The adolescent empire.

America and the Imperial Idea

The principal foreign policy initiative of the second Clinton administration is the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to include the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary. These old and much-abused nations, having been historically a part of Mitteleuropa or Central Europe and having passed through a forty-year confinement within Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe, now seek to become part of Western Europe or even of the North Atlantic community. In support of this undertaking, there has formed a group of foreign policy leaders and specialists from different NATO countries whose name is, appropriately, the New Atlantic Initiative. In May 1996 they gathered for a conference, the Congress of Prague, in that most ancient and beautiful of Central European capitals.

I had attended and enjoyed the Congress of Prague, both the Congress and the Prague parts, and I was now sitting in the late afternoon of a fine spring day on a bench in the main square of another ancient and beautiful Bohemian town, Kutna Hora, some fifty kilometers east of the Czech capital.

Kutna Hora is now small, but it still has within it a splendid ensemble of Renaissance and baroque buildings, monuments to the time when its vast silver mines provided the financial basis, not only for magnificent churches, monasteries, palaces, and the town square in which I was sitting, but for an entire empire, that of the Habsburgs. The Habsburgs were the first to believe that the master of Bohemia was the master of Europe, and the silver mines of Kutna Hora were a big part of the reason. The Habsburg Empire fought and won many battles to keep the town and its mines in its domain, and it succeeded in doing so right down until 1918.

But in the twentieth century, Kutna Hora experienced the rule of two other empires, that of Nazi Germany, when the town found itself in the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, and that of the Soviet Union, when it found itself in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Needless to say, these empires left no architectural legacies comparable to that of the Habsburgs.

Now, it seemed, a fourth empire, that of America, was about to extend its protection over Kutna Hora and over the Czech Republic in which it now found itself. Indeed, in a sense, the American empire had already extended its "soft power" there with its popular culture. For as the sun dipped beneath the lofty spires and gabled roofs above the old square, I heard the sound of rap music coming from the boom boxes carried by adolescent boys wearing baseball caps and baggy pants.

A Tale of Two Tales

Thus, in the twentieth century, three great empires have been the masters of Bohemia, and now a fourth great power, also perhaps an empire in its own way, is preparing to extend its power - and promising to extend its peace and prosperity - over Bohemia and the other ancient lands of Central Europe. But unlike the earlier empires, the United States is extending its realm with the full concurrence and even urging of the Central European peoples themselves, of whom perhaps the most welcoming are the people of Bohemia. From the perspective of the Central Europeans at this historical moment, and from the perspective of the Americans themselves, American power has nothing in common with empire. There is much to be said for this view, and Americans never cease to say it.

From the perspective of other Europeans on other occasions, however, American power has been the last in a grand parade of empires that have marched through the past half-millennium that constitutes the modern age. This age could be said to have begun with Columbus' discovery of the New World, and it has culminated five centuries later with a New World country - the United States of America - as the world's hegemonic and imperial power. As we will see, there is much to be said for this view too.

The story of American power in international affairs, then, is really a tale of two tales: an American tale, the story of a democratic republic and the steady spread of its universal values; and a European tale, the story of an American empire and the steady spread of its imperial idea.

Americans, of course, have rarely been comfortable with the notion that their role in international affairs might be an imperial one. The United States was born in a war of independence by the American colonies against the British Empire, the greatest empire of the time. It fought a second war of independence, the War of 1812, against that imperial power, and throughout the nineteenth century it thought of itself as the American republic standing up to the European empires, with the British one continuing as the principal threat. Americans saw their successive expansions during the nineteenth century as territorial annexations that were clearly natural - even "manifest destiny" - rather than imperial acquisitions, which made subjects of foreign peoples in far-flung lands. The acquisition of the Philippines (and other Pacific territories) and of Puerto Rico (and other Caribbean territories) during the 1890s was in fact very similar to the overseas acquisitions of the European empires at the time. Most Americans were so uncomfortable with this reality, however, that they soon began to call it something else (the Commonwealth of the Philippines, later followed by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; the quick granting of formal independence to Cuba and Panama).

The rhetoric and even policies of President Woodrow Wilson in the First World War and President Franklin Roosevelt in the Second World War were explicitly anti-colonial in their visions of what the shape of the postwar world should be. This led to ongoing tensions with the allies, Britain and France, who possessed the two largest overseas empires in the world. And although the United States itself acquired more overseas territories in the course of these wars (the Danish West Indies, which became the U.S. Virgin Islands, in the First World War; Micronesia and other Pacific islands in the Second World War), Americans never thought of these acquisitions as part of an empire. Indeed, since these acquisitions cannot fit into any American self-concept, they have almost never thought about them at all.

