“Empire” comes from the Latin imperium, derived from the verb imperare, which means to command. Thus an emperor, the man who governs by command rather than consensus or consultation. 
From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the invasion of Iraq, America was in command, not absolutely and not everywhere, but in many places and too a large degree. Difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan, the financial crisis, and the rise of China as an economic and military power suggest that we’re less omnipotent today. Yet we remain the singular country at the center of the evolving global economy, as well as the world’s sole military superpower.
As David Rieff recently observed, a certain kind of commitment to American exceptionalism underwrites our imperial power. It’s a view that transcends political parties. Liberals, he writes, tend to oppose “U.S. military interventions abroad, including in Afghanistan,” while conservatives “believe in the centrality of military power in advancing American interests. But where they are of one mind is on the necessity of America’s continued hegemony in the world.” Empire seems encoded into our national DNA.
Coming from conservative quarters, Richard Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru argued, in a recent essay in the National Review, that America “is freer, more individualistic, more democratic, and more open and dynamic than any other nation on earth.” These qualities, they continue, give us “a unique role and mission in the world: as a model of ordered liberty and self-government and as an exemplar of freedom and a vindicator of it, through persuasion when possible and force of arms when necessary.”
From the left, Anne Marie Slaughter, the current head of policy planning at the State Department, once wrote that America has a special role in the world. We are, she said, as much an idea—a vision of democratic life—as a particular country, and, as she puts it, “it is an idea that ultimately belongs to all the world’s peoples.”
The implication seems clear. If America is not an empire, it should be, not perhaps by administering the known world in the fashion of Rome, or having a large number of colonies, as did the British, but certainly by setting the political agenda for everyone else.
All this makes me uneasy, which is probably why I’ve disliked talk of an American empire in the past. I want to live in a place, not an idea, among a community of people, not an ideology, for the sake of a history, not a manifesto.
I’m also troubled by the implications of a global mission. I have nightmares about the gradual takeover of Washington by global corporate interests, other nations, and NGOs, all of whom see that lobbying the U.S. government provides the most efficient way to influence global affairs. Lobbyists multiply. Foreign interests find ways to funnel cash into our political process. Slowly (or maybe not so slowly) we shift from our already (and always) inadequate democracy toward even more corrupted forms of governance by influence peddling.
Our imperial role also puts our national institutions at risk. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other universities now train a multi-cultural elite to manage and administer the ad hoc global system that has emerged since the end of the Cold War. Thus Princeton’s modified motto is no longer “In the nation’s service,” as coined by Woodrow Wilson, but “In the nation’s service and the service of all nations.” All things considered, it’s not a surprising change, nor unique. As the Romans discovered when their republic came to an end, empire works against a circumscribed, self-governing national life.
I’ve been thinking about this lately because of all the news about Wikileaks, the website that recently began publishing a vast trove of American diplomatic cables. The head of the rogue operation, the Australian Julian Assange, likes to talk about the intrinsic value of transparency, but he has been clear about his real goal. In this and the earlier disclosure of American battlefield intelligence in Iraq and Afghanistan, Assange hopes to strike a blow against the American empire.
My patriotic impulses, which are quite deep and potent, tell me that Assange should be hanged. But then I step back. I have dark forebodings about our imperial ambitions and deep misgivings about the inclination to think of America as the world’s idea. (God forbid that the world should live in accord with any idea!) I believe that America is indeed exceptional and profoundly worthy of patriotic loyalty, but I’m opposed to views that see American global dominance—whether by way of hard power or soft power—as our national destiny.
In fact, the very idea of national destiny strikes me as wrong-headed. Yes, God oversees the affairs of men, guiding the course of history in accordance with his Providence. However, as Abraham Lincoln recognized during the Civil War—a conflict about the very meaning of the crucial American idea of freedom—it is impossible to assign divine favor to one side or the other. He was a far better theologian than those who formulated the slogan of Manifest Destiny.
