NIALL FERGUSON ON THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

Ferguson, a young British historian who teaches at Harvard and has been an apologist for the British Empire, argues in favor of a liberal American empire that would effectively create "the institutions of political, economic, and social freedom." Ferguson justifies the notion of a liberal empire by saying that there are some countries that will never reform themselves into a representative democracy, and it is the responsibility of the empire to force that reform. He cites Canada, New Zealand, and Australia (and to some extent India) as successful examples of the liberal British empire of the 19th Century.

He believes, however, that America has failed in nearly all of its efforts at empire because "they failed to establish very obvious collaborative frameworks, other than with military elites. Those frameworks that they did establish quickly morphed into dictatorships when the Americans held a traditional election and went home.... [T]he model of empire that the United States has followed has been defective." Ferguson argues that during the Cold War, the goal of American intervention became first and foremost an effort to get rid of governments that we disapproved of without much consideration of the type of government that would follow. He says that approach was evidenced in countries from Chile to Iran, and that "the cost of that approach probably outweighed the benefits...because support was given rather uncritically to some pretty lousy regimes."

He identifies a seven stage process in the typical pattern of U.S. intervention in his most recent book, Colossus: The Price of America's Empire. The seven stages are these: impressive initial military success, a flawed assessment of indigenous sentiment, a strategy of limited war and gradual escalation, domestic disillusionment in the face of protracted and nasty conflict, premature democratization, the ascendancy of domestic economic considerations, and ultimate withdrawal. (At which stage do you think we are currently operating in Iraq or in Afghanistan?)
Ferguson attempts to identify some reasons for American failures at nation-building--in his analysis, only about three U.S. interventions in American history are unqualified successes. He argues that a big reason for American failures has been the domestic-policy focus of the educated elite in this country. During the height of the British empire, the intellectual elite were largely focused outward--what overseas posting could they receive and how could they help other nations to develop a British-like political, social, and economic structure? His point is that the British had hundreds of these home-grown imperialists who could serve as administrators of the empire in foreign lands while the U.S. has very few--as he puts it, "There aren't that many Jerry Bremers.... [Y]ou need hundreds of them to make a success of something like this."

In considering the British empire, many of the nation-builders were initially the leaders of the conquering army. What about U.S. military personnel? This leads to big reason number two--according to Ferguson, "In today's volunteer professional army you don't have [the needed] skills [for nation-building] at all. You have people who are tremendously good at being soldiers and Marines. But they're not really trained to do the sorts of thing[s] that you have to do once you've won a war. And they're the first to admit it. They're quite candid that...killing bad guys is what they're trained to do. The business of constructing the rule of law and a functioning market economy is about as far removed from their expertise as you could get."

Ferguson says that the fact Muslim nations dislike us should not affect the way we conduct policy or conduct empire. "Legitimacy isn't necessarily based on affection. It's based on credibility.... It's not the hatred one should worry about, it's the contempt." He points out that the legitimacy the U.S. could achieve in the world if it is successful in Iraq will overshadow the resentment. (I'm not entirely sure that I buy this part of his argument about Iraq.) In his opinion, it is the responsibility of the United States as the sole remaining superpower to use its power for good around the world by instilling successful democracies in countries that might not otherwise reform themselves. We cannot worry about whether the world's populace likes us; we must be concerned about whether we present ourselves as a legitimate power capable of achieving the goals we set in these interventions.

--NOTE: all quotations are attributed to Niall Ferguson from an interview with Frank Bures, "Our Imperial Imperative" in The Atlantic Online, May 2004 (by subscription only).