Finally, in the aftermath of the Second World War and with the advent of the Cold War, American power and presence extended throughout the Free World (especially Western Europe, Northeast Asia, and Latin America), if not the entire globe. That power and presence has extended even farther in the aftermath of the Cold War. Yet at no time during these five decades have either the public officials or the common public in the United States ever referred to their country as an empire or to their role as an imperial one. Even terms that are softer (and more precise), such as hegemony and sphere of influence, have been applied to the United States only by academic specialists in international affairs. The American terms for its international role have been "collective security", "treaty organizations" or alliances, "international institutions", "trade associations", and "the advancement of human rights." If America is an empire, it has to be the least explicit one in history.

It is simple, however, to compose an account of the U.S. role in international affairs that shows its similarity with various European empires. In the past many Europeans, Latin Americans, and East Asians have often done so. At the present time, it is true, many Europeans want the United States to extend its military and economic role into Central and Eastern Europe (the enlargement of NATO and the investment of capital), and discussion about an American empire is impolitic and subdued. Similarly, many Latin American elites currently want the United States to expand its economic role in their region in particular ways (the enlargement of NAFTA and, again, the investment of capital). Here, too, it is currently impolitic to indulge in discussions of "American imperialism" that came so naturally to so many generations of Latin Americans up until about a decade ago.

All this will change with time. There are bound to be disappointments with this or that aspect of the expanded American role in Europe and in Latin America, and this will inevitably generate a revival of discussions about an American empire in those places. While the Chinese, too, are sure to develop their own analyses of the United States in imperial perspective, for the sake of brevity we shall refer to accounts that stress the similarities between the United States and the European empires simply as the European tale.

In this version of the tale, the American experience is not just compared with the overseas and formal empires of Britain, France, and Spain. Comparisons are also made with the informal versions of these overseas empires and with the overland empires of Prussia and Russia. Distinctions and differences that are important in the American tale are far less prominent in the European one. This is the case with the difference between overseas and overland expansion, and between formal and informal rule.

In the European tale, the nineteenth-century overland annexations of the United States (especially the Louisiana Purchase and the southwestern annexations after the Mexican War) were reminiscent of the eighteenth-century overland annexations by Prussia (especially in Poland) and the several-century overland annexations of Russia (again in Poland, but also in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Siberia). On this view, the major difference between the American "Westward Movement" and the German "Drive to the East" is merely one of direction. (Germans and Russians have sometimes added that while they may have exploited the peoples that they conquered, the Americans largely exterminated them.)

More relevant in our time, however, is what the European tale says about the twentieth century. Here, the important idea is that empire can be "informal" as well as "formal", that while there are different kinds and degrees of imperial rule, they are all still variations on an imperial theme. With the European empires, formal rule over colonial peoples was the norm. But some of these empires, most notably the British but also to some extent the French and the Russian, included an "informal empire", that is, less formal rule over a variety of protectorates, client states, and dependencies. These countries were formally independent or autonomous, but really dependent and constrained. One ideal-typical and colorful example was that of the "princely states" of India, with their maharajahs, which existed side by side with British India proper, with formal direct administration by British officials.

While formal rule was the norm and informal rule the exception with the European empires, in the case of the American empire the reverse was true. But the difference is one of degree, not of kind, and both Europeans and Americans have engaged in formal and informal varieties of imperial rule. From a European perspective, there was not much difference in the first half of the twentieth century between, say, British rule over the Federated Malay States, French rule over the monarchies of Indochina (Annam, Cambodia, and Laos), and American rule over the Commonwealth of the Philippines. Nor was there much difference between British rule over its mandates and clients in the Middle East (Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt), French rule over its mandates in the region (Syria and Lebanon), and American rule over its sphere of influence in the Caribbean and Central America (not only during the first half of the twentieth century but also during the second).

The most important similarities between the European and the American empires, however, do not lie in the realm or at the scale of specific dependent territories, even ones as large as a subcontinent (India) or a continent (Latin America). The most important feature of an empire is how it seeks to order not just its own territories but an entire world, to set the standard for a way of life and for the spirit of an age. This is exemplified in the empire's particular vision of politics, economics, culture, and ultimately of such fundamentals as human nature and the meaning of life itself. These together comprise its imperial idea. We shall consider the imperial idea of six great empires, from the Habsburg to the American.

