Recently
while reading a book by an Israeli scholar named Yoram Hazony with the
provocative title The Virtue of Nationalism, I
encountered a distinction drawn by the late Charles Krauthammer between
empire building and American global democratic hegemony. Like the editors of
the Weekly Standard, for which he periodically wrote, Krauthammer
believed it was unfair to describe what he wanted to see done, which was having
the U.S. actively spread its own form of government throughout the world, as
“imperialism.” After all, Krauthammer said, he and those who think like him “do
not hunger for new territory,” which makes it wrong to accuse them of
“imperialism.”
Hazony
responds with the obvious answer that control can be imposed on the unwilling
even if the empire builders are not overtly annexing territory. Meanwhile,
other neoconservatives have given the game away by pushing their imperialist
position a bit further than Krauthammer’s. Max Boot, for example, has been quite open in demanding
“an American empire” built on ideological and military control even without
outright annexation.
The
question that occurred to me while reading Krauthammer’s proposal and Hazony’s
response (which I suspect would have been more devastating had Hazony not been
afraid of losing neoconservative friends and sponsors) is this one: how is this
not imperialism?
Certainly
the use of protectorates to increase the influence of Western powers in the
non-Western world goes back a long time. As far back as the Peloponnesian War,
rival Greek city-states tried to impose their constitutional arrangements on
weaker Greek societies as a way of managing them politically. According to
Xenophon, when the Athenians then surrendered to the Spartan commander Lysander
in 403 BC, they had two conditions imposed on them: taking down their great
wall (kathairein ta makra teixe) and installing a regime that
looked like the Spartan one. This makes arguing that territory has to be
annexed outright in order for it to become part of an American empire so
utterly unconvincing.
One
reason the views offered by Krauthammer and Boot did not elicit more widespread
criticism—and have enjoyed enthusiastic favor among Republicans for decades,
culminating in the oratorical wonders of George W. Bush—may have been the
embrace of another neoconservative doctrine: “American exceptionalism.” The
belief that the U.S. is a supremely good nation founded on universal principles
has consequences that go well beyond electoral politics. Dennis Prager, a
nationally syndicated talk radio host and co-owner of the
website Townhall.com, extols American exceptionalism, which he says
springs from American values.
Those
values have “universal applicability,” according to Prager, and are “eminently
exportable.” Glenn Beck has taken up the same theme of “American exceptionalism” as an exportable “idea” that is meant for
everyone on the planet. The “ideas” or “values” in question are variously
defined by the neoconservative media as “human rights,” “universal equality,”
or just making sure everyone lives like us. Whatever it is, we are told that to
withhold it from the rest of the human race would be uncharitable. Our efforts
to bring it to others therefore cannot be dismissed as “imperialism” any more
than the Spanish government of the 16th century thought it was doing wrong by
forcing its religion on indigenous people in the Americas.
Although
I’m hardly a fan of his political views, former president Barack Obama once
said something that I thought was self-evident but that offended even members
of his own party. According to Obama, “Americans believe they’re exceptional.
But the Brits and Greeks believe they’re special too.” Obama was merely
observing that it’s okay for others to believe they’re special, even if they’re
not Americans imbued with “the idea.” Yet his statement was received with such
uproar that he felt compelled to backtrack. Speaking later at West Point, he made it clear that “I believe in
American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.” This from someone whom
Fox News assures us hated America and spent every minute of his presidency
denying our greatness! (And, yes, I’ve heard the rejoinder to this: Obama was
only pretending to believe in the creed he dutifully recited.)
It
might be argued (and has been by neoconservatives many times) that the U.S. is
both morally superior and less dangerous than ethnically defined societies
because we advocate a “value” or “creed” that’s accessible to the entire human
race. But this is hardly a recipe for peace as opposed to what Krauthammer
called a “value-driven” relationship with the rest of the world. British
journalist Douglas Murray, in his intended encomium Neoconservatism: Why
We Need It, tries to praise his subjects but ends up
describing a kind of global democratic jihadism. While Douglas admits that
“socially, economically, and philosophically” neoconservatism differs from
traditional conservatism, he insists that it’s something better. He commends
neoconservatives for wishing to convert the world to “values.” Their primary goal,
according to Murray, is the “erasing [of] tyrannies and [the] spreading [of]
democracy,” an arduous task that requires “interventionism, nation-building,
and many of the other difficulties that had long concerned traditional
conservatives.”
Please
tell me this is not what it obviously is: an invitation to war and empire
building. The quest for hegemony always looks the same, no matter what
moral labels some choose to give it.
Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus
at Elizabethtown College, where he taught for 25 years. He is a Guggenheim
recipient and a Yale Ph.D. He is the author of 13 books, most recently Fascism: Career of a
Concept and Revisions and Dissents.
