Re: Let 100 apologists bloom

[Bill Rosenberg <w.rosenberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Where does this come from Ken?

Bill


Ken Hanly wrote:
>
> Struggling to get a handle on U.S. foreign policy? For starters, try dusting
> off your Livy and boning up on the Second Punic War. Or dip into a good
> history of 19th-century Britain, paying close attention to those dazzling
> military campaigns in the Middle East - the Battle of Omdurman, say, or the
> Second Afghan War.
> .
> Today, America is no mere superpower or hegemon but a full-blown empire in
> the Roman and British sense. That, at any rate, is the consensus of some of
> the most notable U.S. commentators and scholars.
> .
> "People are now coming out of the closet on the word 'empire,'" said the
> conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. "The fact is no country has been
> as dominant culturally, economically, technologically and militarily in the
> history of the world since the Roman Empire."
> .
> Americans are used to being told - typically by resentful foreigners - that
> they are imperialists. But lately some of the nation's own eminent thinkers
> are embracing the idea. More astonishing, they are using the term with
> approval. From the isolationist right to the imperialist-bashing left, a
> growing number of experts are issuing stirring paeans to American empire.
> .
> The Weekly Standard kicked off the parade early last fall with "The Case for
> American Empire," by The Wall Street Journal's editorial features editor,
> Max Boot. Quoting the title of Patrick Buchanan's last book, "America: A
> Republic, not an Empire," Boot said, "This analysis is exactly backward: the
> Sept. 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and
> ambition; the solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more
> assertive in their implementation."
> .
> Calling for the military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, Boot cited the
> stabilizing effect of 19th-century British rule in the region. "Afghanistan
> and other troubled lands today," he wrote, "cry out for the sort of
> enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident
> Englishmen in jodphurs and pith helmets."
> .
> Since then, the empire idea has caught on. In January, Charles Fairbanks, a
> foreign policy expert at Johns Hopkins University, told an audience at
> Michigan State University that America was "an empire in formation." Last
> month, a Yale University professor, Paul Kennedy - who 10 years ago was
> predicting America's ruin from imperial overreach - went further.
> .
> "Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power," Kennedy wrote in
> the Financial Times of London. "The Pax Britannica was run on the cheap,
> Britain's army was much smaller than European armies and even the Royal Navy
> was equal only to the next two navies - right now all the other navies in
> the world combined could not dent American maritime supremacy. Napoleon's
> France and Philip II's Spain had powerful foes and were part of a multipolar
> system. Charlemagne's empire was merely western European in its stretch. The
> Roman Empire stretched further afield, but there was another great empire in
> Persia and a larger one in China. There is no comparison."
> .
> The most extended statement from the empire camp to date is "Warrior
> Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos" (Random House, 2001), a
> recent book by the journalist Robert Kaplan.
> .
> Arguing that "times have changed less than we think," Kaplan suggests the
> nation's leaders turn to ancient Greek and Roman chroniclers - as well as
> Winston Churchill's 1899 account of the British conquest of the Sudan - for
> helpful hints about how to navigate today's world. He devotes a chapter to
> the Second Punic War ("Rome's victory in the Second Punic War, like
> America's in World War II, made it a universal power") and one to the
> cunning Emperor Tiberius. Granted, the emperor was something of a despot,
> writes Kaplan. Still, he "combined diplomacy with the threat of force to
> preserve a peace that was favorable to Rome."
> .
> If that sounds familiar, you've got the right idea. "Our future leaders
> could do worse than be praised for their tenacity, their penetrating
> intellects and their ability to bring prosperity to distant parts of the
> world under America's soft imperial influence," Kaplan writes. "The more
> successful our foreign policy, the more leverage America will have in the
> world. Thus, the more likely that future historians will look back on
> 21st-century United States as an empire as well as a republic, however
> different from that of Rome and every other empire throughout history."
> .
> Classicists may scoff at the idea that democratic America has much in common
> with the tyrannical Rome of Augustus or Nero. But the empire camp points out
> that however unlikely the comparison, America has often behaved like a
> conquering empire. As Kennedy put it, "From the time the first settlers
> arrived in Virginia from England and started moving westward, this was an
> imperial nation, a conquering nation."
> .
> America's imperial behavior continues today. "The United States has bases or
> base rights in 40 countries," he said. "In the assault on Al Qaeda and the
> Taliban, they moved warships from Britain, Japan, Germany, Southern Spain
> and Italy."
> .
> Today, the empire scholars acknowledge that America tends to operate not
> through brute force but through economic, cultural and political means. The
> idea seems to be that it is easier to turn other people into Americans than
> for Americans to make war on them.
> .
> "We are an attractive empire, the one everyone wants to join," Boot said.
> .
> And that, empire enthusiasts say, is the reason to root for a Pax Americana.
> In an anarchic world, with rogue states and terrorist cells, a globally
> dominant United States offers the best hope for peace and stability, they
> argue.
> .
