Empire, Imperialism and other geo-political naughtiness

welsh

welsh

Junkmaster
I saw this in the letters section of the Economist in response to oneof their articles about the future of US empire and imperialism.

Would anyone like to comment?

Empire, state building?
SIR – You say that American military and nation-building intervention in other countries is likely to be short, because imperialism and democracy are at odds with each other (“Manifest destiny warmed up”, August 16th). In the end democracy will win because the subjects will protest and so, eventually, will Americans.
Your argument misses the economic face of empire.
Over the past three decades, America's government, particularly the Clinton administration, has constructed an international monetary and financial framework which ensures that the normal working of market forces shores up American power. The framework yields disproportionate benefits to Americans and confers autonomy on its economic policymakers while curbing the autonomy of all others. It provides the material basis of American military supremacy.

The key political feature of the system is that it is not an empire in the sense of an imperial centre and colonies. It is based on “sovereign” states. These states can be left to manage the costs of the system, including the protests of those whose lives are disrupted by it. This is how the modern-day empire can quietly escape the trade-off between imperialism and democracy, most of the time.

Robert Hunter Wade
London School of Economics
London

SIR – America most certainly is not an empire. Though it inherited the geopolitical mantle of ensuring world stability from previous imperial powers, it lacks two essential traits of past empires. First, empires used conquest to plunder the resources of the periphery to enrich the centre. No empire has ever engaged in the likes of the Marshall Plan to benefit the vanquished as America has. The United States will spend billions to stabilise Afghanistan and Iraq rather than benefiting materially from them. Second, America does not send out colonialists to people the upper stratum of the populations of the societies it defeats militarily nor do we shuffle various population groups to ensure control.

We may seem like a duck and we may even quack like a duck. But we most certainly do not walk like a duck, thumping over others with heavy feet (or jackboots). Despite our enormous power, we walk rather softly—and benevolently.

James Na
Seattle
 
Meh, I have to disagree with James Na here. I think that the current form of an empire is very different from that of even a mere century ago, since there is now much faster and better communication, as well as more control by the people and more education, leading to more criticism by the public, an Empire is much more restricted in it's ways, if it wants to keep the public on it's side. While in earlier days you had people in villages not even aware that their country was at war, much less caring about how that war is conducted, nowadays you have to live in total solitude not to know about what is going on in the world, and everyone has an opinion about what is happening. Add to that the power that those people have over it's own country, and it is much harder for a country to dominate other countries, and to do what has been done in earlier days by such empires. I think that in today's world the word Empire needs to be re-evaluated, and given a new meaning, and I think that the USA should qualify for being an empire.

Luke: Yep, and they're the most boring of them all, the most generic army there is, and it used to be the most popular. Meh, everyone plays Chaos, noone wants other armies. Silly stuff ;)
 
I think the definition of Empire is the question here, not if America is an Empire, which is secondary.
I think that the idea that Imperialisim and Democracy are constantly at odds is ignorant. In certain situations the democratic situation has become signifigantly worse when Imperial powers left (Sudan), and in some cases Democracy would have been impossible without "imperialisim", as in India, South Africa or Australia. All of them model democracies for the last 10 years at least because of Imperialisim.
 
Sander, you are Dutch, right? Well, as we are, you are as well- you yourselves cannot truly claim to be a "nation state" because of your dependance on other peoples, namely immigrants. We are similar.
It just goes to show you that outside of China, Empire is an outdated term with no real modern meaning because it has been used for centuries in the same context, and changing it is silly because we will have discussions like this that sound more like some quiviling theological discussion on a word than a real geo-political debate.
 
Democracy would have been impossible without "imperialisim", as in India, South Africa or Australia
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That may be a bit of an ignorant statement, you're claiming that the people who originally lived there could never have gone over to Democracy, they aren't lesser people than others, nor are they dumber, so they could have easily gotten to a democracy(Not that it's that good either, it's just the lesser of evils. Meh, gotta love cliches) without any kind of domination by Western people. Every single government came from another, at one time noone had a government, at another time every government was a totaltarian one.

