BOOK
REVIEW America
undressed The Empire Has No
Clothes: US Foreign Policy Exposed by Ivan
Eland
Reviewed by David Isenberg
Now
that George W Bush has been re-elected president of the
United States, neo-conservatives and war hawks, both
pundits and policymakers, will likely feel vindicated
and even emboldened to continue on their course of enlarging
the American empire, all under the rubric of fighting
the global "war on terror". As one of the new political
slogans puts it, "four more years, four more wars".
But, as it turns out, wanting a US empire and
benefiting from one are markedly different things. This
is something not well appreciated in many of the recent
books analyzing the American empire. Most of them
assume, regardless of the overall morality of the
undertaking, that the US has only to snap its
militarized fingers and the deed is done, rather like
the slogan "resistance is futile" of the Borg in the
Star Trek television series, leaving the rest for
historians to debate.
Of course, in reality that
never happens. All empires, from the Roman to the
British, come to an end sooner or later. But the costs
are considerable, both to the lands and people absorbed,
as well as economically, socially and politically to the
imperial country itself.
But in a sound-bite
age, few people have the time or inclination to ponder
the sweep of history. What is needed then is a primer on
the subject, a sort of "Empire for Dummies", laying out
in detail the follies of America's current course of
action, which is taking it steadily further away from
its historical roots as a republic.
Fortunately,
we have just such a work in The Empire Has No
Clothes. It is a worthy tome written by Ivan Eland,
who is senior fellow and director of the Center on Peace
and Liberty at the Independent Institute in Oakland,
California.
Eland deserves more than a little
credit for writing this book. Not just any author can
detail the similarities between ancient Sparta and the
US-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for
example, but he manages to pull it off quite nicely.
Eland was previously director of defense policy
studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington,
DC, and as such, has observed imperialistic
interventions by both right- and left-wing
administrations - from George H W Bush, through Bill
Clinton to George W Bush himself. His jaundice about
their rhetoric and actions is both well documented and
well deserved.
He is obviously familiar with all
the current proponents of American empire - from imports
such as British historian Niall Ferguson, to home-grown
pith-helmet and jodhpur-wearing wannabes Robert Kagan
and Wall Street Journal essayist Max Boot - and their
arguments and smoothly picks them apart. One of his
favorite targets by the way is Boot; he can't resist
pointing out his contradictions, as in this passage:
Even Max Boot of the Council on Foreign
Relations, a staunch proponent of military
intervention for spreading democracy and free markets,
admits that imposing liberal democracies by force in
the developing world has been less than successful
(yet he still advocates attempting to do so).
Observations like these are fairly frequent
and quite entertaining, and it's worth buying the book
for these alone. The layout of the book is
straightforward. The first chapter is a relatively brief
survey of the American empire. It plows familiar ground,
but sets the stage for analyzing the current stage of
American military interventionism.
The second
chapter is devoted to answering the question - as if
there is really any debate here - of whether the US
truly has an empire. After conclusively demonstrating
that yes, Virginia, there really is an empire, he moves
on to a discussion of the more useful question as to why
it has one; ie, security, domestic causes, democratic
peace theory, that is, democracies don't fight each
other, a proposition that was proved false in World War
I.
He then explains how the current American
empire is, in fact, worse than its predecessors in that
it has none of the benefits and all the disadvantages of
traditional empires, such as nationalism, as the US is
now facing in Iraq.
But the next two chapters
are the heart of the book. They are why conservatives
and liberals, respectively, should be against empire.
Those who appreciate irony will find lots to amuse them
here. For example, how is it that a Republican Party
that once sincerely believed in not just limited, but
minimal, government, has become an unabashed supporter
of continued, massive military mobilization, the
greatest enlarger of government bureaucracies known to
humanity? As Eland writes, "American societal
mobilization to fight World War II surpassed even the
massive effort during World War I. The US government's
tentacles slithered ever deeper into civil society."
Increased government growth and spending, the
corresponding damage caused to economic growth and the
economic costs of paying for successive wars are neatly
summarized here as well.
Another target for
Eland is the concept of using military force to spread
"free markets"; what can be called the neo-mercantilist
argument. Evidently there are those who really believe
that capitalism and democracy can be spread at the point
of a bayonet. If it sounds ridiculous, it is only
because it is, and Eland has a fun time demolishing the
argument.
The chapter on why liberals should
oppose empire is equally, if not more, informative and
entertaining. After reading this section nobody will
ever be able to utter the words Woodrow Wilson and
liberal with a straight face. In Eland's view this is
the old left, but one that resonates to this day, just
under new names, such as the "engagement and
enlargement" of the Clinton years, or what the former
president's secretary of state Madeleine Albright
euphemistically called "assertive multilateralism".
Interestingly, in light of the reported
contributions that Christian evangelicals made to Bush's
re-election, Eland notes that Wilsonianism preceded
Wilson and was rooted in the desire of Christian
missionaries to save savage and inferior peoples and
vanquish evildoers. Fast-forward 90 years and find the
"axis of evil". Coincidence? I don't think so.
The final chapter dwells on what is an
appropriate policy for the current age. Like the first
chapter, much of this is familiar and represents the
usual solutions offered up by the anti-empire crowd,
such as conducting an offshore balancing strategy,
abandoning outdated alliances, focusing on key regions,
letting rich allies defend themselves, using a narrower
definition of "protection of trade" and "vital
interests", and stopping worries about maintaining
access to cheap oil.
Left unsaid, however, is
that very few, if any, of these options are likely to be
adopted during the next four years of the Bush
administration. Perhaps the costs of maintaining the
American empire will have to become even more evident
before American can return to a more traditional foreign
policy.
The Empire Has No Clothes: US Foreign
Policy Exposed by Ivan Eland. The Independent
Institute, Oakland, California, 2004. ISBN:
0-945999-98-4. Price US$24.95, 304 pages.
David Isenberg, a senior analyst with
the Washington-based British American Security
Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background in
arms control and national security issues. The views
expressed are his own.
(Copyright 2004 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
continue on their course of enlarging
the American empire, all under the rubric of fighting
the global "war on terror". As one of the new political
slogans puts it, "four more years, four more wars".
