Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., historian and writer, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, served as special assistant to President John F. Kennedy. His most recent book is War and the American Presidency.

The American Empire? Not So Fast Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

The one thing that Noam Chomsky and lished in 1771—and one finds “empire” de- Paul Wolfowitz might agree upon is the re- fined as “a large extent of land under the ju- ality of an American Empire. Of course, risdiction or government of an emperor.” Chomsky regards the American Empire as a The first European example mentioned is monstrosity and Wolfowitz regards it as the Charlemagne, of whom the Britannica says, savior of humanity, but of its existence nei- “It is to be observed that there is not a foot ther has any doubt. Commentators make of land or territory annexed to the emperor’s comparisons to the great empires—to the title.” Roman Empire; to the nineteenth-century “Imperialism” did not appear as a word British and French empires. Is the so-called until the nineteenth century. Its first appli- American Empire a fitting successor to these cation was not to overseas expansion but to historic empires? Certainly the overwhelm- the domestic pretensions of Napoleon III, ing military, economic, and cultural power emperor of France. As late as 1874, when projected by the United States at the start of Walter Bagehot wrote “Why an English the twenty-first century should qualify as Liberal May Look Without Disapproval on imperial. But does its history commit the the Progress of Imperialism in France,” he United States to an imperial destiny? referred to France’s internal polity, not to its Historians who believe in the American foreign policy. The contemporary meaning Empire, pro or con, think it does. Some cite of imperialism as the domination of distant the use of the word “empire” by Americans peoples appeared toward the end of the when the United States itself was struggling nineteenth century. to be born. In 1783, George Washington So evidence derived from the use of the called the infant republic a “rising Empire.” word “empire” by Americans in the eigh- A few years later in the Fourteenth Federal- teenth century is irrelevant. Still, has not ist, James Madison spoke of the “extended the United States been a constantly expand- republic” as “one great, respectable, and ing nation? Has not this expansion been flourishing empire.” The case turns on the welcomed by an eager popular consensus? meaning of “empire” in the eighteenth cen- Have not the American people from the tury. If one consults the standard modern start been hell bent on empire? work on the subject, Richard Koebner’s Im- Well, yes and no. Leaders of the early perialism: The Story and Significance of a Po- republic would have been astonished to litical Word, one finds that the Latin word discover that by the twentieth century a “imperium” meant sovereignty, the exercise single nation stretched from sea to shining of authority, and that in the eighteenth cen- sea. Thomas Jefferson expected white set- tury the word “empire” by no means im- tlers to spread across the continent but nev- plied territorial expansion. Look at a con- er supposed the Stars and Stripes would temporaneous dictionary—say the first edi- accompany them. Along the Pacific would tion of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, pub- arise, in Jefferson’s words, “a great, free and

The American Empire? Not So Fast 43 independent empire,” populated by white As for Canada, John Quincy Adams held Americans “unconnected with us but by the “our proper domain to be the continent of ties of blood and interest.” Daniel Webster North America.” Sen. Charles Sumner, an- similarly anticipated an independent, white other Massachusetts man, was sure that the “Pacific republic” on the west coast. Even law of gravitation would bring us Canada. Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, for all his John Quincy Adams’s grandson, the young flamboyant expansionism, proposed in 1825 Henry Adams, observed in 1869 “that the to draw “the Western limits of the republic” whole continent of North American and all along the edge of the Rocky Mountains and its adjacent islands must at last fall under to erect a statue of the fabled god Terminus the control of the United States is a convic- on the highest peak. On the Pacific coast, tion absolutely ingrained in our people.” Benton said, “the new Government should “Long ere the second centennial arrives,” separate from the mother Empire as the Walt Whitman predicted in Democratic Vis- child separates from the parent.” tas (1871),”there will be some forty to fifty Early Americans conceived continental great States, among them Canada and Cu- expansion as through empty lands popu- ba.” As late as 1895, Henry Cabot Lodge lated only by wandering and primitive declared, “From to the Rio Grande to the Indians—“savages.” But Jefferson would Arctic Ocean there should be but one flag have probably been even more astonished and one country.” to discover how little the United States These things, so authoritatively pre- had expanded to the south and to the north dicted, never came to pass. We have not an- where European settlers—British, French, nexed Cuba or Canada. There is no likeli- Spanish—had established themselves. Jeffer- hood that we ever will. The record hardly son thought Cuba “the most interesting sustains the thesis of a people red hot for addition which could ever be made to our empire. From the Louisiana Purchase on, system of States” and told John C. Calhoun territorial acquisition has always met resis- in 1820 that the United States “ought, at tance. Texas waited outside the Union for a the first possible opportunity, to take Cu- decade as an independent republic and then ba.” John Quincy Adams, James Monroe’s entered only through presidential sleight of secretary of state and his successor in the hand, John Tyler procuring admission by White House, considered the annexation joint resolution after the Senate had rejected of Cuba “indispensable to the continuance a treaty of annexation. The outcry during and integrity of the Union itself” and the Mexican War to take “all Mexico” came thought Cuba would inevitably fall to to naught. President James K. Polk even the United States by the law of political feared that Congress would turn against the gravitation. war, the House having passed a resolution In a masterful book 70 years ago called declaring that the war had been “unneces- Manifest Destiny, Albert K. Weinberg sar- sarily and unconstitutionally begun by the donically exposed the long parade of ex President of the United States,” and that he post facto justifications—political gravita- would lose California and New Mexico. The tion, natural right, geographical predestina- Ostend Manifesto aroused so much criticism tion, natural growth. The 1840s and 1850s that President Franklin Pierce’s secretary were salad years for Manifest Destiny with of state was obliged to disclaim it, and the acquisition of California and New Mexi- William Walker and the other freebooters co (1848), followed by the fantasies of the commanding mercenaries who invaded Cen- Ostend Manifesto (1854), a try by American tral America and Cuba were repudiated. diplomats in Europe at getting Spain to During and after the Civil War, a life- give up Cuba to the United States. long expansionist, William H. Seward,

