Discourses of empire: the US ‘empire’, globalisation and international relations

Abstract

The contemporary normalisation of discussing United States foreign policy in terms of imperialism and empire is of great interest to all scholars of international relations, and the purpose of the present article is to analyse this trend in terms of the broader context of the role of empire in international relations theorising. There is a deeper logic to the recognition of a truly imperial republic than just contemporary foreign policy, as the US as empire seems to convey a richer understanding and a deeper resonance of America's contemporary role. What is also striking are the ties between empire and globalisation, which are increasingly being recognised. The use of imperial language as a more general discourse questions the dominant assumptions in international relations concerning the state of anarchy in the international system, without abandoning the dynamics of power and coercion that are part and parcel of imperial relationships, which can help to convey a richer sense of the dynamics of the international realm.

Notes

Bryan Mabee is Senior Lecturer in international relations at Oxford Brookes University, Department of Politics and international relations, Oxford, OX3 0BP, UK. Email: [email protected]

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Standing Group on International Relations Conference, The Hague, Netherlands, 9–11 September 2004. I would like to thank the participants and organisers at the panel Empire versus global governance for their questions and comments.

See A Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002; N Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, London: Penguin, 2004; M Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation‐building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, London: Vintage, 2003.

For an overview see M Cox, ‘The empire's back in town: or America's imperial temptation—again’, Millennium, 23(1), 2003, pp 1–27. See also the debate on Cox's article in Security Dialogue, 35(2), 2004, pp 227–261.

M Cox, ‘Empire by denial? Debating US power’, Security Dialogue, 35(2), 2004, p 230.

N Ferguson, ‘Welcome to the new imperialism’, The Guardian, 31 October 2001, quoted in A Callinicos, The New Mandarins of American Power: The Bush Administration's Plans for the World, Cambridge: Polity, 2004, p 99.

For one influential, if highly disputed, take on this see M Hardt & A Negri, Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

The benefits of adding the ‘imperial’ into International Relations have been well analysed by Barkawi and Laffey, and this article has drawn on a number of their insights. See T Barkawi & M Laffey, ‘Retrieving the imperial: empire and international relations’, Millennium, 31(1), 2002, pp 109–127; and T Barkawi & M Laffey, ‘The imperial peace: democracy, force and globalisation’, European Journal of International Relations, 5, 1999, pp 403–434.

As President Bush stated, ‘America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish. We wish for others only what we wish for ourselves—safety from violence, the rewards of liberty, and the hope for a better life’. GW Bush, ‘Remarks by the President at 2002 graduation exercise of the United States Military Academy’, 1 June 2002.

The revisionist literature is well represented by W Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing, 1959; and G Kolko & J Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945–1954, New York: Harper and Row, 1972. For some of the problems with this scholarship, and more generally with American Cold War historiography, see G Lundestad, ‘Moralism, presentism, exceptionalism, provincialism and other extravagances in American writings on the early Cold War years’, in G Lundestad, The American ‘Empire’, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp 11–29.

For good overviews see Cox, ‘The empire's back in town’; and Ferguson, Colossus, pp 3–7. For an account of American foreign policy‐makers and thinkers on empire, see E Eakin, ‘All Roads lead to DC’, New York Times, 2 April 2002, Section 4, p 4; D Morgan, ‘A Debate over US ‘empire’ builds in unexpected circles’, Washington Post, 10 August 2003, AO3.

IH Daalder & JM Lindsey, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy, Washington: Brookings, 2003, pp 46–47; Callinicos, New Mandarins.

For an excellent overview of this movement and its influence on the Bush administration's foreign policy, see S Halper & J Clarke, America Alone, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004.

For examples of conservative advocates of US empire, see R Haass, ‘Imperial America’, paper presented at the Atlanta Conference, 11 November 2000; D Simes, ‘America's imperial dilemma’, Foreign Affairs, 82(6), 2003, pp 91–102; M Boot, ‘The case for American empire’, Weekly Standard, 15 October 2001, 7(5), available at http://www.weeklystandard.com. For others that share similar policies but do not use ‘empire’ directly to describe it, see W Kristol & R Kagan, ‘Towards a neo‐Reaganite foreign policy’, Foreign Affairs, 75(4), 1996, pp 18–32; Project for the New American Century, ‘Statement of principles’, available online at www.newamericancentury.org; and C Krauthammer, ‘The unipolar era’, in AJ Bacevich (ed) The Imperial Tense, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003.