Nonetheless, I’m against Assange and other would-be radicals who see empire and think evil, for they are also in the grip of a false view. American global predominance is evil compared to what? As compared to increased global conflict? As compared to a corrupt and inept United Nations? As compared to the cold, amoral, calculating self-interest of an ascendant China? Assange talks a great deal about the virtue of transparency. But this entirely abstract and formal idea has no capacity to restrain the perennial human impulse toward violence, chaos, and destruction.
In other words, I’m in favor of defending the American empire, such as it is, because I’m an Establishmentarian. While not inclined to romanticize current arrangements, which are undoubtedly unjust and cruel and riddled with human sinfulness, I very much oppose revolutionary attitudes that make the terrible error, all too common among progressives, of imagining that nothing could be worse than the status quo.
I take comfort in knowing that St. Augustine adopted the same view. He wrote the definitive book against our worldly fantasies of empire: City of God. Yet he worked to support the survival of the Roman Empire. Throughout most of his adult life, the Roman Empire was crumbling, attacked by Germanic tribes from the north. At one point he went to see some Roman generals in the field. They had come to see the futility of the imperial dreams of the city of man—Augustine’s own arguments taken to their logical conclusions—and they wished to retire to their villas to purify their souls. Augustine urged them to stay in the field. One does not abandon ordinary men and women to the forces of chaos, which are real and pitiless.
Our predominance is likely to endure, and perhaps even increase. (I’m an American optimist who thinks our society has remarkable capacities for renewal.) This puts us in a unique position of global responsibility, one that we should not abandon. We must stay in the field in order to defend the global order (no doubt a very imperfect one) that we have done so much to create.
This responsibility puts us in a perilous position. Our notions of American exceptionalism have tempted us (and continue to tempt us) toward imperial fantasies that may be our undoing. I hope we resist these fantasies. It seems to me absurd to imagine that America is the idea that belongs to all the world’s people. And it strikes me as silly to think that we’re freer, more individualistic, and more democratic than any other nation. After all, we largely invented the highly conformist mentality of mass consumer culture.
In any event, the ultimate destiny of America should be manifest to any who take the long view. We will eventually go the way of all earthly kingdoms—destroyed by the consuming self-love that drags fallen humanity down into the dust.
But as St. Augustine recognized, our moral responsibilities do not stretch out into the long view. They concern the here and now. The present, American-led global order secures a relative peace, one threatened by the Wikileaks attacks, which are motivated by anarchistic and antinomian fantasies, ones all too common among Western progressives. There are present day Vandals abroad, forces of discord, disorder, and destruction that Assange and others eager for the fall the American empire underestimate. We cannot allow them to triumph.
R.R. Reno is a Senior Editor of First Things and Professor of Theology at Creighton University. He is the general editor of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible and author of the volume on Genesis. His previous “On the Square” articles can be found here.
David Rieff’s The Wikileaks Strike at the Heart of American Exceptionalism can be found here, Richard Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru’s essayAn Exceptional Debate can be found here, and Anne Marie Slaughter’s essay The Idea That Is America can be found here.
Comments:
However, the idea of "empire" has always seemed a stretch to me. To say "it's not the regular kinda empire like Rome or the Ottoman, but if you squint real hard and only look at one side of the balance pan, we're an empire" has never been convincing. By virtue of who we are as a nation, both by wealth and by a set of principles that are essentially moral elements, we have had great importance and influence over other nations. But those quantitative differences do not suddenly become a qualitative change of hegemony just because they are large. Having a "special role" is also not the same thing as empire.
It is far better to lead by example. And to simply pose our virtues, as an attractive option, that many might voluntarily choose on their own.
Second, as far as I know, Assange has never claimed that there are not real enemies of Western liberal democracies. Rather, he has argued that the shroud of secrecy around the vast imperial American military-industrial complex is itself one such enemy. Reno concedes the existence of this vast complex, yet he suggests that anyone seeking to expose its operations to the light of day is necessarily the worst sort of naive anarchist who seeks to undermine nothing less than the forces of order holding the forces of chaos at bay. This is sheer assertion, not argument.
For we should ask ourselves: Is it really the case that the vast American empire (again, acknowledged by Reno) is actually vulnerable to collapse because of the leaking operations of a tiny organization headed by an almost-forty-year-old Australian dude with white hair? Seriously?! If only the Soviets had known!
