Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., historian and writer, winner of two Pulitzer…

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., historian and writer, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, served as special assistant to President John F.
Kennedy. His most recent book is War and the American Presidency.




             The American Empire? Not So Fast
             Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.


The one thing that Noam Chomsky and                             lished in 1771--and one finds "empire" de-
Paul Wolfowitz might agree upon is the re-                      fined as "a large extent of land under the ju-
ality of an American Empire. Of course,                         risdiction or government of an emperor."
Chomsky regards the American Empire as a                        The first European example mentioned is
monstrosity and Wolfowitz regards it as the                     Charlemagne, of whom the Britannica says,
savior of humanity, but of its existence nei-                   "It is to be observed that there is not a foot
ther has any doubt. Commentators make                           of land or territory annexed to the emperor's
comparisons to the great empires--to the                        title."
Roman Empire; to the nineteenth-century                              "Imperialism" did not appear as a word
British and French empires. Is the so-called                    until the nineteenth century. Its first appli-
American Empire a fitting successor to these                    cation was not to overseas expansion but to
historic empires? Certainly the overwhelm-                      the domestic pretensions of Napoleon III,
ing military, economic, and cultural power                      emperor of France. As late as 1874, when
projected by the United States at the start of                  Walter Bagehot wrote "Why an English
the twenty-first century should qualify as                      Liberal May Look Without Disapproval on
imperial. But does its history commit the                       the Progress of Imperialism in France," he
United States to an imperial destiny?                           referred to France's internal polity, not to its
     Historians who believe in the American                     foreign policy. The contemporary meaning
Empire, pro or con, think it does. Some cite                    of imperialism as the domination of distant
the use of the word "empire" by Americans                       peoples appeared toward the end of the
when the United States itself was struggling                    nineteenth century.
to be born. In 1783, George Washington                               So evidence derived from the use of the
called the infant republic a "rising Empire."                   word "empire" by Americans in the eigh-
A few years later in the Fourteenth Federal-                    teenth century is irrelevant. Still, has not
ist, James Madison spoke of the "extended                       the United States been a constantly expand-
republic" as "one great, respectable, and                       ing nation? Has not this expansion been
flourishing empire." The case turns on the                      welcomed by an eager popular consensus?
meaning of "empire" in the eighteenth cen-                      Have not the American people from the
tury. If one consults the standard modern                       start been hell bent on empire?
work on the subject, Richard Koebner's Im-                           Well, yes and no. Leaders of the early
perialism: The Story and Significance of a Po-                  republic would have been astonished to
litical Word, one finds that the Latin word                     discover that by the twentieth century a
"imperium" meant sovereignty, the exercise                      single nation stretched from sea to shining
of authority, and that in the eighteenth cen-                   sea. Thomas Jefferson expected white set-
tury the word "empire" by no means im-                          tlers to spread across the continent but nev-
plied territorial expansion. Look at a con-                     er supposed the Stars and Stripes would
temporaneous dictionary--say the first edi-                     accompany them. Along the Pacific would
tion of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, pub-                      arise, in Jefferson's words, "a great, free and

The American Empire? Not So Fast                                                                                           43
independent empire," populated by white              As for Canada, John Quincy Adams held
Americans "unconnected with us but by the       "our proper domain to be the continent of
ties of blood and interest." Daniel Webster     North America." Sen. Charles Sumner, an-
similarly anticipated an independent, white     other Massachusetts man, was sure that the
"Pacific republic" on the west coast. Even      law of gravitation would bring us Canada.
Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, for all his     John Quincy Adams's grandson, the young
flamboyant expansionism, proposed in 1825       Henry Adams, observed in 1869 "that the
to draw "the Western limits of the republic"    whole continent of North American and all
along the edge of the Rocky Mountains and       its adjacent islands must at last fall under
to erect a statue of the fabled god Terminus    the control of the United States is a convic-
on the highest peak. On the Pacific coast,      tion absolutely ingrained in our people."
Benton said, "the new Government should         "Long ere the second centennial arrives,"
separate from the mother Empire as the          Walt Whitman predicted in Democratic Vis-
child separates from the parent."               tas (1871),"there will be some forty to fifty
     Early Americans conceived continental      great States, among them Canada and Cu-
expansion as through empty lands popu-          ba." As late as 1895, Henry Cabot Lodge
lated only by wandering and primitive           declared, "From to the Rio Grande to the
Indians--"savages." But Jefferson would         Arctic Ocean there should be but one flag
have probably been even more astonished         and one country."
to discover how little the United States             These things, so authoritatively pre-
had expanded to the south and to the north      dicted, never came to pass. We have not an-
where European settlers--British, French,       nexed Cuba or Canada. There is no likeli-
Spanish--had established themselves. Jeffer-    hood that we ever will. The record hardly
son thought Cuba "the most interesting          sustains the thesis of a people red hot for
addition which could ever be made to our        empire. From the Louisiana Purchase on,
system of States" and told John C. Calhoun      territorial acquisition has always met resis-
in 1820 that the United States "ought, at       tance. Texas waited outside the Union for a
the first possible opportunity, to take Cu-     decade as an independent republic and then
ba." John Quincy Adams, James Monroe's          entered only through presidential sleight of
secretary of state and his successor in the     hand, John Tyler procuring admission by
White House, considered the annexation          joint resolution after the Senate had rejected
of Cuba "indispensable to the continuance       a treaty of annexation. The outcry during
and integrity of the Union itself" and          the Mexican War to take "all Mexico" came
thought Cuba would inevitably fall to           to naught. President James K. Polk even
the United States by the law of political       feared that Congress would turn against the
gravitation.                                    war, the House having passed a resolution
     In a masterful book 70 years ago called    declaring that the war had been "unneces-
Manifest Destiny, Albert K. Weinberg sar-       sarily and unconstitutionally begun by the
donically exposed the long parade of ex         President of the United States," and that he
post facto justifications--political gravita-   would lose California and New Mexico. The
tion, natural right, geographical predestina-   Ostend Manifesto aroused so much criticism
tion, natural growth. The 1840s and 1850s       that President Franklin Pierce's secretary
were salad years for Manifest Destiny with      of state was obliged to disclaim it, and
the acquisition of California and New Mexi-     William Walker and the other freebooters
co (1848), followed by the fantasies of the     commanding mercenaries who invaded Cen-
Ostend Manifesto (1854), a try by American      tral America and Cuba were repudiated.
diplomats in Europe at getting Spain to              During and after the Civil War, a life-
give up Cuba to the United States.              long expansionist, William H. Seward,