Quoted in IH Daalder & JM Lindsey, ‘American empire: not “if” but “what kind”,’ New York Times, 10 May 2003, B9.

On this debate, though not from the perspective of empire, see NJ Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

See R Cooper, ‘Why we still need empires’, The Observer, 7 April 2002; Ignatieff, Empire Lite; S Mallaby, ‘The reluctant imperialist: terrorism, failed states and the case for American empire’, Foreign Affairs, 81(2), 2002, pp 2–9; D Rieff, ‘Liberal imperialism’, in AJ Bacevich (ed) The Imperial Tense, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003.

Cooper, ‘Why we still need empires’, p 27.

For representative writings see Callinicos, New Mandarins; D Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; M Hudson, Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance, London: Pluto Press, 2003.

It is perhaps not surprising that many recent Marxist analyses have been rather complimentary of realist and neo‐realist readings of the international system. For example see Callinicos, New Mandarins; P Gowan, ‘A calculus of power’, New Left Review, 16, July/August 2002, pp 47–67.

Harvey, New Imperialism, p 85.

The former is well represented by Bacevich, American Empire; the latter by M Mann, Incoherent Empire, London: Verso, 2003. There is also a growing number of conservative‐realist critics of the emerging US empire, who believe that an imperial strategy is not in America's interest, and detrimental to America's future, in that the new policies will almost certainly foment a counter‐hegemonic response. As Layne summarises, ‘One thing is certain: unless the call for the United States to exercise self‐imposed grand‐strategic restraint is heeded, the rest of the world will act to impose that constraint on Washington’. C Layne, ‘The cost of empire,’ American Conservative, 6 October 2003, available online at http:// amconmag.com/10.06.03/cover.html. Also see Bacevich, American Empire; Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, ‘Statement of principles’, available online at http://www.realisticforeignpolicy.org, which echoes Layne's sentiment and is signed by a number of prominent realist and neo‐realist International Relations scholars.

Mann, Incoherent Empire, p 13.

See W Clark, ‘America's virtual empire’, Washington Monthly, November, 2003; CS Maier, ‘An American empire’, Harvard Magazine, 105(2), 2002, pp 28–31; Mann, Incoherent Empire, introduction. Harvey also makes this distinction in his analysis: see Harvey, New Imperialism, chapter two.

Maier, ‘An American empire’, p 28. For a more in‐depth analysis, see CS Maier, ‘Alliance and autonomy: European identity and US foreign policy objectives in the Truman years’, in MJ Lacey (ed) The Truman Presidency, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

GJ Ikenberry, ‘Illusions of empire: defining the new American order’, Foreign Affairs, 83(2), 2004, p 146.

GJ Ikenberry, ‘America's imperial ambition’, Foreign Affairs, 81(5), 2002, p 60.

Ikenberry, ‘America's imperial ambition’, pp 56–59; I Eland, ‘The empire strikes out: the “New Imperialism” and its fatal flaws’, Policy Analysis, 459, 2002, pp 1–27; A Lieven, ‘A trap of their own making’, London Review of Books, 25(9), 2003, pp 17–19; Mann, Incoherent Empire.

Clark, ‘America's virtual empire’; Mann, Incoherent Empire, chapter one.

Clark, ‘America's virtual empire’; JS Nye, The Paradox of American Power, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Bacevich, American Empire; Ferguson, Colossus; Williams, Tragedy of American Diplomacy.

The roots of the Bush foreign policy approach are well‐documented in Daalder & Lindsey, America Unbound; Halper & Clarke, America Alone.

The founding document of the Bush strategy can be seen in the 2002 National Security Strategy. For a good overview, see Daalder & Lindsey, American Unbound, chapter eight.

Cox, ‘The empire's back in town’, p 5.