So I'd like to know exactly how the relative order secured by American global hegemony has been threatened by WikiLeaks. America's Defense Secretary has argued just the opposite:
“Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time. And I dragged this up the other day when I was looking at some of these prospective releases. And this is a quote from John Adams: ‘How can a government go on, publishing all of their negotiations with foreign nations, I know not. To me, it appears as dangerous and pernicious as it is novel.’
“Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments — some governments — deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation.
“So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another.
“Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.’’
Private Bradley Manning should indeed be hanged for treason. On the other hand, Julian Assange is not an American and so he may be despicable but he cannot be disloyal -- he never had any duty to America.
"...the "Europeans" ... have shed many times more blood in the Allied cause over the course of the last Century..."
This is a meaningless claim, because the Allied cause of WWI was not the same as that of WWII nor the Cold War, and neither were the Allied parties. Even if one could devise a method of counting (shall we credit France for WWI and debit it for Vichy? If not, why not?), it would only be capable of interpreting a bygone era and not the present. The closest thing we have to an Allied cause now is NATO, and the blood and treasure spent therein have been overwhelmingly American.
But the point is well-made about America's cultural amnesia and the corresponding incoherence in justifying her reasons for employing the military. I don't think for a minute that America is an empire in either the Roman or the 19th-century Great Game sense, because we do not conquer in order to rule (or we are the worst empire ever at seeing to it!). But it is true that Americans have grown soft at home in looking after the national interest, in all respects, because we have forgotten that our homes, our livelihoods, our culture, and our borders need defending at home and not just by expeditionary forces deployed around the world.
Spellcheck strikes again - I assume this is meant to be "rogue," though perhaps Mr. Reno knows more about Assange's grooming habits than I do.
The First Amendment prohibits Congress from passing any law restricting the freedom of the press. The text says nothing about any exception for national security. To the extent the judiciary has created an exception (and this is questionable) it only applies when information is leaked that causes direct, imminent, and catastrophic damage to the country. None of these cables come anywhere close to that standard.
What Wikileaks has done is to become a clearinghouse for information the government is trying to keep from the public, including reports of federal agents hiring minor male prostitutes in Afghanistan. In other words, it has given the public a direct view to what its government (and the agents of its government) does behind close doors and pays for with the money of the American people. It gives the public the ability to judge for themselves in a fairly unmediated fashion the morality, legality, and prudence of those the public must hold responsible. That is precisely the purpose for which the freedom of the press was codified in our Constitution and it is the reason that Americans have traditionally fiercely protected the freedom of the press. That is, until now.
It's not patriotic to call for the death of Assange. It's a direct assault on one of the freedoms most fundamental to the American scheme of liberty. As conservatives say, if you don't like it, perhaps you should go someplace else. Russia would be more suited to your tastes.
You're overreaching when you say "The First Amendment prohibits Congress from passing any law restricting the freedom of the press. The text says nothing about any exception for national security." The primary author of the first amendment, James Madison, and the primary mover behind the inclusion of the first amendment to the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, both believed in the need for governmental secrecy, as a review of their presidential administration's indicate. It is simply wrong to assert the absolutist 20th century view of press freedom and attribute it to the architects of the 1st amendment. You can attribute it to the Warren and Burger Courts, but not to the founders who drafted and ratified the amendment. Throughout the first 150 years of the nation's existence, various Presidents routinely withheld national security information from the Congress, the Courts, and the media, and prosecuted those who attempted to steal such information.
And you're missing the obvious legal distinction: the First Amendment does not prohibit the government from designating communications as "confidential", and it probably does not prohibit the criminalization of the act of stealing such information. It does protect the subsequent publication of those secrets by the press. In fact, that's the whole point.
Really, what would the point of the codification of freedom for the press be if it wasn't for information the government did not want disclosed, information on the basis of which the public could judge the actions of those it elected? To report on Lindsay Lohan's most recent DUI? If the point of the freedom of the press isn't to protect the release of information that may be used to criticize the government, even if it may damage government interests, then the freedom is a dead letter. I agree with Jefferson: "[W]ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter..."; "I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents."