The Habsburg Empire and the Roman Catholic Faith

It was the Roman Empire that first taught Europeans what an empire could and should be. It set the standard and haunted the imagination of Europeans for more than a millennium after its fall. The Roman imperial idea was expressed in the Roman law and the Latin language and was embodied in classical architecture and the Roman family. Long after the power of empire had disappeared, these four features remained as a venerable legacy of the Empire's achievements, as an empire of the mind. But the Roman Empire also lived on in a concrete, institutional way as well, in the form of the Roman Catholic Church, whose structure and offices (including the highest one, the master bridge-builder between the temporal and the spiritual realms or Pontifex Maximus) mirrored those of the Empire. The Roman Catholic Church was a far more real heir to the Roman Empire than its more temporal counterpart and sometime rival, the medieval Holy Roman Empire.

It was wholly natural, then, for the first empire of the modern era, that of the Habsburgs of Austria and Spain, to believe that it was bringing about a long-awaited restoration of the Roman Empire. Indeed, this restored empire would be more complete and more fulfilled than the original, for it would include not just the Old World but also the New, and not just the temporal world but also the spiritual one. The Habsburg Empire was a renaissance empire in a double sense: in its particular era as well as in its imperial idea.

At the center of the Habsburg imperial idea was the Roman Catholic faith. Every major feature of the Empire was an expression of the Roman Catholic conception of the human condition. This can be seen in such disparate areas as government, law, economics, city planning, public architecture, and, in the Spanish realm, even the design of the private home. Human nature was understood to be a complex product of both divine grace and human sin, with human beings capable of both great good and great evil. The good would be nurtured and the evil subdued within a strong governing authority and a strong spiritual authority that worked closely together. At the same time, these authorities allowed local energies to flourish within the universal (catholic as well as Catholic) order. Real local autonomy was contained within formal centralized authority.

In the Habsburg and Catholic vision, the ideal human type was the saint. But as was shown most clearly in the Spanish version, saints might be as varied as the soldier in the perpetual service of the faith (Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits or Soldiers of Christ) or the mystic in perpetual communion with the divine (Saint John of the Cross, Saint Theresa of Avila). More commonly, however, the human ideal was the mature person who had experienced enough of life's challenges, trials, and sorrows to have acquired strength, wisdom, and judgment, and who could now govern and guide others for the common good. Such a person was needed to find the poised balance that was energy within order. And such a degree of maturity could only be reached after many decades of adulthood, probably not until one's fifties, if then.

The British Empire and the Benevolent Monarchy

The British empire is not normally regarded as having anything like a vision of the sort that characterized the Habsburgs. There definitely was some kind of British imperial idea, however, even though its vision was less cohesive, less centralized so to speak, than that of the Habsburgs. In fact, there were several ideas at the center of the British conception of empire. One idea, parallel to the Roman Catholicism of the Habsburgs, was that of Protestant Christianity. This idea had a remarkably long run, from the time of Elizabeth I (as the "Virgin Queen", a Protestant counterpart to the Catholics' Virgin Mary) to the time of Victoria, with its numerous and active missionary societies. But the Protestant faith in the British Empire was less pervasive and comprehensive than the Roman Catholic faith was in the Habsburg one. Another idea was that of the British (or English) nation (or, for a while, race), which was parallel to the central idea of the French Empire. But the British nation really consisted of a complicated mixture of English, Scottish, and Welsh nations, gathered together in a United Kingdom, rather than in an unambiguous nation-state like that of the French. This idea, too, could not be truly pervasive and comprehensive, especially for an empire whose peoples were so disparate and so far-flung.

Two other interrelated ideas were more distinctive to the British conception. One was the idea of the trading empire. Trade might seem to some a rather mundane source for imperial legitimation, but for sixteenth-century Britain it meant the romance of merchant-adventurers releasing vital energies, effecting dramatic transformations, and bringing forth exotic goods from the far corners of the earth. In the nineteenth century, the idea of trade became even grander when it was expanded into the ideology of Free Trade. For almost nine decades (from the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 to the return of colonial tariffs or "imperial preference" in 1932) the British thought of their empire as the main force for spreading and maintaining freedom of trade, for the betterment of all.