See Cox, ‘The empire's back in town’, pp 8–10. For one take on the issue of exceptionalism, see SM Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double‐edged Sword, New York: Norton, 1997.

Ferguson refers to the US as the ‘anti‐imperialist imperialist’. Ferguson, Colossus, chapter two.

See Pagden's discussion of the British and Dutch empires in A Pagden, People and Empires, London: Phoenix Press, 2002, chapter 7. Also important along these lines is D Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Purdy distinguishes between a ‘strong imperialism’, based on the presumed moral superiority of a people, and a ‘weak imperialism’, that is based on the presumed moral superiority of a state. J Purdy, ‘Liberal empire: assessing the arguments’, Ethics and International Affairs, 7(2), 2003, p 35.

For both a critical and positive account of the reasoning for the Iraq war, see respectively, Mann, Incoherent Empire, chapter 8; C Hitchens, Regime Change, London: Penguin, 2003.

R Saull, ‘On the “new” American “empire” ’, Security Dialogue, 35(2), 2004, p 250.

For a good overview, see D Held et al, Global Transformations, Cambridge: Polity, 1999, introduction.

A Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity, 1990, p 64.

See the overview in AG Hopkins, ‘The history of globalization—and the globalization of history’, in AG Hopkins (ed) Globalization and World History, London: Pimlico, 2002, pp 11–46. More recent historical work that makes an explicit connection can be found in PJ Cain & AG Hopkins, British Imperialism 1688–2000, Harlow: Pearson, 2002; N Ferguson, Empire, London: Penguin, 2003; and the contributions to Hopkins, Globalization and World History. Also see the recent collection on the ‘British Atlantic world’: D Armitage & MJ Braddick (eds) The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800, London: Palgrave, 2002. This is also an overall theme in Braudel's work; see, for example, F Braudel, The Perspective of the World, Civilization and Capitalism, Fifteenth–Eighteenth Century, Vol. 3, London: Phoenix Press, 2002; For an International Relations perspective, see B Buzan & R Little, International Systems in World History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; and the contributions to the special issue of Review of International Studies on ‘Empires, systems and states’: Review of International Studies, 27, 2001.

See Hopkins, Globalization and World History.

P Krugman, ‘The localization of the world economy’, in P Krugman, Pop Internationalism, Cambridge: MIT Press, p 207. See additionally, B Eichengreen, Globalising Capital: A History of the International Monetary System, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996, chapter 2; P Hirst & G Thompson, Globalization in Question, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996, chapter 2; K O'Rourke & JG Williamson, Globalization and History: The Evolution of the Nineteenth‐Century Atlantic World Economy, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999; J Thomson & SD Krasner, ‘Global transactions and the consolidation of sovereignty’, in EO Czempiel & JN Rosenau (eds) Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches to World Politics for the 1990s, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989, pp 195–219.

Hirst & Thompson, Globalization in Question, p 49.

Ferguson, Empire; Ferguson, Colossus, pp 186–193.

This connection will be discussed in more detail below.

J Gallagher & R Robinson, ‘The imperialism of free trade’, Economic History Review, 1, 1953, pp 1–25.

Again, Ferguson has noted the parallels with Britain. See Ferguson, Colossus, pp 20–21.

See I Clark, Globalization and International Relations Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999; Held et al, Global Transformations; JN Rosenau, Along the Domestic‐Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997; JA Scholte, Globalization: A Critical Introduction, London: Macmillan, 2000.

MW Doyle, Empires, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986, p 35.

Doyle, Empires, chapter 6.

For overviews, see DB Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires 1415–1980, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000; D Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals from the Sixteenth Century to the Present, London: Pimlico, 2003.

Barkawi & Laffey, ‘The imperial peace’, p 415. For an overview of the use of force in European empires, see VG Kiernan, European Empires from Conquest to Collapse, Fontana, 1982.

M Shaw, Theory of the Global State: Globality as an Unfinished Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p 104.

Quoted in Pagden, People and Empires, p 104.

EA Cohen, ‘History and the hyperpower’, Foreign Affairs, 83(4), 2004, p 54.

Barkawi & Laffey, ‘Retrieving the Imperial’, p 111. Also see L Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1500–1850, London: Pimlico, 2003.

