America as Empire

Subtitled 'Global Leader or Rogue State', this thoughtful book by the President of the State of the World Forum is a valuable contribution to the debate about the current and future global role of the United States. For those unfamiliar with the Forum (see www.worldforum.org) it was established in 1995 in collaboration with Mikhael Gorbachev as a global network of leaders 'dedicated to discerning and implementing those principles, values and actions necessary to guide humanity toward a more sustainable global civilisation'. Its strap line is 'transforming conversations that matter into actions that make a difference'. The Forum held an annual meeting for several hundred people from 1995 - 2000, drawing in an impressive array of global players and creative thinkers. I can attest to the excitement of the atmosphere and the richness of discussions (amplified by the presence of around 60 highly articulate young people), having attended the 1997 meeting in San Francisco and the 2000 gathering in New York. Since that time, the main activity of the Forum has been a Commission on Globalisation, which reports regularly to a subscriber list. There has been much debate - reflected in a provocative piece in a recent FT Magazine by Philip Bobbitt - about the term empire as applied to the United States. Jim Garrison begins by noting the irony that America was established as a haven for those fleeing the abuse of power and now wields 'nearly absolute power' (or at any rate immense influence) through formal and informal means and on a variety of fronts - military, scientific and technological, economic and even cultural. Garrison is surely right in his explanation of the trajectory of US history. Although it was founded on the principles of light (Bacon's New Atlantis is extensively discussed) and is now challenged to marry that light with power - a tricky business. Garrison illustrates the history of this rise to power by documenting the path towards its current total of 647 military bases around the world. This is a complex process as 'American democratic ideals, always viewed as universal, and American interests, generally commercial, became inextricably interlinked and functionally synonymous'. And, in spite of the US image of itself as a benign power, Garrison shows that it 'has applied its military force as effectively as its commercial interests and as relentlessly as its democratic ideals'. The total number of occasions on which the US has used military force between 1776 and 2003 amounts to 235 (counting world wars as one occasion) while the Native Americans were engaged in battle more than 1,250 times. And the first recorded use of bioterrorism was by the British in 1763 when Native Americans were given blankets and handkerchiefs from a smallpox hospital. Bringing things up to date, Garrison observes that as power increases and is seen nevertheless to be vulnerable, citizens are called upon to sacrifice the very freedom that was a founding principle of the US and is still prominent in its rhetoric - this was already the experience of Rome and Athens and is the case with the provisions of the Patriot Act. As we have seen, the multilateral or world-centric approach of the Clinton administration has given way to a 'nation-centric tribalism' with aspirations to 'full spectrum dominance' where the UN along with international treaties and the International Criminal Court are sidelined when critical US interests are at stake. This brings Garrison to his central issue: will US power be used in the future to dominate or serve, can the US become 'an empire among nations'? His thesis is that the self-interest typified by the attitudes of nation-states is ultimately self-defeating and that the US 'must combine its self-interest with the interests of the whole' - because its dominion is planetary, its interests must be planetary. The precedent has been set with the work of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman in connection with the building of new international institutions, now badly in need of an upgrade. His vision is that the current system of nation- states needs to be replaced by a transnational system of integrated global management involving global issue networks as 'history meets the future'. The time of US supremacy happens to have come about when the planet is on a 'slow collision course with itself' that demands US leadership if the fundamental planetary issues are to be addressed. A fascinating section addresses the conditions for the success of the Roman Empire with portraits of key second century Emperors like Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. In the case of Rome, wealth contained the seeds of decay and one cannot help wondering if the current 'epidemic' of obesity is aprt of the same pattern. Can the US become the world's first 'transitional empire' by helping set up a system of network governance of which it is a part? Can it use its power not to dominate the nations but to empower a community of nations? Not so long as it is obsessed with a war on terror without addressing root causes and defining outrages as crimes against humanity - as suggested by Mary Robinson, a move which redefines the parameters. However, Garrison points out that there is a second superpower in the form of world public opinion, which supports this transition to a fairer world. In his historical section Garrison draws heavily on 'The Story of Civilisation' by Will Durant, but his analysis could have been enriched with references to Arnold Toynbee's Study of History and the works of Pitirim Sorokin and Oswald Spengler, anong others. There were also gaps in his treatment the situation in Kuwait leading up to the 1991 Gulf War - he does not explain the machinations behind the scenes leading Saddam Hussein into a false sense of security about invading Kuwait. Although he has a good section on the regulation of private gain in the context of global common good, he could have questioned the nature of democracy as it shades into monetocracy. And it was disappointing to see no mention of Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic Presidential candidate who embodies precisely the vision and interconnected world-view advocated by Garrison himself. However the book is most timely, and one can only hope that some of its suggestions are taken up by the Kerry campaign and that a new and more enlightened era will open up in 2005.