The Death of Empires

Nexon and Wright define unipolarity, hegemony, and imperial orders in the context of international relations. To define these positions within the world order, they examine the ties between the predominant power and the lesser power. In an imperial rule, the central authority exercises power through the local intermediary (which represents the central authority) in a formal manner, which in turn exercises power over the local interest keeping every imperial periphery mutually exclusive so as to prevent a coalescing of power to overthrow the central authority. The authors argue that the United States is not an empire, although it may have tendencies of an empire such as the occupation and rule of Iraq. In today’s world it is difficult to find any single country that fits a clear cut definition of its standing in the international community. I agree with the authors that even though the United States may have empirical tendencies in the international community, the country is nowhere near an empire since the end of the Marshall Doctrine of Theodore Roosevelt.

In the case of Iraq some authors may claim that Iraq is a semi autonomous protectorate of the US, but the Iraqi government has no choice but to comply, because the consequences of non compliance are too high which is effectively a relationship between an empire and ruled. In the case of Iraq, the US has appointed representatives in Iraq that acts as an intermediary within the country to represent the interest of the US (the CPA), and the US has unique contracts with Iraq (heterogeneous). But this case of US empirical rule is not typical, mostly due to the fact that in today’s day and age it is nearly impossible to isolate a country to ‘divide and rule” that is so critical with the creation of an empire. Furthermore, the US does not have semi autonomous representative that report back to the US government as a central authority. According to the authors the height of American imperialism was the Spanish-American war in 1898, after which the US adopted a mostly isolationist stance until WWI and WWII (I believe that the height was the enactment of the Monroe Doctrine by Teddy Roosevelt and the influence of Panama and other South and Central American countries in that era. The United States was reluctant to enter into WWI and WWII due to a non interventionist belief possibly because of a sluggish economy, but when the US did enter the war it was with a coalition. We see in this era the US did not act in the capacity of an empire but the world was more like a hegemonic constitutional order (if we ignore the cold war that started immediately with the end of WWII and the bi-polar tension of the world) that acted through the United Nations.

In the post world war world where Europe was rebuilding, we see the US interfering in European politics most visibly through the Marshall Plan, but this interference did not translate to empirical rule. One could argue that this was a heterogeneous contract with various European states, but the intent was to rebuild the world economy through loans and mass removal of trade barriers, not to colonize European states by ruling through intermediaries. Most importantly, international cooperation was encouraged and political ties among the peripheries were not seen as a threat to US power. This cooperation among the different states would fly in the face of any empire, because empires by nature must maintain a “cross periphery divide and rule” to prevent uprisings.  According to the authors, the mixed bag powers held by countries and the informal ties closely resembles this picture. The UN played the pivotal role of the institutional site that where countries gave and received formal authority, which makes the hegemonic order a hegemonic constitutional order. This bipolar (with Russia and US being in competition for power) and hegemonic constitutional order continued until the end of the cold war when the world arguably shifted to a constitutional order. Seeing this through the lens of human history, this is a significant shift from when the world was covered by empires.

Since the end of WWII the US has engaged in imperial activities the Bay of Pigs, the War on Drugs (which includes interfering in sovereign South and Central American nations), proxy wars with Russia (Afghanistan for example), bur these actions were not performed through local intermediaries on behalf of the US and more importantly these countries were not cutoff from the rest of the world in an increasingly globalized world. The only exceptions to US not exercising full imperial power are the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. In these instances legitimacy in the international community and domestically (support for the wars) was tarnished because of the distribution of violent images. This free flow of information makes it nearly impossible to isolate a country and also keep legitimacy of empirical rule. Finally, no matter how the US interfered in other countries it was done through the government that previously existed.