See, for example, PF Diehl (ed) The Politics of Global Governance, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001; RB Hall & TJ Biersteker (eds) The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; D Held & A McGrew (eds) Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance, Cambridge: Polity, 2002; T Risse‐Kappen (ed) Bringing Transnational Relations Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; J Rosenau & EO Czempiel (eds) Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992; R Wilkinson & S Hughes (eds) Global Governance: Critical Perspectives, London: Routledge, 2002.

RO Keohane, ‘Introduction: from interdependence and institutions to globalization and governance’, in R O Keohane, Power and Governance in a Partly Globalized World, London: Routledge, 2002, p 15.

GJ Ikenberry, ‘Institutions, strategic restraint and the persistence of American postwar order’, International Security, 23, 1998, p 65. Also see B Cumings, ‘Still the American century’, Review of International Studies, 25, Special Issues, 1999, pp 285–290.

For one particularly enthusiastic example, see T Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, New York: Anchor Books, 2000.

Held et al, Global Transformations, p 28.

This is the argument of Rosenberg: J Rosenberg, The Follies of Globalisation Theory, London: Verso, 2000, pp 27–43. For other recent critiques, see Barkawi & Laffey, ‘Retrieving the imperial’; SD Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999; SD Krasner, ‘Rethinking the sovereign state model’, Review of International Studies, 27, Special Issue, 2001, pp 17–42; A Osiander, ‘Sovereignty, international relations and the Westphalian myth’, International Organization, 55(2) 2001, pp 251–287; J Rosenberg, The Empire of Civil Society, London: Verso, 1995, chapter 5; B Teschke, The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations, London: Verso, 2002.

The classic statement of this is K Waltz, Theory of International Politics, Boston: Addison‐Wesley, 1979.

See the analysis by Barkawi & Laffey, and the ensuing debate: Barkawi & Laffey, ‘Retrieving the imperial’; A Callinicos, ‘The actuality of imperialism’, Millennium, 31(2), 2002, pp 319–326; M Shaw, ‘Post‐imperial and quasi‐imperial: state and empire in the global era’, Millennium, 31(2), 2002, pp 327–336; RBJ Walker, ‘On the Immanence/Imminence of empire’, Millennium, 31(2), 2002, pp 337–345.

For an overview, see RF Betts, Decolonisation, London: Routledge, 1998.

Rosenberg, Follies of Globalisation Theory, pp 27–43; Shaw, Global State, p 104.

Armitage, Ideological Origins, p 14.

Hopkins discusses this in terms of the history of globalisation as well: ‘History of globalization’, p 36.

However, see Doyle, Empires; Buzan & Little, International Systems in World History.

Saull, ‘On the “new” American “empire” ’, p 251.

B Buzan & R Little, ‘Why International Relations has failed as an intellectual project and what to do about it’, Millennium, 30(1), 2001, p 26.

See Waltz, Theory of International Politics.

See the competing versions in RO Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy, Princeton; Princeton University Press, 1984; R Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. The historical discussion of Kennedy is also relevant: P Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, London: Fontana, 1989.

This is particularly the argument of Ikenberry. See GJ Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001; Ikenberry, ‘Persistence of postwar order’.

Ferguson, Colossus, pp 8–12. Also see N Ferguson, ‘Hegemony or empire?’, Foreign Affairs, 82(5), 2003, pp 154–161.

Ferguson, Colossus, p 9.

Ikenberry, ‘Illusions of empire’, p 146.

The problem of hierarchy within or under anarchy is not new, as a number of scholars, mainly from a constructivist viewpoint, have challenged the prevailing conventions of the discipline concerning anarchy. See K Weber, ‘Hierarchy amidst anarchy: a transaction costs approach to international security cooperation’, International Studies Quarterly, 41(2), 1997, pp 321–340; A Wendt & D Friedheim, ‘Hierarchy under anarchy: informal empire and the East German state’, International Organization, 49(4), 1995, pp 689–721.

Cox, ‘The empire's back in town’, pp 15–17; V Hanson Davis, ‘What empire?’, in AJ Bacevich (ed) The Imperial Tense, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003, pp 146–155.