> "There's a positive side to empire," Kaplan said. "It's in some ways the
> most benign form of order." Struggling to get a handle on U.S. foreign
> policy? For starters, try dusting off your Livy and boning up on the Second
> Punic War. Or dip into a good history of 19th-century Britain, paying close
> attention to those dazzling military campaigns in the Middle East - the
> Battle of Omdurman, say, or the Second Afghan War.
> .
> Today, America is no mere superpower or hegemon but a full-blown empire in
> the Roman and British sense. That, at any rate, is the consensus of some of
> the most notable U.S. commentators and scholars.
> .
> "People are now coming out of the closet on the word 'empire,'" said the
> conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. "The fact is no country has been
> as dominant culturally, economically, technologically and militarily in the
> history of the world since the Roman Empire."
> .
> Americans are used to being told - typically by resentful foreigners - that
> they are imperialists. But lately some of the nation's own eminent thinkers
> are embracing the idea. More astonishing, they are using the term with
> approval. From the isolationist right to the imperialist-bashing left, a
> growing number of experts are issuing stirring paeans to American empire.
> .
> The Weekly Standard kicked off the parade early last fall with "The Case for
> American Empire," by The Wall Street Journal's editorial features editor,
> Max Boot. Quoting the title of Patrick Buchanan's last book, "America: A
> Republic, not an Empire," Boot said, "This analysis is exactly backward: the
> Sept. 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and
> ambition; the solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more
> assertive in their implementation."
> .
> Calling for the military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, Boot cited the
> stabilizing effect of 19th-century British rule in the region. "Afghanistan
> and other troubled lands today," he wrote, "cry out for the sort of
> enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident
> Englishmen in jodphurs and pith helmets."
> .
> Since then, the empire idea has caught on. In January, Charles Fairbanks, a
> foreign policy expert at Johns Hopkins University, told an audience at
> Michigan State University that America was "an empire in formation." Last
> month, a Yale University professor, Paul Kennedy - who 10 years ago was
> predicting America's ruin from imperial overreach - went further.
> .
> "Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power," Kennedy wrote in
> the Financial Times of London. "The Pax Britannica was run on the cheap,
> Britain's army was much smaller than European armies and even the Royal Navy
> was equal only to the next two navies - right now all the other navies in
> the world combined could not dent American maritime supremacy. Napoleon's
> France and Philip II's Spain had powerful foes and were part of a multipolar
> system. Charlemagne's empire was merely western European in its stretch. The
> Roman Empire stretched further afield, but there was another great empire in
> Persia and a larger one in China. There is no comparison."
> .
> The most extended statement from the empire camp to date is "Warrior
> Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos" (Random House, 2001), a
> recent book by the journalist Robert Kaplan.
> .
> Arguing that "times have changed less than we think," Kaplan suggests the
> nation's leaders turn to ancient Greek and Roman chroniclers - as well as
> Winston Churchill's 1899 account of the British conquest of the Sudan - for
> helpful hints about how to navigate today's world. He devotes a chapter to
> the Second Punic War ("Rome's victory in the Second Punic War, like
> America's in World War II, made it a universal power") and one to the
> cunning Emperor Tiberius. Granted, the emperor was something of a despot,
> writes Kaplan. Still, he "combined diplomacy with the threat of force to
> preserve a peace that was favorable to Rome."
> .
> If that sounds familiar, you've got the right idea. "Our future leaders
> could do worse than be praised for their tenacity, their penetrating
> intellects and their ability to bring prosperity to distant parts of the
> world under America's soft imperial influence," Kaplan writes. "The more
> successful our foreign policy, the more leverage America will have in the
> world. Thus, the more likely that future historians will look back on
> 21st-century United States as an empire as well as a republic, however
> different from that of Rome and every other empire throughout history."
> .
> Classicists may scoff at the idea that democratic America has much in common
> with the tyrannical Rome of Augustus or Nero. But the empire camp points out
> that however unlikely the comparison, America has often behaved like a
> conquering empire. As Kennedy put it, "From the time the first settlers
> arrived in Virginia from England and started moving westward, this was an
> imperial nation, a conquering nation."
> .
> America's imperial behavior continues today. "The United States has bases or
> base rights in 40 countries," he said. "In the assault on Al Qaeda and the
> Taliban, they moved warships from Britain, Japan, Germany, Southern Spain
> and Italy."
> .
> Today, the empire scholars acknowledge that America tends to operate not
> through brute force but through economic, cultural and political means. The
> idea seems to be that it is easier to turn other people into Americans than
> for Americans to make war on them.
> .
> "We are an attractive empire, the one everyone wants to join," Boot said.
> .
> And that, empire enthusiasts say, is the reason to root for a Pax Americana.
> In an anarchic world, with rogue states and terrorist cells, a globally
> dominant United States offers the best hope for peace and stability, they
> argue.
> .
> "There's a positive side to empire," Kaplan said. "It's in some ways the
> most benign form of order."