Iraq lays bare the realities of America’s new role. It commits the U.S. to become the guarantor of peace, stability, democratization, and oil supplies in a combustible region of Islamic peoples stretching from Egypt to Afghanistan. A role once played by the Ottoman Empire, then by the French, and then the British – all painfully. Will American neo-imperialism fare better?
The ever-present danger of overstretch looms. A characteristic delusion of imperial power is to confuse global power with global domination. The Americans may have the former, but can they count on always having the latter? The more they try to rebuild each failed state or appease each anti-American hatred, the more they expose themselves to the overreach that eventually undermined the classical empires of old. Al Qaeda will surely strike a busy and overextended empire in the back.
Vice President Richard Cheney viewed Iraq as a perfect opportunity to prove the “Rumsfeld doctrine” of low-manpower, shock-and-awe aerial warfare, without any need for the U.S. to win allies or for the military to engage in “state-building” tasks.
To be an imperial power today calls for more than the exercise of power. We now know the role requires a judicious mix of force and politics, and, in particular, coalitions of willing nations. Yet Britain is the sole nation with which the U.S. has a trusting relationship on such matters as nuclear deterrent capability, and electronics and signals information. If victories remain elusive, then brains, notably in the exercise of intelligence, will be more important than brawn. The U.S. has close ties with Germany and Japan, but what of the more active cooperation with France and Spain?
The traditional theory suggests that the rise of any imperial power automatically generates counter-alliances. As a result, the dominant power redoubles its efforts to counter the new alliance, until eventually the empire becomes overstretched and collapses. Will the U.S. be the exception and remain immune from history’s harms? Or will its imperial destiny be the same as the other empires: hubris followed by defeat?