BUT Imperialism and Democracy are constantly at odds, at least the old form of imperialism. Why? Because it didn't leave the people it conquered in control of their own destiny, what you are talking about are what has evolved from those old Imperialist colonies, almost every seperation of a colony happened during the last century, and that is also when governments became more and more democratic, and when they allowed more power and freedom in their colonies. I would hesitate to call it old imperialism..
 
No, not really.
The only nation in the entire East to willfully transform itself into a Democracy for a sustained period of time was Turkey- and that was because of a need to survive.
You are missing the point. The point of British and American Imperialism was to set up the nessicary infrastructure and economic climate that a modern democracy demands, as the point of Belgian and to a lesser extent France was to grab recourses so we could have snazzier stuff.
 
I started with chaos, though now I'm playing dwarfs.

Hey everyone, let's forget about politics and stuff and talk about warhammer.
 
The only reason there actually are democracies, is not because of how good we are, or how much smarter/more evolved we are than other people, but solely because of circumstance, we happen to be in this place, we had certain influences, and certain events happened.

Now that we have global communication and other things like that it's much much easier for other countries to be influenced by the same things, and : evolve" into a different country, the fact taht it hasn't happened that much doesn't mean it cannot(or couldn't have) happened.

As for your other post there, there is a big difference between what I am saying and depending upon immigrants and other countries, by exporting, importing and allowing immigration, you are not oppressing or controlling any other country, you are merely using international bonds, and even helping that country with it's economy(usually). Whether the USA is an empire sure depends on what the meaning of the word would be in this world, I don't care if you give it another name or not, imperialism should be re-evaluated to see what it means CURRENTLY, because the world is very very different from what it used to be. By saying that the USA isn't an empire you are overlooking that the USA has great great influence in the current world, and can do a lot of things. An empire is a country with a lot of power, basically, IMperialism is when a country exercises that power over other countries expanding their borders and gaining more power, besides the expanding borders, I would sure think that the USA would fir the bill, the fact that it still depends on other countries is because of the size and demands of the current world, which is again a reason to evaluate the meaning of what an empire is...
 
I think that the point here is not that colonialism sometimes led to democracy, which is true, nor that colonies have often done worse under independence then under colonialism (which is sadly also true in some cases).

Rather I think the point that imperial policies don't live long when the colonizer is democratic. In this I agree that outcome is also uncertain. "Democratic" countries have often played hosts to their own subordinate classes for extended periods, and have often been made to give up their own colonial territories only after the populace of the colonizer (the metropol) is given to examine their conscience. Ghandi's march to the sea to collect salt is a good example, I think. Often a democracy has to think of itself as being "evil" in the process of democracy, to reconsider that. Its not surprising that some of the first thinkers of international human rights law come from Spain which questioned the morality of Spanish policies against indigenous people of America, during Spanish colonialization. Interestingly, those arguments come from Spains universities.

But I also agree that the nature of imperialism has also changed with changing finance. Its important to remember that Imperialism has been more about money and economics than conquest and war. Much of the early imperialism was built around mercantilistic policies, but in a world of increasingly globalized capital, imperialism should reflect different economic rules.

So I think the brit policy of indirect rule and indirect empire have more of a role to play.
 
Sander said:
That may be a bit of an ignorant statement, you're claiming that the people who originally lived there could never have gone over to Democracy, they aren't lesser people than others, nor are they dumber, so they could have easily gotten to a democracy(Not that it's that good either, it's just the lesser of evils. Meh, gotta love cliches) without any kind of domination by Western people. Every single government came from another, at one time noone had a government, at another time every government was a totaltarian one.
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I don't this is really an issue of people but of government and typesof government that can be created. History is full of post-colonial states that looked like they would go democratic, but then once in power the new regime dominated the opposition.

