Andrew Bacevich ( The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War ) writes, “Americans in our time have fallen prey to militarism, manifesting itself in a romanticized view of soldiers, a tendency to see military power as the truest measure of national greatness, and outsized expectations regarding the efficacy of force. To a degree without precedent in U.S. history, Americans have come to define the nation’s strength and well-being in terms of military preparedness, military action, and the... Read more

Howe, again, points out that the most obvious “imperial” project in US history is the one we take most for granted, the conquest of the American continent: “it is the internal expansion of the continental USA, across the intervening hundred years, which evokes the most direct parallels with empire-building elsewhere. Exterminatory war, ‘freelance’ expansionism by adventurers, farmers, prospectors, and religious fanatics, ecological devastation, and drawing up of oft-broken treaties and protectorates, experiments in Indirect Rule and drives for cultural assimilation... Read more

Stephen Howe ( Empire: A Very Short Introduction ) admits that nationalists in the Austro-Hungarian empire “scorned it as the ‘prison-house of nations,” and that to the intellectuals of Vienna, the empire was “a senile absurdity.” Still, “the very existence of those nationalist, cultural, and intellectual movements, able to express their damning criticisms with largely unrestricted freedom, hints at a more positive story.” The empire’s “efforts at achieving peaceful coexistence through a pluralist, ‘multicultural’ policy (for instance sponsoring education in... Read more

Travis Kroeker ( Journal of Religious Ethics , 2005) argues that Yoder is closer to Augustine than his dismissal of Augustine as a “Constantinianism” implies: “Augustine’s theological corpus is nothing if not exegetical and historical, though, of course, it is also true that Augustine freely appropriates the ‘gold and silver and clothing’ of the pagan philosophers (and especially the Platonists) in order to put to use those resources in the service of the caritas of the messianic body ( On... Read more

Motyl offers several responses to Ferguson’s advocacy of liberal empire as a way of spreading democratic institutions, capitalist economies, freedom, and Western culture. First, he notes that liberal empires that promote free trade and democracy might be tied to a particular historical moment: “it is an unwarranted leap in logic to conclude from the British example that all liberal empires can promote free trade and democratic institutions. For all we know, the initial conditions underpinning British success may no longer... Read more

Alexander Motyl attempts to discern the definition of empire implicit in Niall Ferguson’s Empire : “ As Ferguson does not even bother to define the concept, at most we can surmise from his discussion of British and American power that empire entails ‘actually ruling a colony’ by means of ‘colonial structures.’ Ruling stands in sharp contrast to the ‘American approach [which] has too often been to fire some shells, march in, hold elections and then get the hell out—until the... Read more