Closely related to this was the idea of the maritime empire. Naval power - "rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves" - was at the center of the British imperial idea and provided much of its romance. The two-power standard (the Royal Navy should be stronger than the next two navies combined) was to demonstrate British naval, and imperial, superiority to all. The British Empire could be "an empire upon which the sun never sets" because it depended upon those "storm-tossed ships" all around the globe.

But the most central of the ideas of the British conception of empire was that of the British monarchy. The soul of the British Empire was loyal service to King (or Queen) and Country. Much of the Empire's legitimacy derived from the legitimacy of its monarchy, which was seen as a benevolent one, and from the loyalty of the civil and military officers who served it. The American war of independence, which replaced a monarchy with a republic, helped make the remaining loyal parts of the Empire even more attached to the monarchy; the more loyalist, the more royalist. The clearest example was English-speaking Canada, largely founded by refugees or emigres from the American revolution, who called themselves the United Empire Loyalists.

The centrality of the monarchy to the Empire was recognized and reinforced by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli when he had Queen Victoria become Empress of India and thus the "Queen-Empress." In later years, there followed a succession of grand and stirring ceremonies that gathered together the many-splendored princes, sultans, and even kings from all the far-flung lands that were under the benevolent rule of the British imperial crown. The climax came with Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, undoubtedly the grandest spectacle staged in the nineteenth century anywhere in the world.

For the British Empire, the ideal human type was the soldier, later joined by the civil administrator, in the service of the Crown. The virtues upheld in this ideal were loyalty, duty, honesty (from honor), integrity, common sense, and good judgment. These qualities could only be learned through experience, and therefore they normally were found only in mature men. But this British ideal of maturity could be reached at an earlier age than that of the Habsburgs, probably in one's forties.

The French Empire and the Rational Nation-State

The French empire was not as far-flung or as long-lasting as the Habsburg and the British ones. For more than a century (1830s-1950s), however, it was the second largest empire in the world. The center of the French imperial idea was the French nation-state, organized according to the principles of reason (or Reason). By its nature, this idea would seem to be less universal than that of the Habsburgs (less catholic, more national) or even than that of the British (less global, more national). On the other hand, Reason was usually seen as being even more universal than Catholicism. The French had to deal continually with the tension between the national claims of France and the universal claims of Reason.

The French imperial idea was even more constrained by the fact that France was so clearly the quintessential nation-state. In addition, the French Empire, more than the Habsburg and the British, was characterized by formal rule and by formal distinctions between who was in and who was out. The French claims to universalism rested upon the remarkable notion that, because French national culture was the most classical, logical, and rational of cultures, it had universal validity and appeal. In theory human nature was perfectible, and in practice the human nature of an elite few was perfectible through the reason expressed, and the education organized, by the French state.

For the French Empire, the ideal human type was the man of action (or of affairs) in the service of Reason. The human ideal was a mature man who had lived and reasoned long enough to become an effective and efficient administrator of others for the public good. But while the British ideal had to be reached through experience, the French ideal could be achieved through education. Thus, this French ideal of maturity could be attained at an earlier age than that of the Habsburgs or even the British, probably as early as one's thirties.

The Nazi Empire and Racial Identity

The rule of Nazi Germany over other peoples was so brief, so extreme, and so perverse that it hardly deserves to be called an empire - which connotes at least some degree of order and durability - at all. However, Germany's central place in Central Europe and certain elements of continuity between the Second Reich (reich is the German term for empire) of Kaiser Wilhelm and the Third Reich of the Nazis make this case an interesting story in its own right. In addition, within the Nazi empire the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia was a central domain.

As is well recognized, Germany's national unification in 1871 was peculiar: it not only came late, but it also remained incomplete. At that time virtually all of the British people were in Britain or, when elsewhere (for example, Canada, Australia), under British rule. Similarly, virtually all of the French people were in France (the exceptions being Belgium, some Swiss cantons, and Quebec).

The situation of the German people was quite different. The political circumstances of German unification had meant that Germans in the Habsburg monarchy, who were the dominant or imperial people in its Austrian half, could not be included in the new German state. This would not have been a problem for the Germans in Austria if they could have continued to rule. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, this was becoming problematic. The German proportion of the empire's population was declining, while democratic suffrage was increasing. The conjunction of the demographic trend with the democratic one made it clear that the Germans could become merely one of several minorities in what had been their own empire. This sense of a steady and relentless decline in their proportion of the population and in their political and social position gave rise in the German communities of the Habsburg monarchy to a "politics of cultural despair." The consequence was an acute sense of cultural identity, which, given the reigning intellectual ideas of the time, became an acute sense of racial identity. The consciousness of German cultural and racial identity was much more intense in Austria-Hungary - that is, outside of Germany - than it was in Germany itself. Unfortunately, this was the atmosphere in which Adolf Hitler came of age.