Its not a case of people and what they want, but of situation and what they can get. This idea of Locke and Hobbes of the creation of a social contract is a nice philosophical idea, but has little historical basis. It was Hume who said that the reason why leaders stay in power is not because they are stronger than society, but that society is divided and is uncertain what other members of society will do. In short, the king or dictator survives because he keeps people divided, in otherwords he extenuates the collective action problem.

Mancur Olson, who coined the collective action problem, pointed out that we can trace the creation of modern liberal democracy to one transition- the Glorious Revolution of England. I would argue that the new government was more oligarchy than democracy, but it set the path for other liberal democracies.

So I think the point that people would have come up with democracy on their own is, no offence, wishful thinking. If anything democratization is a very difficult and tenuous process. Many democratic experiments have failed and many have actually rolled back.

Sander said:
BUT Imperialism and Democracy are constantly at odds, at least the old form of imperialism. Why? Because it didn't leave the people it conquered in control of their own destiny, what you are talking about are what has evolved from those old Imperialist colonies, almost every seperation of a colony happened during the last century, and that is also when governments became more and more democratic, and when they allowed more power and freedom in their colonies. I would hesitate to call it old imperialism..
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Actually, we can trace a lot of the independence movements to the weakness of the metropol powers to contain their revolutions, the spread of ideologies that made independence easier (Maoism especially), and a rise in nationalism (itself a notion of constructed identity).

If you look at a lot of countries now, you see a lot of the old school- early modern politics that you found in Europe before the 18th Century, but with a more modern glossy touch. Thomas Calleghy for example, wrote a wonderful book about Zaire under Mobutu which compared Mobutu to the Absolutist France. One could look at Suharto in Indonesia and see similiar trends. In the lesser developed world, politics is very much old school wealth maximizing by political elites. If you expand past that to Latin America you see a lot of the class struggle that shaped the birth of modern Europe and the US.

However, the major difference is this. (1) Countries are forced to pursue the form of the modern nation state - even if they are empirically incapable due in part to the rules set up in organizations like the UN. (2) Nations that are struggling to become strong (like the OECD states) are doing so under added pressures to democratize, create unified nations, and under a system in which they are under pressure from more powerful states and those state created institutions (like the World Bank/IMF) which seeks to create a more secure world for liberal economics.
 
Welsh, I think Ill be quite and let you handle everything. Very impressive.
Sander, I will never say that my people are better then everyone else; my circusmtances are.
But do you think that the circumstance of these people in inolterable, that somehow thier state of repression cannot be changed? That is both a fundemental principal of neo-cons, Imperialists and Communists, all of which are realated to one another.
My point is simply that, given the right cirucmstances, the right approach that Imperialisim can work as a sort of artificial circumstance.
 
welsh said:
Mancur Olson, who coined the collective action problem, pointed out that we can trace the creation of modern liberal democracy to one transition- the Glorious Revolution of England. I would argue that the new government was more oligarchy than democracy, but it set the path for other liberal democracies.

So I think the point that people would have come up with democracy on their own is, no offence, wishful thinking. If anything democratization is a very difficult and tenuous process. Many democratic experiments have failed and many have actually rolled back.
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Besides these points, it could well be argued democracy is a cultural concept inherit to the Western culture but very difficult to accept for most other cultures, so that it becomes necessary for cultures to "Westernize" before they can become a democracy. You can not institute a democracy and say "the rest stays the same"

If you were to ask me, which nobody will, I would say the only reason Democracy was instituted was because the basis for it was laid in Ancient Rome and Ancient Athens...Without this basis, which the Western culture fell back on during the Renaissance, we would never have known democracy either.
 
Actually Kharn, if you look at some other societies, one might find the beginnings of democratic practices. For example, Some argue that the Batswana people (of Botswana- surprise!) had a system of governance in which people supposedly got to voice their discontent to the leader and that the leaders were supposedly responsive to their people, and thus some of the early practices of democracy were laid down. In other arguments, groups could be democratic provided that they didn't get too big (consultation among the group became too difficult).