While I sympathize with your general sense that freedom of the press is something we ought to be very leery about circumscribing in any way, I am scratching my head, at your statement: "Why should we care what the opinions of Jefferson and Madison are, other than as a matter of dead history? The American people did not vote on the opinions of the Founders and those opinions are not codified in law. They're just that: opinions."
"Dead history"? Really? Sure we voted on the opinions of the Founders. It's just a matter of which of their opinions ended up being included in the Constitution. If good arguments are opinions with reasons, then the Founders' arguments ought to be considered on their merits, regardless of their status as dead history, and the fact that this discussion is even occurring ought to rebut the notion that this history is "dead." Did Jefferson's famous comment on newspapers and government make it into the Constitution? Obvoiusly not, so why should his opinion carry any more weight than the non-codified views of Madison?
My two cents
1. Saying that one agrees with an opinion is different than claiming that opinion has weight in the legal disposition of a matter.
2. You have still failed to grasp the legal distinction between stealing information, and publishing information that has been stolen.
3. When one votes on a law, one does simultaneously vote on all the other legal principles the drafter of the law holds to be true. This should be obvious, especially in this case. It is entirely plausible that one would vote for the text of the bill of rights while disagreeing with the drafters opinions that were not expressed in the text. The whole point of drafting such legislation is to find the points of agreement, and express them in such a way that people of different opinions on other matters can agree on those matters explicitly and expressly contained in the text, without their disagreement on other issue blocking the passage of the legislation.
And a few basic legal principles:
1. Just because a government violates a legal principle in the Constitution does not mean that principle should be interpreted to allow such a violation. Again, this is the point of binding law, that it be binding. And why you think that state action has more of a legally binding effect than the "opinions" of the Supreme Court is entirely beyond me. Perhaps you should read Madison v. Marbury.
2. Are you giving the example of Jefferson encouraging states' attorneys to prosecute newspapermen as in any way relevant to the First Amendment? Because the Fourteenth Amendment did not pass until 1868.... Jefferson died in 1826. The First Amendment did not apply to the states yet. And the proposed prosecution was for libel, not revealing state secrets.
"(God forbid that the world should live in accord with any idea!)"
This strikes me as horribly anti-intellectual and just plain mischeivous.
After all, justice, peace, and the innate dignity of the human person are fine candidates for ideas that should be globally respected.
Again, the notion that the first amendment protected the publication of stolen government secrets is a mid-20th century phenomenon of progressive jurisprudence. But you seem unwillining to acknowledge this. But please, for the sake of intellectual honesty, stop acting as if this was settled by your good friend Thomas Jefferson (one of the foremost advocates of presidential secrecy) and those who ratified the first amendment. Publishing stolen government secrets was not, despite your passionate hope, "one of the freedoms most fundamental to the American scheme of liberty" in the eyes of those who drafted the first amendment. This belief prevailed until well into the 20th century -- it did not become "fundamental" until the time of Hugo Black and the Warren/Burger Court. It is of course "fundamental" to much of the contemporary law professoriate, but it was not fundamental to Jefferson and the other dead white male founders.
Also, you claimed that people calling for "the death of Assange" were unpatriotic (very magnanimous of you to determine who is patriotic and who is not -- and who should move to Russia). Am I to take it then that the death penalty for the thief who stole the government documents, Pvt. Bradley Manning, and fed them to Assange would be OK under your system of "distinctions"? Or is Manning also protected by your absolutist, 20th century view of the first amendment? By the way, what is Assange's press affiliation? Also, could he publish your private corresponce were it to be hacked? Or is there a distinction to be made re your letters, e-mails, etc.
Unfortunately I do not have the time to write an essay correcting your misapprehensions of our legal system, such as the fact that judicial decisions have stare decisis status and aren't mere "'opinions'", or that the First Amendment did not apply to the states in Jefferson's time, etc. I won't even get into the legal doctrines concerning extra-territorial jurisdiction that would probably make a criminal prosecution impossible
Nor do I have the time to teach you the democratic theory that underlies the First Amendment; that citizens should be able to freely criticize their government. In order to criticize one's government, one presumably has to know what they're up to. The vigilance of the press to provide information to the public on governmental activities has always been crucial to democracy.