In later decades, other imperial peoples underwent their own demographic and democratic transitions and declines, issuing in their own politics of cultural despair. The one million French in Algeria and the one million British in Northern Ireland are among the best known examples. But the twelve million Germans in the Habsburg monarchy presented a problem of vastly greater magnitude. With the collapse of the monarchy in 1918, the problem became a disaster.

The peace settlement after the First World War created a fatal dynamic toward a murderous empire. Given Germany's central place in Europe's geography and its leading place in Europe's economy, it was inevitable that German power would eventually revive. Given the parceling-up of the non-European world between the victorious empires of Britain and France, if a powerful Germany sought to create its own empire, it would have to do so within Europe itself. Given the new but weak states between Germany and Russia (which had now become the Soviet Union), it was inevitable that Germany would create this empire in the East. Finally, given the fact that two of these new states (Czechoslovakia and Poland) together ruled five million Germans, who would always be an exposed and vulnerable minority in these states, it was inevitable that any German empire would have as a central project, a fixed idea, the protection, preservation, and eventual inclusion of these German minorities. The majority of these Germans, more than three million, were concentrated in Bohemia alone.

The protection and preservation of a once-dominant and now-subordinate minority is a difficult task, and the methods used will normally be difficult as well, at minimum institutionalized discrimination and repression (as the white population in the American South - actually a demographic majority - believed for a century after the Civil War). But from 1939 to 1945, the German empire in East-Central Europe combined the power of the revived German state with the ideology of racial identity, which had sprung from the politics of cultural despair of Austria-Hungary. This ideology of racial identity was the imperial idea of Nazi Germany. For the Nazi empire, the ideal human type was the SS officer in the service of the German Volk and the Aryan race. The virtues upheld in this ideal were courage, strength, endurance, heroism, and loyalty (the SS motto was "loyalty is my honor"). These are not the distinguishing qualities found in a mature man. Indeed, they are most likely to be found in a young man in his physical prime, that is, in his twenties.

The Soviet Empire and Industrial Growth

The soviet, or Russian, empire shared some important qualities with the Nazi, or German, one. They both sought to rule the same territory, East-Central Europe. They both sought to legitimize their rule with a secular ideology.

The fundamental dynamics of the German and the Russian empires were different, however. There were no significant Russian minorities in East-Central Europe (although there were some further east, in Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine). It was not the peoples of East-Central Europe who represented a threat to the Russians; it was the geography. Poland in particular had been the springboard for repeated invasions of Russia from the west (Napoleonic France, Wilhelmine Germany, Nazi Germany, and even Poland itself in 1920). From the Russian perspective, the real "Polish corridor" went from west to east and was Poland itself. Other countries in East-Central Europe (Hungary and Romania) also had served as a base for invasions. At the end of the Second World War, Stalin insisted upon converting East-Central Europe into a vast buffer zone between the Soviet Union and the West, one that would be ruled (in the words of the Yalta agreement) by "governments friendly to the Soviet Union." For the next four decades, the central project of the Soviet empire was the protection and preservation of this buffer zone. No other European empire had ever had at its core quite this kind of problem and project.

The Soviet empire was unique in another way. In almost every empire, and certainly in the other five that we are discussing, the imperial people have been economically and, yes, culturally more advanced than the subordinate ones. The Russian empire was one of those rare and perverse cases where the imperial people were less advanced than those that were subordinate. The Russians combined superior power with inferior culture. This made their empire particularly loathsome to East-Central Europeans.

The Russians therefore had an especially difficult task in legitimizing their empire with a higher idea. Of course, they initially made a big effort to have that imperial idea be Marxist ideology, but this was soon replaced in practice with the claim that Soviet communism and the Soviet development model were superior in providing for economic growth. By the early 1980s, however, this particular imperial idea clearly had been proven false, and it now actually delegitimized the empire and helped to bring about its sudden fall.

What was the ideal human type of the Soviet imperial idea? In the Stalinist era, it was of course "the new Soviet man", the industrial worker whose virtues were strength, endurance, loyalty, and, in time of war, heroism. Like those of the SS man, these were the virtues of a young man in his twenties. But in the later decades of the Soviet empire this young Soviet man grew older, while not acquiring any new virtues or maturity. Indeed, it soon became clear that in the Soviet imperial idea there was no place for any ideal human type, but only different kinds of utterly prosaic, mundane, and boring human beings.