However, if you look at modern democracy- you have a lot of cultures that have been able to adapt to democracy. The Taiwanese have gotten a pretty good democracy, Thailand has had some success, the Philippines recently, Japan. In Africa you have had democratic experiements, Turkey in the Islamic world, and India. While it might be argued that democracy mixes with industrialization, take Costa Rica which is still agricultural.

So I think the "right culture" argument for democracy is a pretty thin one. What you are really talking about in democracy is institutions of governance and government restraint. That should be able to transend individual cultures.

There is also a very dangerous argument in the cultural tradition which I don't think you are making, but which should be considered carefully. If we think that some cultures can't have democracy, and if we value democratic government over autocratic or oligarchic as being more empowering for both economic prosperity and social life (of which there are a lot of quantitative studies on), then what we allow ourselves to argue is that "some cultures deserve democracy, and other's don't".

To be honest I would hesitate from such a position, not only because there is empirical evidence to the contrary, but also because there's a potential bias. We could label "good cultures" and then "bad cultures" without really understanding why particular cultures lead to democratic or authoritarian governmance. If we can isolate the reasons why we find democracy in some cultures but not others, than we might have something. Otherwise we accept fatalism - ie- no Islamic culture can be democratic.
 
My brother collects High Elfs, which is quite the opposite of my Dwarfs.
 
It is.
Western Europe is all Democracy, Islam only has Turkey, and Eastern Europe only has Greece and Poland, while South America has democracies sprining up everywhere.
 
Depends on how you look at it. Elfs are fragile but agile, while dwarfs are sturdy but slow. In the end, they are about equally potent armies :P.
 
Eastern Europe only has Greece and Poland,
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Well no, actually most eastern european countries are democracies, with better or worse institutions, but democracies anyway.

You can know a bit more about those countries on the OCDE and the Council of Europe sites.


Edit: i remember that you are probably talking about the fact that most new countries that arose from the old USSR only have de jure democracies, while the practices remain far from liberal and democratic states, and i won`t dispute that, you`re right if that was what you meant.
 
Constipated-whatever(WHy? WHY THAT NAME???):
You never ever said that imperialism could serve as circumstance, you said that:
1. The definition of an empire is the question here(Which brings up the question: Why did you try to argue my point which said the exact same thing?)
2. Democracy would have been impossible without imperialism in some cases(Nothing about artificial circumstance, I read this sentence as: "They couldn't have been a democracy without others.")
3. I was missing the point because Imperialism was mainly used for economical purposes(I don't really see why you said that, it had little to do with what was being said, as well as that your "point" came out of the blue...And in fact, that wasn't even a point.)
4. You're point is that IMperialsim can be an artificial circumstance(Again, out of the blue, and I hadn't disputed that at all, I just disputed that there couldn't have been a democracy without imperialism.)

So ehmm, maybe you want to give your posts more coherency...

I agree with Kharn that without the Greeks and Romans we wouldn't have any democracies here at all(The first post-classical Republics were the Republic of Venice, and the Republic of the Netherlands(also known as "The Republic"), and those are the ONLY pre-renaissance republics/democracies I know of. Most democracies came into place during and after the renaissance, when there was a greater and greater turning towards the classic Greeks and Romans and their cultures, and thus, inevitably, democracy).

welsh: I won't dispute the points you made in the first post, I agree with them, but I will dispute those made in the second post:
I don't think that there is such a thing as good and bad cultures, because they may or may not choose democracy. Because, in my opinion, ANY government type can be as good as any other. IN fact, if you have the right leader, a totalitarian government can be the best type of government there is. While I agree that due to culture, certain people will, with the current state of mind, not get to a democracy(Simply because it isn't what they want, it isn't that good either. Democracy leaves the way open for other things-look at how Hitler came to power.), but I do disagree with what appeared to me as arguing that they were worse because of that. I may be wrong, maybe you weren't arguing that at all, but that was, for me, what you appeared to be arguing. The fact that they don't have a democracy doesn't mean that they are worse, it means that they are either being oppressed, or don't want one.

ONe thing I would like to say is this: Who here believes that democracy is the best type of government there is?
 
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