In the old days
of imperialism, before 1945, citizens of imperial nations learned
about their empires in school; they imbibed imperial anxiety and
pride, and discussed and debated empire publicly. It was never thus
in America, where US empire remains mostly invisible.
Americans are just now starting to learn about their
imperial history, amidst its current crisis, but there is pervasive
resistance to such learning, which contradicts patriotic truths
about American national character. Resistance to learning supports a
national denial of reality that keeps Americans ignorant of the
empire built, maintained, and defended in their name. This ignorance
helps explain the cognitive shock – as distinct from the emotional
and ethical horror – of events on September 11, 2001. For most
Americans, the animosity in those planes appeared literally out of
nowhere.
National ideology only begins to explain the gap between
America’s identity in the world and its self-understanding. In the
world of national states that emerged after 1945, the old meaning of
‘empire’ became archaic, because no country could then legitimately
administer another country. In addition, America itself emerged
from an anti-imperial struggle; and it supported national movements
elsewhere, from 19th century Latin America to 20th century Africa,
Asia, and west Asia. Support for nationalist struggles could
not be offered to communists, however; they had to be
constructed as aliens in their own lands, no matter how
indigenous their roots, most notably, in Vietnam, where France and
America drew a line between north and south that made liberation
forces in the north seem alien invaders, while Americans backed
‘native’ nationalists in the south. Embracing this kind of
ideological history, Americans can never admit to being
imperialists.
After 1945, imperialism acquired a new format under American
leadership. First, the cold war allowed the US to expand military,
economic, and political power around the world, posing as a crusader
against communism, committed to liberal modernisation. In 1989, the
cold war ended; then economic globalisation, global security, and a
war on terrorism came to justify more US expansion. Since 1945, US
power has expanded steadily and dramatically; it now covers the
world of nations, but does not deploy the formal discourse of
imperialism. Rather, the US sees itself as the world’s leader.
Americans lead global progress, facing enemies and obstacles
everywhere. In this guise, America uses its power inside
international institutions, like the UN, but strikes on its own when
necessary. America refuses to allow international laws to operate
inside US borders unless they conform to US law. Thus, US power
projects itself onto the world, but the world cannot respond;
this imbalance is typical of the imperial settings, but
Americans think of it instead as a natural state for the ‘world’s
only superpower’.
A flurry of books has appeared recently in America using the term
‘empire’ to describe US power. The term is beginning to appear
flattering in some circles. The growth of an American empire built
on the old repertoire of ‘indirect rule’ had been obvious outside
America for decades before ‘empire’ began to appear in US public
discourse, after the conquest of Iraq without international
legitimacy. Nevertheless, the idea that the US is an imperial power
is not popular among Americans. Journalists, scholars, teachers,
students, analysts, and politicians prefer to depict the US as a
nation pursuing its own interests and ideals. The phrase ‘American
empire’ will not appear in 2004 election debates, where voters will
focus on domestic and foreign policy issues. The war in Iraq is a
bigger issue with each passing day, not because of Iraqi
suffering, but because of American deaths. Wars come home when
bright young people return dead; and to make matters worse, people
do not understand the war in Iraq, which most people supported out
of patriotic fervour, trusting their president to lead. Now, US
‘intelligence’ is under scrutiny. Everyone knows Bush lied about
‘weapons of mass destruction.’ The war in Iraq appears now to have
been a mistake, but the US cannot simply back out, and Kerry along
with all but one US Senator voted for the war, and Kerry says the US
must stay to see the job done.
Living conditions in Iraq are not a political issue in America.
Few people even know what they are. Only bombing and death are in
the news, sometimes called features of ‘resistance’ to a US
occupation that must seem to most Americans not as popular in Iraq
as US propaganda once portrayed it. No one in the US could now
believe that ordinary Iraqis want Americans there, based on
reading or watching the news. US voters will never see in the news
the vast suffering in Iraq caused by American empire; instead they
will see security threats and policy options. The cost of empire at
home is not open for discussion. The war budget is called a ‘defence
budget’ and continues to soar, without protest. The empire continues
to operate out of public view. A tiny proportion of decisions that
sustain the empire ever come under public scrutiny.
