, prestige is a function of social ranking or status, which is itself conferred according to three dimensions: military capabilities, economic capabilities, and political performance—the ability of successfully translating one’s preferences into successful outcomes. It in this latter respect that the US felt it was particularly deficient in the aftermath of the Cold War, hence the need to conserve and enhance American prestige so as to match America’s pretensions of world leadership. Accordingly, the thesis examines in detail how the pursuit of prestige affected American foreign policy in the contexts of rejection of the ABM and the ICC treaties, the use of force without a UN Security Council authorization the bombing of Yugoslavia over Kosovo, and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The thesis concludes that prestige ii represents a significant and enduring influence over states’ foreign policy conduct due to status inconsistency. Furthermore, the recent American policy of imperial expansion from 1998 to 2003 under the presidencies of Clinton and George W. Bush is likely to be a harbinger of things to follow, because the circumstances favoring status inconsistency and the consequent policy of prestige are still present. iii Acknowledgements As the saying goes, “per aspera ad astra”: through hardships toward the stars. This is particularly appropriate for the process of thesis writing— occasionally rewarding, often bordering on painful, and almost always laborious: the equivalent of an intellectual marathon testing not only the skill and the knowledge, but also, and perhaps much more so the stamina, patience, and motivation of the student so bold, as in my case, as to undertake it without an inkling of the length or difficulty of the road ahead. Yet one is not alone in running the demanding race and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the many individuals who helped me edge towards the finish line. Let me first extend to all of you a very warm mulŃumesc —thank you. In the first place, I would like to express my sincerest thanks and gratitude to my supervisor David Haglund, whose door has always been open to me and who has shown positively unheard of patience in dealing with my frequent (sometimes daily) queries. This is all the more remarkable in a field where, as he assures me, it is not unheard of to meet one’s supervisor face to face only at defense time. I would also like to thank Charles Pentland and the staff of the Queen’s Centre for International Relations not only for offering consistent moral support, but also for providing the equally important financial backing that enabled me to take part in academic conferences I could not have otherwise attended and which were essential to the development of the thesis’ argument. Their generosity is well appreciated and will not be forgotten. Extensive thanks and praise should also go to Oded Haklai and to Andrew Grant, who have spared time and energy to point me in the right direction on the frequent iv occasions where the task seemed on the verge of becoming a labor of Sisyphus. Both are superb mentors and foul-weather friends. Special thanks and considerable due credit should be extended to my former MA supervisor Dr. Harald Kleinschmidt of the University of Tsukuba, who patiently read through countless drafts, and was so exigent as to dismiss the many pages that were unsatisfactory. His “brutal honesty,” as he would put it, saved the thesis many times from succumbing to the temptation to get the job done as quickly or as sloppy as possible. Such an intellectual debt cannot be repaid in full, but, I hope that the thesis, by living up to his standards, will manage to at least cover some of it. Finally, the biggest round of applause should go to my mother, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. I could not have done it without you. v Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgments………………………………………………… …………………….iv Chapter One: Introduction………………………………………………………………...1 Chapter Two: Theories of American Empire……………………………………………45 Chapter Three: The US: Empire or Imperialist…………………………………………..73 Chapter Four: The Years of Illusion, 1989-1998………………………………………108 Chapter Five: Prestige and the Bombing of Yugoslavia………………………………..147 Chapter Six: Indispensable Nation: Prestige and US Unilateralism……………………187 Chapter Seven: America Supreme: Prestige and the Invasion of Iraq………………….230 Chapter Eight: Conclusion: …………………………………………………………….278 Selective Bibliography………………………………………………………………….296 vi Chapter One Introduction Awareness of America’s role in the world came to Captain John Prior as his company was searching a Fedayeen suspect house in Baghdad and interrogating at gun-point the target’s relatives: “we’re on top... Rome fell, and Greece fell, and I thought: I like being an American. I like being on top and you don’t stay on top unless there’s [sic] people willing to defend it... And I thought: I don’t want this to happen to me or my family, and we need to maintain superiority as the number one superpower.” 1 Captain Prior’s formula has the distinct merit of encapsulating at once several apparently disparate, yet relevant elements of the problématique of empire: the tangible reality of America’s preponderant power, the cyclical rise and fall of great powers throughout history, the fear of humiliation at the hands of rival states, the pride of serving the currently most influential country in the world, and the necessity of acting forcefully in order to maintain this lofty position. All these notions are fully compatible with a growing view among students of American foreign policy: that increasingly throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s the US has behaved in an imperial manner. Accordingly, the main question this doctoral thesis sets out to answer concerns the causes behind America’s strategy of empire in the 1998-2003 timeframe . Between 1998 and 2008, if one were to count as a barometer only the frequency of book reviews in Foreign Affairs , more than thirty tomes were published on the topic of empire. 2 Most 1 George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005), 231. 2 See inter alia Amy Chua, Day of Empire: Why Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—And Why They Fall (New York: Doubleday, 2007); Herfried Münkler, Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007); Christopher Layne and Bradley 2 such studies are undertaken in direct reference to either the existence of an American empire or to an alleged US effort to achieve imperial dominion. The current lionization of American empire may bring to memory the coming and going in the 1960s and 1970s of the theory of American empire developed by New Left scholars in the context of the Vietnam War. 3 However, this time around, empire may not be a passing fad, given the diversity of intellectual background of the scholars employing it. American empire has become a mainstream concept in the study of International Relations, though an on-going debate still grips the field on whether America constitutes an actual empire. However, the question to ask is not whether there is such a thing as an American empire, but whether conceiving America as an empire is of any practical utility for the purpose of analyzing contemporary US foreign policy. 4 The answer this thesis advances is in the affirmative, since the assumption of an American empire helps make sense of the ubiquitous nature of the present American influence in world politics as well as of the reactions of accommodation or opposition the US engenders in other states. Though analysts frequently focus on the sizable surpluses America enjoys in military and economic assets relative to other great powers, these advantages by themselves do not produce an accurate depiction of the extent of America’s current preponderant role in the Thayer, American Empire: A Debate (New York: Routledge, 2007); Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions : American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); Josef Joffe, Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006); Charles Maier, Among Empires: American