44 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SPRING 2005 served presidents Abraham Lincoln and An- oped a colonial outlook. The United States drew Johnson as secretary of state. But Se- established no colonial department. It ward’s ambitious program got nowhere, ex- trained no administrators to man the out- cept for the flyspeck of Midway and for posts of empire. It had no upper class with Alaska, which Russia wanted to get rid of younger sons who needed outdoor relief. and which Congress reluctantly accepted Britain created a British world in India and after members were bribed, perhaps by the Africa; the French created a French world in Russian minister. The Senate rejected the Indochina and Algeria. The number of Hawaiian reciprocity treaty, the purchase of Americans who settled in the Philippines the Virgin Islands from Denmark, the an- was negligible. When Britain liberated In- nexation of Santo Domingo, the annexation dia and when France liberated Algeria, it of Samoa. It took half a century of argument was a matter of bitter internal controversy. before we annexed Hawaii, and this might When America liberated the Philippines, it not have taken place had it not been for the was a matter of indifference mingled with war with Spain. Even with this war we still relief. did not annex Cuba. We did annex the To be sure, the United States like all Philippines but set them free 40 years later. great powers has varied and vital economic And by 1960 Alaska and Hawaii were interests, ranging from access to raw materi- states, not colonial possessions. Annexing als to export markets. But to assert that Puerto Rico as an inadvertent result of the these interests foreordain wars of conquest is Spanish-American War, we have maintained contrary to the evidence, and indeed con- it as a “commonwealth,” though statehood futed by the writings of Marx and Engels, advocates are gaining strength. Indepen- who in this matter were hardly as Marxist as dence is a non-issue except for a tiny their disciples. minority. Of course we enjoy an informal em- In short, the imperial dream had en- pire—military bases, status-of-forces agree- countered consistent indifference and recur- ments, trade concessions, multinational cor- rent resistance through American history. porations, cultural penetrations, and other Imperialism was never a broadly based, pop- favors. But these are marginal to the subject ular mass movement. There were spasms of of direct control. “The term ‘empire’” writes jingoistic outrage, as over the sinking of the Professor G. John Ikenberry, summing up Maine, but no sustained demand for empire. the common understanding, “refers to the As James Bryce, the foreign observer whose political control by a dominant country of insights into the American mystery were the domestic and foreign policies of weaker second only to Tocqueville’s, wrote in The countries.” In their days of imperial glory, American Commonwealth (1888), Americans Rome, London, Paris, despite slow and awk- “have none of the earth-hunger which burns ward lines of communication, really ruled in the great nations of Europe.... The gener- their empires. Today communication is in- al feeling of the nation is strongly against a stantaneous. But despite the immediacy of forward policy.” At the height of American contact, Washington, far from ruling an em- experiments with imperialism at the end of pire in the old sense, has become the virtual the nineteenth century, Theodore Roosevelt, prisoner of its client states. a disappointed imperialist, deplored “the This was the case notably with South queer lack of imperial instinct that our Vietnam in the 1960s, and it has been the people show.” case ever since with Israel. Governments in Americans, unlike the Romans, the Saigon 40 years ago and in Tel Aviv today British, and the French, are not colonizers of have been sure that the United States, for remote and exotic places. We never devel- internal political reasons, would not use the

The American Empire? Not So Fast 45 ultimate sanction—the withdrawal of the limit. Of course, we can always bomb, American support. They therefore defied but that is hardly the way to win hearts major American commands and demands and minds. Americans are simply not with relative impunity. competent imperialists, as we have demon- Pakistan, Taiwan, Egypt, South Korea, strated in Iraq. The so-called American the Philippines, and very likely Iraq itself Empire is in fact a feeble imitation of the are similarly unimpressed, evasive, or defi- Roman, British, and French empires.• ant. For all our vast military power, we can- not get our Latin American neighbors, or This essay was adapted from a paper presented at a even the tiny Caribbean islands, to do our tribute to James Chace, a former editor of this jour- bidding. As for our military power, war nal, on December 9, 2004, at the Carnegie Council against a guerrilla insurgency in Iraq seems on Ethics and International Affairs in New York. to have strained our military resources to

46 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SPRING 2005