Young Empire, Mature Americans

During and after the Second World War, American power and presence - the American empire of the European tale - underwent a great leap outward from the Western Hemisphere to the world itself, or at least to Western Europe and Northeast Asia. "Present at the creation" of this new, world-spanning empire was that extraordinary generation of "wise men" - especially George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and George Kennan - and three successive (and successful) presidents - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Of course at the time not everyone acknowledged that these leaders were especially "wise." Indeed, even among themselves they occasionally belittled each other. The two who were generally held in the widest and highest regard, Marshall and Eisenhower, had the advantage of having been the leading American soldiers of the Second World War, respectively "the architect of victory" and "the liberator of Europe." Seen from the perspective of fifty years later, however, these men do seem to be not only wise, but extraordinarily so. They exemplify a maturity of experience, understanding, character, and judgment that has been achieved only rarely in American history, and indeed only rarely in the history of the world.

Why do these men seem so mature? Part of this impression, of course, may be an optical illusion. Because they happened to be in positions of leadership or high office during a great war in which their country was victorious, they naturally seem to have commanding personalities and sound judgment. If Napoleon had ended up a victor rather than a loser, he probably would appear to be a wise man too.

But some other things were also at work. The wise men of the postwar decade had not just been leaders during the challenges of the Second World War. They and their generation had experienced directly three successive periods of crisis and challenge that together had filled most of their adult years - the First World War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. Some had experienced personal affliction or tragedy as well, most obviously Roosevelt but also Marshall and Eisenhower.

In addition, most of these American leaders had extensive, even intimate, experience with Europe. In this they had experienced vicariously some of the triumphs and tragedies of several generations of old nations, not just those of their own generation of Americans. This kind of understanding has been perfectly expressed in the writings of George Kennan. No American in public affairs or in academic life has ever demonstrated a more European sensibility, and wise and mature understanding, than Kennan has in his memoirs and diaries.

The wise men at the center of the new American empire were joined by comparable wise men in old nation-states that had become the new American allies. During the postwar decade, unusually mature and seasoned men served as the leaders of West Germany (Konrad Adenauer), Italy (Alcide de Gasperi), and Japan (Shigeru Yoshida). Reaching their countries' highest office a decade after the Second World War, these leaders actually had been born a generation before Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo, the men who had led their countries into disaster during the war. The wartime leaders had been radicals, albeit radicals of the right; their successors, who were a generation older in age as well as a decade later in leadership, were true conservatives. The political leadership in Britain and in France during the postwar era was more varied. However, that seasoned British conservative, Winston Churchill, returned to power during 1951-55, and his French counterpart, Charles de Gaulle, followed soon after (1958-69).

In its first generation, then, an extraordinary group of wise men presided over the center of the American empire, designed its structures, composed its policies, and governed its energies. A similarly extraordinary group of wise men presided over the major dominions of the empire and adapted and applied the imperial policies to the local realities of their own nations.

During the next two generations, the American empire brought peace and prosperity to its major dominions, the industrial nations of Western Europe and Northeast Asia (first Japan and later South Korea and Taiwan). The benefits of peace and prosperity were less evident in other regions of the empire, particularly Latin America, but even there they were enjoyed by the local elites.

Peace and protectorates. The long peace in Western Europe was due in part to the Cold War in Central Europe. The potential for Soviet aggression made manifest the need for American protection. The United States provided this with the security guarantees of NATO, which can be seen as an unusually sophisticated system of military protectorates (something that President de Gaulle not only saw but remarked upon).

Many empires have included a form of military dependency that went under the name protectorate. The British Empire was especially rich in these (the princely states of India, the Malay States, and a whole array of dependencies in Africa and the Persian Gulf), but the French Empire included such protectorates too (formally Annam, Cambodia, Laos, Morocco, and Tunisia). In most empires, the protectorates were more like protection rackets, with the imperial power really providing protection against itself. In the American empire, however, the protectorates of Western Europe and Northeast Asia were protected from a threat of foreign aggression, be it from the Soviet Union or from communist China, that both the protectorates and the imperial power perceived and about which they largely agreed. Where the threat of foreign aggression was less obvious, as in Latin America and in the Middle East, American military protection was less meaningful. The U.S. security pacts in these regions (the Rio Pact in Latin America, the short-lived Baghdad Pact in the Middle East) were perceived by substantial parts of the local populations as being protectorates or even protection rackets in the conventional imperial (or imperialist) sense. Following this logic, it would seem that the end, or at least radical decline, of the foreign (that is, Russian) threat to Europe will eventually erode the legitimacy and stability of the American system of protectorates.