Fears, Then and Now
This imperial condition contrasts sharply with that of Britain in
the old days. US taxpayers and voters pay the entire cost of the
America empire, and so must be kept in the dark about its
operations. The British people never paid for the empire that so
many loved because it was funded by Asians and Africans. If
Americans ever engaged in a cost-benefit analysis of the US empire,
who knows what would happen. But you can be sure, that will not
happen soon, because Americans do not see their empire; what they
see is an ever-more-pressing, ever-more-expensive need for national
security. Global threats to America must be magnified as much as
possible to keep the empire going despite its rapidly rising cost
and surely diminishing returns. Bill Clinton began scaring Americans
about terrorism. But 9/11 was the biggest gift imaginable for
American imperialists: it buried the empire out of sight under the
iconic rubble and dust of the Twin Towers.
Once upon a time, Americans believed that Soviets would attack
them with nuclear missiles. In the 1950s, we as school children hid
under our desks for air raid drills once a week. Families built bomb
shelters in their basements. In classrooms, cinema halls, and TV
cartoons, Americans learned that a ‘communist menace’ roamed the
world and that only strong, brave American soldiers could defend the
world against the ‘Soviet threat’. America was like Superman, called
to duty when evil reared its head, and otherwise living as a
‘mild-mannered reporter’, Clark Kent. The idea that America is
essentially good, caring, innocent, even naïve, like Clark Kent, has
managed to survive inside US popular culture despite virtually
continuous US imperial warfare since 1945.
Not only do Americans wear ideological blinders, they daily
imbibe information filtered and fed by media barons, politicians,
scholars, and educators who collaborate in imperialism for different
reasons, typically unknowingly. Individualism combined with expert
specialisation creates incoherently fragmented images of an imperial
reality that looks like an elephant groped by four blind men: one
feels the feet and calls it a tree; another feels the trunk and
calls it a snake; and each in turn is convinced by his own palpable
facts, but as a group they cannot describe what is there. In the
same way, some Americans focus on Islamic ideology; some, on nuclear
threats; some, on evil rulers; some, on the ghostly al-Qaeda; some,
on military options; and others, on civilian and economic issues.
Many Americans are humanitarians concerned with suffering. But each
group having gathered its own data on its specialised topic, and
each struggling daily with work and family – ‘just making a living,’
as we say – their understandings do not add up to a coherent
picture. Empire appears to be a piecemeal scattering of individual
facts and events, never a coherent product of a democratic political
system where many people might oppose empire, if they could, but
where voting against it is not an option.
The ideological composition of American knowledge also leads
Americans into raging debates among blind men, instead of into a
serious search for better information. Foreign information and
opinions are discounted, as in other countries. Non-nationals are
always kept away from the levers of public opinion. Because the US
has such a heavy impact on so many countries, this nationalist
resistance to foreign opinion might be usefully compared to a father
discounting cries of pain from his family and neighbours. A US
national structure of intellectual work and debate sets firm limits
on factual input and applies appropriate filters. Most Americans
never learn anything about any other country except what is deemed
relevant to the American national context by American experts and
defenders. Americans learn a lot about the world, but not what
people in other countries want Americans to learn. Rather, Americans
learn how every country fits into the American scheme. Some fit
better than others, and those that do not fit need fixing. The world
appears to be a collection of countries where people emulate
America, and where people who can migrate come to America to thrive
inside an absorbent American culture that seems to provide a
workable model of the world, a much better model, indeed, than the
United Nations. In the American model, all cultural diversity fits
neatly inside a politics of identity that revolves around
the white elites who prescribed the US constitution, assay US
values, and dominate all major US institutions. Most Americans
believe that people everywhere would be better off adopting the
American model of cultural and political stability and economic
progress.
The confidence with which American feminists promoted the
criminalisation of the Taliban and conquest of Afghanistan is a good
indication of how liberal Americans support imperial expansion.
Liberal democrats led the fight against communism at home and
abroad. Liberals and conservatives equally support the US empire,
whose name they dare not speak in public. The empire will not be
undone until its reality and costs become visible to Americans who
might think about dismantling it, if they could only see it. Until
empire is on the public agenda in America, it can never be
effectively criticised or made an object of basic policy change.
Effective challenges will not appear on the battlefield, let alone
among the rubble of suicide bombers; they will begin in newspapers,
magazines, books, schools, email, blogs, chat rooms, drinking halls,
churches, and dinner parties; then they will move into the streets
and finally into election campaigns.
Americans can eventually imbibe the wisdom of the world and
engage in dialogue with people who experience US empire from the
other side. It is critically important to write books based on
experience outside America to sell in America; to get citizens of
the world and foreign students in America to bear witness in public
to the US empire at work in the world at large; and to organise
programmes for action around the world that make sense in America
yet change the way Americans think. Obstacles to all these critical
endeavours are formidable and mounting under the paranoid national
security regime in America today.