See Gallagher & Robinson, ‘The imperialism of free trade’.

For an overview see Lievan, Empire.

A Watson, The Limits of Independence: Relations Between States in the Modern World, London: Routledge, 1997, pp 118–122.

O Waever, ‘Europe's three empires: a Watsonian interpretation of post‐wall European security’, in R Fawn & J Larkins (eds) International Society After the Cold War, London: Macmillan, 1996, pp 224–225.

Ikenberry, ‘Illusions of empire’, p 154. Shaw moves in a similar direction: Shaw, Global State.

Pagden, People and Empires, p 8. Also see JH Richardson, ‘Imperium Romanum: empire and the language of power’, Journal of Roman Studies, LXXXI, 1991, pp 1–15.

Pagden, People and Empires, p 40.

A Hurrell, ‘Power and the international system’, Security Dialogue, 35(2), 2004, p 254.

Hurrell, ‘Power’, p 255.

Ikenberry, ‘Persistence of post‐war order’, p 45.

JG Ruggie, Winning the Peace: America and World Order in the New Era, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, pp 47–49.

JL Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p 39; Maier, ‘Alliance and autonomy’, pp 273–276; Cumings, ‘Still the American century’, pp 271–299.

G Lundestad, ‘The American “empire” 1945–1990’, in G Lundestad, The American “Empire”, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, p 39.

See Harvey, New Imperialism, chapter 4.

Gaddis, We Now Know, especially chapters 2–3; Lundestad, ‘The American “empire” ’.

P Gowan, ‘Empire as superstructure’, Security Dialogue, 35(2), 2004, p 259.

Similar views have been expressed by Barkawi & Laffey, ‘Imperial peace’; Shaw, Global State. Also see the large number of overviews that have conceptualised these regions in various typologies of states: R Cooper, Postmodern State and the World Order, London: Demos, 2001; R Kagan, Paradise and Power, London: Atlantic Books, 2003; G Sørensen, Changes in Statehood: The Transformation of International Relations, Houndsmills: Palgrave, 2001. There is also an importance to the way in which an empire is defined by its frontiers; for example, Cox points to the crucial essay by FJ Turner, that declared that freedom required an ever expanding frontier, while Maier points to the frontier as the ‘principle preoccupation of the guardians of empire’. Cox, ‘The empire's back in town’, p 8; Maier, ‘An American empire?’, p 29; FJ Turner, ‘The significance of the frontier in American history’, Indianapolis: Bobb Merrill, 1893; W Appleman Williams, ‘The Frontier thesis and American foreign policy’, in W Appleman Williams, History as a Way of Learning, New York: New Viewpoints, 1973.

Barkawi & Laffey, ‘Retrieving the imperial’, p 112; J Agnew & S Corbridge, Mastering Space, London: Routledge, 1995, chapter 4.

Buzan & Little, ‘Why International Relations has failed’, pp 33–34.

Buzan & Little, ‘Why International Relations has failed’, p 34.

Gaddis, We Now Know; F Halliday, ‘The Cold War as inter‐systemic conflict: initial theses’, in M Bowker & R Brown (eds) From Cold War to Collapse: Theory and World Politics in the 1980s, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; Lundestad, The American ‘Empire’; Maier, ‘The American empire?’.

Hopkins, Globalization and World History.

Buzan & Little have provided one excellent take on this: Buzan & Little, International Systems in World History. There is some useful overlap here with historical sociology, which could be fruitfully further pursued; see, for example, S Hobden & JM Hobson (eds) The Historical Sociology of International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; M Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 1–2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 1993. A number of scholars based in a Marxist historical materialist framework have already done some excellent work in this regard: see especially Rosenberg, Empire of Civil Society; Teschke, Myth of 1648.

See, for example, Shaw, ‘Post‐imperial and quasi‐imperial’.

Cox, ‘The empire's back in town’, p 23.

See Buzan & Little, ‘Why International Relations has failed’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bryan Mabee

Bryan Mabee is Senior Lecturer in international relations at Oxford Brookes University, Department of Politics and international relations, Oxford, OX3 0BP, UK. Email: [email protected]