But it is not quite as simple as that. The long peace in Western Europe was also due to the fact that the American empire seemed to have provided the final solution to the German question. From 1871 to 1945, unified Germany, which normally was both the greatest economic and the greatest military power on the Continent, presented an intractable problem for its neighbors. After 1945, however, Germany was no longer the central military power in Europe but was divided down the middle of Central Europe by the two superpowers on either side of Europe. (As Soviet Marshall Georgi Zhukov said to President Eisenhower in 1955, "You have your Germany, and we have ours. It is better that way.") Further, Germany was no longer the leading economic power in Europe, America was. Finally, German minorities were no longer in a prominent but vulnerable position scattered around East-Central Europe. Rather, as a result of the great and terrible refugee flights of 1945, they were now crammed into Germany itself (mostly West Germany, where they were safely bottled-up within a stable democratic state tightly integrated into the American alliance system).

Prosperity and preferences. The long prosperity in Western Europe was largely due to the open international economy organized by the United States. The memory of the Great Depression made manifest the need for American economic leadership. The United States provided this with the economic aid of the European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan), the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. Together, these institutions can be seen as an unusually sophisticated system of economic organization from an imperial center.

All empires have included some form of economic dependency. The British called theirs imperial preference, while the French termed theirs the colonial pact. In most cases, imperial preference and colonial pacts were really the preference of the imperial power for itself, at the expense of the colonial peoples; most familiar are the arrangements for the imperial powers to be the manufacturer of industrial goods, while the colonial peoples remained the providers of agricultural ones.

In the American empire, however, the preference of the imperial power was for its economic dependencies to reconstruct rapidly their old industries and even to construct new ones. As it turned out, for four decades the chief beneficiaries of the American system of open economies - even more so than America itself - were the industries of the major dominions of the American empire, the nations of Western Europe and Northeast Asia.

This is no longer the case in the 1990s. The very prosperity of these major dominions has lifted them onto the levels of high-wage, even post-industrial economies, and their industries have become less competitive in the world market. With their unemployment rates ranging from 10-15 percent, the West European nations in particular are no longer confident that they benefit from the open global economy.

The Future Bases for Imperial Legitimacy

What, then, will be the bases for the American empire's legitimacy in the future? We shall consider three elements that have often been central to an imperial idea - peace, prosperity, and culture.

For a long time, the Roman Empire provided all three of these elements, and this was the reason for its enduring legitimacy. The Habsburg Empire was stronger in prosperity than in peace, and stronger still in its pervasive culture. The British Empire, like the Roman, provided all three elements during "the long peace" of "the long nineteenth century." The French Empire, like the Habsburg, was stronger in prosperity than in peace and stronger still in its cultural prestige. In contrast, the short-lived Nazi empire provided almost nothing of these three elements, and the Soviet empire little more. The Nazis sought their legitimacy in a battle for racial superiority, which they lost. The Soviets sought their legitimacy in a battle for economic growth, which they also lost.

As we have seen, the American empire has been largely successful in providing peace and prosperity. These, accordingly, have been the real and central components of the American imperial idea. What of their future?

The peace component should continue to have a great deal of strength. The contemporary Russian threat is obviously only a shadow of the old Soviet one. But just as obviously, it looms large enough in the strategic mind of virtually every country in Central and Eastern Europe for it to wish to become a member of NATO. The Russian threat can arise from too little strength (that is, so much disorder that criminal organizations and military units are out of control) as well as from too much, as with the old Soviet Union. But one way or another, the specter of Russia will continue to haunt at least the eastern half of Europe.

Although there now seems to be a greater potential for a Chinese threat to neighbors than a Russian one, the Chinese threat does not loom large in the strategic mind of the countries of East and Southeast Asia in the same way that the Russian threat looms in the strategic mind of those of Central and Eastern Europe. The reasons for the difference are many and complex, but a principal one is that the Soviets actually occupied their neighbors, while the Chinese have not. Nevertheless, the potential for a Chinese threat is there, and thus the basis for a new U.S. containment policy, and with it a new system of American security guarantees and military protectorates. A policy of containment toward a weak and disordered Russia, and a second policy of containment toward a growing and annoyed China, are the likely result. These particular policies probably are not the best ones for the United States to follow toward these two difficult nations. They are certainly not the most discerning and subtle. Together, however, the two containment policies would provide a strong basis for the legitimization and continuation of an American system of military protectorates in Europe and in Asia, which are for America the most important regions in the world other than North America itself.