44                                                                WORLD POLICY JOURNAL   · SPRING 2005
served presidents Abraham Lincoln and An-        oped a colonial outlook. The United States
drew Johnson as secretary of state. But Se-      established no colonial department. It
ward's ambitious program got nowhere, ex-        trained no administrators to man the out-
cept for the flyspeck of Midway and for          posts of empire. It had no upper class with
Alaska, which Russia wanted to get rid of        younger sons who needed outdoor relief.
and which Congress reluctantly accepted          Britain created a British world in India and
after members were bribed, perhaps by the        Africa; the French created a French world in
Russian minister. The Senate rejected the        Indochina and Algeria. The number of
Hawaiian reciprocity treaty, the purchase of     Americans who settled in the Philippines
the Virgin Islands from Denmark, the an-         was negligible. When Britain liberated In-
nexation of Santo Domingo, the annexation        dia and when France liberated Algeria, it
of Samoa. It took half a century of argument     was a matter of bitter internal controversy.
before we annexed Hawaii, and this might         When America liberated the Philippines, it
not have taken place had it not been for the     was a matter of indifference mingled with
war with Spain. Even with this war we still      relief.
did not annex Cuba. We did annex the                  To be sure, the United States like all
Philippines but set them free 40 years later.    great powers has varied and vital economic
And by 1960 Alaska and Hawaii were               interests, ranging from access to raw materi-
states, not colonial possessions. Annexing       als to export markets. But to assert that
Puerto Rico as an inadvertent result of the      these interests foreordain wars of conquest is
Spanish-American War, we have maintained         contrary to the evidence, and indeed con-
it as a "commonwealth," though statehood         futed by the writings of Marx and Engels,
advocates are gaining strength. Indepen-         who in this matter were hardly as Marxist as
dence is a non-issue except for a tiny           their disciples.
minority.                                             Of course we enjoy an informal em-
     In short, the imperial dream had en-        pire--military bases, status-of-forces agree-
countered consistent indifference and recur-     ments, trade concessions, multinational cor-
rent resistance through American history.        porations, cultural penetrations, and other
Imperialism was never a broadly based, pop-      favors. But these are marginal to the subject
ular mass movement. There were spasms of         of direct control. "The term `empire'" writes
jingoistic outrage, as over the sinking of the   Professor G. John Ikenberry, summing up
Maine, but no sustained demand for empire.       the common understanding, "refers to the
As James Bryce, the foreign observer whose       political control by a dominant country of
insights into the American mystery were          the domestic and foreign policies of weaker
second only to Tocqueville's, wrote in The       countries." In their days of imperial glory,
American Commonwealth (1888), Americans          Rome, London, Paris, despite slow and awk-
"have none of the earth-hunger which burns       ward lines of communication, really ruled
in the great nations of Europe.... The gener-    their empires. Today communication is in-
al feeling of the nation is strongly against a   stantaneous. But despite the immediacy of
forward policy." At the height of American       contact, Washington, far from ruling an em-
experiments with imperialism at the end of       pire in the old sense, has become the virtual
the nineteenth century, Theodore Roosevelt,      prisoner of its client states.
a disappointed imperialist, deplored "the             This was the case notably with South
queer lack of imperial instinct that our         Vietnam in the 1960s, and it has been the
people show."                                    case ever since with Israel. Governments in
     Americans, unlike the Romans, the           Saigon 40 years ago and in Tel Aviv today
British, and the French, are not colonizers of   have been sure that the United States, for
remote and exotic places. We never devel-        internal political reasons, would not use the

The American Empire? Not So Fast                                                             45
ultimate sanction--the withdrawal of            the limit. Of course, we can always bomb,
American support. They therefore defied         but that is hardly the way to win hearts
major American commands and demands             and minds. Americans are simply not
with relative impunity.                         competent imperialists, as we have demon-
    Pakistan, Taiwan, Egypt, South Korea,       strated in Iraq. The so-called American
the Philippines, and very likely Iraq itself    Empire is in fact a feeble imitation of the
are similarly unimpressed, evasive, or defi-
ant. For all our vast military power, we can-
                                                Roman, British, and French empires.            ·
not get our Latin American neighbors, or        This essay was adapted from a paper presented at a
even the tiny Caribbean islands, to do our      tribute to James Chace, a former editor of this jour-
bidding. As for our military power, war         nal, on December 9, 2004, at the Carnegie Council
against a guerrilla insurgency in Iraq seems    on Ethics and International Affairs in New York.
to have strained our military resources to




46                                                                    WORLD POLICY JOURNAL   · SPRING 2005