I will point out the consequence of what you are saying. If you're right, the New York Times could be prosecuted as well. But your theory wouldn't just have repercussions on press freedom in America. Assange is not a US national. Under your theory, the New York Times could be subject to prosecution for publishing Chinese documents detailing human rights violations in Tibet, which regards as a state secret.
The irony of your position is that journalists would have to flee to havens that protect the freedom of the press strongly--those evil "socialist" European countries like Sweden, from countries like the US, Russia, and China.
If I were schooled by you I'd demand a refund.
Nice way to dodge the questions about Manning's legal rights under your absolutist view of the 1st amendment.
And by the way, judicial decisions are not the final word on the law, as much as the law professoriate may desire. (See Lincoln, A. on the Dred Scott decision; or Warren, E. on separate but equal). But I guess they're just another duo of dead white males not worth listening to... Let's face it, Lincoln was no Justice Brennan. Oh heck, he's dead too....
So I guess the "Thomastic" theory of government in the United States is that the government has no right to preserve and protect its national security secrets - - heck let's go all the way, and publish the latest troop movements in Afghanistan! There are simply no "distinctions" to be made when it comes to freedom of information,; thank you for schooling me. Your devotion to the public's fundamental right to know has opened new horizon's for me! I can't' wait to read your private correspondence, e-mail, etc. online in your new, brave new world!
"I want to live in a place, not an idea, among a community of people, not an ideology, for the sake of a history, not a manifesto."
One thing that frightens me about our present situation is the intense loathing that the elite of our country so obviously feel for our culture. On the left the hatred is obvious - you noted in a blog post last week the intemperate ravings of a 'Catholic studies' scholar who resembles a 'whiteness studies' academic in his contempt for his subject. I am sad to say that many on the elite right dislike actual Americans as much as they might love, in theory, the small-town dweller or the small businessman. It is shown not by their rhetoric but their actions: like the leftist they welcome uncontrolled illegal (but also excessive legal) immigration into our country of people who are uninterested in adapting the culture of their new country. Let me illustrate what I mean by way of example: if a bunch of Americans moved all at once to, say, Guatemala, and started driving SUVs, drinking Big-Gulp Cokes and forcing everyone to celebrate the 4th of July, elite opinion would swoon at the violation of Guatemalan culture. Elites would need smelling salts would someone suggest that immigrants to the US must adapt themselves to the local culture in some trivial way.
You can also see this in the way that almost no current, widespread American literature celebrates the foibles of the American culture, where our general faults are loved as well as our virtues. There is almost no sense that a huge number of people exist here who share something in common that they do not share with others, and that thing is something special in itself - and has not one blasted thing to do with politics.
Our elitist is a bit of a straw man of course, but lets come up with a slogan for him: 'So I can love his enemy, I have my neighbor'
Morally, the U. S. government is entitled to keep secret certain information, but this right is not absolute and indeed is limited to only just and appropriate uses. What is just is not ultimately determined by the State but by God; therefore, although the State makes a judgment on the rightness of keeping certain information secret in the course of governing, that judgment may be wrong and immoral. In those cases, it is right to oppose that immoral decision and reveal the secret if a man learns of it.
This does not mean that State should not prosecute the citizen who reveals a State secret. Indeed, the State--believing in the justice of its cause--will of course prosecute the citizen. But, that prosecution--if the secrecy decision is indeed unjust--is therefore also unjust, and it is the responsibility of jurors to vindicate the cause of justice upon the trial of the leaker.
It seems clear to me that certain information, like the disgusting funding of young "boy dancers" in Afghanistan, were unjustly kept secret. The American public always has a right to know what evil actions their government is taking.
But it is also clear that certain information in the thousands of secret cables is likely to be legitimately deemed secret by the State.
Therefore, both Manning and Assange on the one hand, and whichever U. S. officials who made the immoral decisions to keep such depravities secret and thereby damage the integrity of the justice system on the other hand, must be brought to justice.