The prosperity component is more problematic. As we have noted, the very prosperity of major dominions of the American empire, particularly in Western Europe, has lifted them onto the levels of high-wage, even post-industrial economies. Now, the most competitive economies in low-tech and mid-tech industries are the newly industrial countries of East Asia, especially China but also India, Indonesia, and Malaysia. These are now the chief beneficiaries of the American system of open economies. Yet, none of these countries has been a formal member of an American system of military protectorates, and China was actually a target of that system. Similarly, few of these nations have embraced the full principles and practices of the American system of open economies. Again, China has been most direct in rejecting them. In short, several of the major current beneficiaries of the American empire have not been socialized into its institutions and norms. Indeed, the largest beneficiary, China, has been socialized into - as well as socialist in - confronting them.

It is the cultural component of the American imperial idea that is now coming to the fore. While the peace component based upon military protection is becoming more ambiguous and the prosperity component based upon open economies is becoming more dubious, the "soft power" component of popular entertainment based upon global media is becoming more pervasive.

It is a cliche that American popular culture is something different from the pervasive cultures of many of the empires of the past. The cultures that these earlier empires put forward to legitimize and embellish their rule were both pervasive and elevating. Spanish painting, Austrian music, baroque architecture, British literature, and French elegance were all the expressions of a high culture, as were the public buildings and urban design in the Habsburg, British, and French Empires. More fundamentally, as we have seen, the ideal human types of these empires provided elevated and elevating models, mature persons of admirable virtues. It is no accident that high culture has never been a major component of the American imperial idea. Insofar as an American high culture even existed, it was lower than its European counterpart in every cultural genre. What might be called the "American empire style" of art (especially that of the late 1940s to early 1960s) was the always ugly and now discarded abstract expressionism. Its counterpart in architecture was the always banal and now tiresome international style, or modernism. The real culture of the American empire, of course, has been what we call popular culture (although it is often forgotten that the high cultures of the earlier empires were rather popular too).

At the beginning of the American empire, however, the ideal human type was still a mature person of admirable virtues, as exemplified by its "wise men." Two generations later, the ideal human type of the American empire is the popular entertainer or sports star. These receive its highest public renown and its highest monetary rewards. The qualifies ("virtues" don't even come to mind) needed to be a successful entertainer or sports star are inherent talent, self-centeredness, energy, and aggressiveness. As with the SS officer and the new Soviet man, these are not the distinguishing qualities of a mature person. Indeed, those who have them don't even have to wait until their twenties to acquire them; they are already present in one's teens.

In short, the ideal human type of the American imperial idea is the adolescent. It is no accident that adults in America are increasingly adopting the qualities of adolescents - particularly self-centeredness and aggressiveness - in such professions as business, politics, law, and academia. It is also no accident that the most pervasive rule of American styles, fads, and fashions is found among the adolescents of the world.

It has always been the nature of adolescents to reject adults and to reject authority. What is new is for adults in authoritative positions in American institutions (academia, media, and politics) to teach adolescents to reject all adults and authorities (family, church, and law) other than themselves. It is also new for adults occupying authoritative positions in the American empire to teach the adolescents of the world to reject all adults and authorities (traditions, religions, and nations) other than themselves. Five decades after the wise men of the American empire, its current leaders act as if they were five decades younger.

The peace of the American empire has rested upon its military, and its prosperity has rested upon its productivity. An effective military and a productive economy both require a minimum of self-discipline and deference to authority. In recent years, these qualities have been relentlessly attacked and undermined by the soft power of the American empire. Daniel Bell once wrote of "the cultural contradictions of capitalism" - that the very success of capitalist production produces an excess of popular consumption, which in turn undermines capitalist production. This is paralleled in the cultural contradictions of the American imperial idea, where the peace and prosperity of the empire produce a self-centeredness and self-indulgence that in turn undermine it. The American empire is becoming an empire of the adolescents, by the adolescents, and for the adolescents. But in the end - in its erratics, its entertainments, and its emptiness - an adolescent empire will be no empire at all.

James Kurth is professor of political science at Swarthmore College.