We’re not an imperial power, as nations such as Japan and Germany can attest. We’re a liberating power, as nations in Europe and Asia can attest as well. President George W. Bush[1]

Perhaps the lesson to be drawn was that if there was ever to be an empire of liberty, as Jefferson envisioned, it could not be America’s alone. An empire of liberty belong[s] to all who fought for it. [W]hether one deplore[s] American ascendancy or believe[s] in its value, reducing it to its imperial dimension alone would surely work to undermine it. Charles S. Maier[2]

The question of an “American Empire” casts an interesting light on present-day debates about the global role of the United States because Americans loath to label themselves as an “imperial” nation. Although the Founding Father Thomas Jefferson once dreamed of an “empire of liberty” stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, “empire” does not leave a good impression on an overwhelming number of Americans. Many hold the view that their country gained its independence from the British Empire under the tyrannical King George III. Following independence, the United States resisted (and at times challenged) European imperialism. America, as former Secretary of Defense quipped, “we don’t do empire.”

Historians, however, are less willing to accept these assertions at face value. In 2002, Andrew Bacevich argued that throughout its history, the United States aimed “to preserve and, where both feasible and conducive to U.S. interests, to expand an American imperium.” According to Bacevich, a commitment to global openness – removing barriers that inhibit the movement of goods, capital, ideas, and people – is central to this imperial strategy. “The ultimate objective,” then, “is the creation of an open and integrated international order based on the principles of democratic capitalism, with the United States as the ultimate guarantor of order and enforcer of norms.”[3]

Bacevich’s work was a new chapter in an enduring debate on the American Empire among historians of U.S. foreign relations. In 1959, William A. Williams published his ground-breaking The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. Revised and re-edited over the years, Williams argued that a “troublesome factor in the economic aspect of American foreign policy [is] the firm conviction, even dogmatic belief, that America’s domestic well-being depends upon such sustained, ever-increasing overseas economic expansion.” As Williams saw it, the danger with this approach was that it ignored the need for reform at home while concurrently blaming foreigners for troubles in the American domestic scene.[4]

This domestic-international link was more clearly demonstrated in Walter LaFeber’s The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898. Originally published in 1963, The New Empire posited that America’s increasing industrial efficiency by the end of the nineteenth century spurred an interest in Washington toward world affairs and overseas markets. By the turn of the twentieth century, the United States was already producing more than the industries of Britain, France, and Germany put together. Because of gross income inequalities, however, the American people had limited means to consume everything that their country produced. As such, the American economic and political elite looked at international markets to remedy the “overproduction crisis” at home.[5]

For American decision-makers, on the other hand, power was just as salient as economic stability throughout the twentieth century. Following World War II, the Truman administration saw it as vital to American interests in creating and preserving an international system that fostered free trade and political harmony among all nations, with the United States at the helm. As the “Grand Alliance” that defeated Nazi Germany broke down in the second half of the 1940s, the Soviet Union came to be identified as the primary menace to the U.S.-led international order. That confrontation gave rise to the Cold War which only ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union.[6]

With the defeat of Iraq in the First Gulf War in 1991 and the declaration of a “new world order” by President George H. W. Bush followed by U.S.-led humanitarian interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, the United States rose to its position of supreme ascendancy in the international scene. (Unpleasant failures in Somalia and Rwanda were largely ignored, of course.)

The accounts by Williams, LaFeber, and Bacevich were extremely critical about America’s role as an “empire.” The recent works of the British historian Niall Ferguson, however, turn the anti-imperialist argument on its head. Having spent an important part of his career on the history of the British Empire in the nineteenth century, Ferguson boldly asserted a few years ago that he is “fundamentally in favor of empire.” “Indeed,” he continued, “I believe that empire is more necessary in the twenty-first century than ever before.”[7] According to Ferguson, only the United States can (and should) fulfill that role.

Ferguson did not debate whether America was an empire or not: with some 752 military installations in more than 130 countries (where significant numbers of American troops are stationed in 65 of these), with a military arsenal that is absolutely unparalleled in the world, America’s role as the empire of our times was sealed.[8]

The question that Ferguson grappled with was whether the United States could sustain its empire the way Britain did throughout the nineteenth century. The United States possesses great “soft” power today just like Britain did, but lacks other British strengths, such as the equivalent of the Indian Civil Service (ICS). ICS administered the British Raj and was staffed by enthusiastic Oxford and Cambridge graduates. (Britain also had enterprises similar to the ICS in other parts of the world.) The ICS staff never exceeded a few thousand and kept India under firm British control at a time when Britain was losing its role as a superpower.

The sense of duty in the nineteenth century that led Britain’s best and brightest into imperial service obviously has no counterpart in the United States today. The top graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Stanford prefer to go to law school, or medical school, or Wall Street. Some, but not many, join the Peace Corps. Niall Ferguson maintains that in order to maintain the American Empire, which could be used to proliferate liberal and democratic institutions in countries that do not have them, America’s youth needs to answer the call of duty.

A major question still needs to be addressed though. If the United States is to retain its “empire” (and as Prof. Ferguson contends, that may indeed be better than the alternatives – anarchy in the international system or dominance by another power that does not even pay lip-service to democracy and human rights the way Washington does), U.S. policy-makers ought to come to grips with the central paradox of ascendancy: how can America sustain its “empire” without appearing “imperialistic” in the eyes of the world? In criticizing U.S. foreign policy, not many lay people clearly define “American imperialism.” However, “American imperialism” is one of those magic words that unites a lot of people who are resentful of U.S. policies. Especially in the Middle East, where British and French imperialism has not left a very positive imprint, flaunting the “e-word” and the “i-word” will do just as damage as the reckless invasion of Iraq and the ensuing tragedy.

The challenge for the succeeding American president in January 2009, then, will be to restore America’s “imperial hold” around the world without appearing imperialistic, militaristic, and unresponsive to the concerns of other countries. The key to (re)building the “empire of liberty” in the twenty-first century will be to emphasize “liberty” (and respect) rather than “empire.”

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Barın Kayaoğlu is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia and a regular contributor to the Journal of Turkish Weekly.

E-mail: kayaoglu@virginia.edu