Condemning on either "Manning and Assange" or "culpable U. S. officials" rather than both sets of parties reveals two mirror false and evil absolutisms whereby "State rights can never be abused" or "Individual freedoms can never be abused."
Those who only cry for justice for their own favorite side are not really crying for justice, but for evil.
"U.S. officials" are not equally culpable with Manning and Assange -- Manning violated his oath and various secrecy obligations he swore to protect and endangered the lives of his fellow soldiers, while Assange is simply anti-American and hates everything the United States stands for . . . let's see if Assange puts the same effort into revealing secrets from Russia, China, Iran, etc. Don't hold your breathe.
As for 'evil actions' -- let's bring this down to earth, literally. The "dancing boys" was an abuse by private contractors that was stopped by the State Department. But beyond that, how do you define evil? Was it evil for the US to ally itself with Stalin in WWII? Maybe. Was it evil for the US to drop the Atomic bomb on Japan? Maybe. Was it evil for Lincoln to kill 500,000 Americans to free the slaves? Maybe. It's nice for you to sit on your detached perch and make sweeping moral judgements - - unfortunately political leaders don't have that luxury. They have to make judgements that affect the lives of their fellow citizens, and if they make the wrong judgement then history and their God will judge them. But to act like the choice between good/evil is always clear cut in the affairs of men here on earth is naive and dangerous.
America's dominance was always based on its membership in "the West" which was a lot larger than us alone. At first, during the period between World Wars we were more or less equal members with England and France. Then after, WWII and before the Fall of the Wall, we were the leader of the "West." That West was tacitly ustralia/New Zealand and to a lesser degree Latin America). Sure, at times, xenophobes claimed that the "Europeans" weren't "pulling their weight" (even though they have shed many times more blood in the Allied cause over the course of the last Century) and that we should let them fend for themselves, but our chief commitment throughout the time before the Fall of the Communists, was to the concepts of man, fair play and Democracy that gradually evolved in the Christian (or more euphemistically: "Western") World.
We seem to be abandoning that for a more American-centric, still developing entirely secular idea of democracy based on a concept of atomized individuals dependent more or less on the American State and worried about their victimhoods with little necessary attachment to principles established by our prior history and no dominant culture.
What makes an American an American? Is it blood or descent or a particular culture or a belief in a particular view of fair play and equality? No, it is merely being found present within the very porous territorial boundaries of the US sufficiently long so as to qualify for citizenship. Thus, the latest immigrant from a nation where men can take four wives and divorce them at will or slaughter them in honor killings and where servants are treated little better than chattel is as much an American as anyoneborn here who grew up on the Civics Courses taught in an American School.
Likewise, what is the culture of the US? Is it some shared body of thought and belief? Not really. Rather, it is whatever a transitory majority of the people say it is. If the present majority wants to allow abortion; then abortion it is. If the present majority wants to abandon our alliances with the "ingrate Europeans" then we can do that. If they want to abandon the Western concept of Marriage, then so be it.
The on-going dialectic will proceed to the question: why shouldn't polygamous marriages be permitted as is done in so many other countries throughout the World? We haven't gotten there yet, but it won't take long until that question is debated. Even now, we are starting to see shows on TV about Plural Marriage (i.e., "Big Love" and some recent interviews by Oprah)
And if the transitory majority want to abandon our long-time alliances and instead to court favor with Vladimir Putin and the leadership in Beijing, despite their records as long-time Communists, then why not? Likewise, if it is perceived that courting the Mideast is more likely to keep the flow of oil coming and the Mideast wants us clearly to renounce any commitment to Christianity and the West, then why not? Our future "predominance" therefore may well be based on our surrender of any values other than the best deal we can achieve through "free trade."
Thus, before we dismiss concerns about the future of the US on the ground of national optimism, don't we need to define what the perceived "good future state" of the US would be? If it is just getting along with whomever we decide to get along on whatever modus vivendi we settle upon on an ad hoc basis, it may be a lot different future than any of us would have envisioned in the heady days aat the End of the Cold War.