-Caveat Lector- http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/qanda/article.jsp?content=20030721_62715_6 2715
Q and A July 21, 2003 'THE PARADOX OF U.S. POWER' British historian Niall Ferguson explains how an imperial America could benefit the world NIALL FERGUSON has made a healthy career out of turning history on its ear. The 39-year-old author and academic -- he's a professor of financial history at New York University's Stern School of Business and senior research fellow at Oxford University -- has produced six books on such diverse subjects as the First World War and the Rothschild business empire. Ferguson's latest book, Empire, examines the dawn and sunset of England's global ambitions, arguing that Britannia's rule wasn't so bad. He recently spoke with Maclean's National Correspondent Jonathon Gatehouse about Britain's past and the lessons for America's future. Around the world, the level of anti-Americanism has never been higher, but it seems to matter less than ever before. Why is that? Being liked or being loved isn't really an integral part of being a successful great power, or indeed a successful empire. You could point to the British experience 100 years ago, and ask how popular were they? These things only matter if they translate themselves into a meaningful threat. And at the moment, the strategic threat posed by the hate-filled antagonists of the U.S. -- whether they be in the Middle East or Western Europe -- is much less than the strategic threat once posed by the Soviet Union, which was ideologically hostile to the U.S. and capitalism. Is there any connection between the slow unravelling of the British Empire over the first half of the 20th century and the growing level of resentment its subjects felt? I don't think so. To understand the decline of British power you need to look at Britain's relative economic decline, but more importantly at Britain's strategic failure to deter the biggest threat to her power -- Germany. The obvious response to that threat prior to 1914 was to create a large and credible land force that would deter the Germans from going to war. The British failed to do that. The nationalist movements that arose in the British Empire, in Egypt and India for example, needed Britain to suffer a massive strategic setback and serious economic weakness before they could really make headway. So from an American point of view, being unpopular isn't that big a deal, unless you are strategically or economically weak. And so far, it's only really manifested itself in a very small number of terrorist attacks -- including the spectacular events of Sept. 11. There has been concern recently about the deficit and debt problem facing the U.S. Do you see that as a threat to their empire? Yes. I think the American fiscal position gives cause for long-term concern because, when you calculate the present value of all the liabilities of the social security and Medicaid system, it exceeds future revenues by $US44 trillion. At some point in the foreseeable future there will be a crisis in the American welfare system that will lead to a cancellation of social programs currently in existence. The irony about American overstretch will be that it's not due to the cost of intervening in Afghanistan, Iraq or anyplace else. It's domestic policies. You argue that the U.S. is the only country capable of righting the ills of the world. What problems should America fix? One that springs to mind is the extreme poverty in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia and Latin America. I think one ought to emphasize how many of the world's poor are poor not because they're exploited by wicked multinationals or hurt by the policies of the International Monetary Fund, but because they're governed by corrupt dictators. The only agency that exists on paper to address these problems through interventions against lawless regimes is the UN. But the UN's resources are very limited, and most of its efforts at peacemaking have been unsuccessful. The argument I've tried to make is that, unless the U.S. commits to intervening against lawless regimes, nothing is going to change. That's the paradox of American power -- great potential, but culturally, politically and fiscally unlikely to sustain its engagement with strategically crucial parts of the world. Your book also talks about the good points of the British Empire. Are there lessons the U.S. should be learning from its ally's experiences? It's particularly striking in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, both countries the British tried to anglicize and transform politically in the 19th and 20th centuries. To my mind the most obvious lessons are in nation-building -- creating liberal regimes based on the free market and the rule of law. These were British objectives 100 years ago -- there's nothing novel about talking the language of liberty while at the same time using military force. But the way the British did it was far more sophisticated than the U.S. seems to be going about it today. The most important difference today is the real absence of a civilian administration, or an ally capable of constructing institutions in the ruins of a dictatorship like Saddam Hussein's. The U.S. might be terribly good at overthrowing bad regimes like the Taliban or the Baath party, but they're clueless when it comes to creating viable alternatives. People around the world wear Nike running shoes and drink Coca-Cola. Why is there such a gap between America's commercial power and its moral influence? This is the missing link in this imperial project. You have an American military presence in two-thirds of the world's countries. And you have an American commercial presence in probably even more of the world. But there's a relatively limited exposure to what I would call American civic culture; there's an absence of credible representatives of civilian power. That's a problem because it means that people simply see the running shoes and the Marines and come to the conclusion that American power is a combination of corporate and military might. But America is based on the rule of law, and is, in fact, one of the most successful experiments in representative government of all time. That's the thing that many people abroad don't see and aren't aware of. There's a bad need for the Americans to get it right somewhere, to remind people that they do government, as well as war and business. Do you think people have a natural yearning for imperialism? It's a curious feature of our own age that economic globalization has actually been accompanied by growing political fragmentation -- the creation of a plethora of new political entities, many of which don't work terribly well. So I don't think imperialism or empire is a universal desideratum in human culture. In many ways the problem at the moment seems to be that nobody wants to run an empire anymore, least of all the United States, who are best capable of carrying it out. Copyright by Rogers Media Inc. May not be reprinted or republished without permission. "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to believe." www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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