I came across an op-ed in the UK periodical The Economist written by British historian Niall Ferguson, who had written a book called Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. He asserts that “the end of America’s empire won’t be peaceful.” Of course you could argue that there never was an “American Empire” in the sense that there was a British Empire. The U.S. did for a relatively short period control countries that it had to invent a phony “crisis” to take from Spain, like the Philippines and Cuba, and today it retains control of territories like Puerto Rico and some islands in the Pacific, mainly as military bases. But unlike the UK, the U.S. was a large country and economic power all its own, and had significant natural resources. It didn’t need to have an “empire” to be powerful, and we can see in countries like China, Germany and Japan that economic power is more important than empire-building.
In its heyday, the British Empire was on paper the largest and most powerful political unit in the world. But it was in many ways a mirage, based largely on British arrogance and conceit. As seen in its military efforts in Afghanistan, if the British army encountered an implacable opposing force, it generally was forced to withdraw. After World War I, the empire retained its territorial reach, yet the resources required to fight the war had depleted its ability to maintain control of it if opposed. The British Empire was only viable so long as its occupation forces did not face significant opposition—or native forces didn’t rebel. While arch-imperialist Winston Churchill decried the loss of most of the empire after World War II, it was inevitable. While there still exists a “commonwealth” in which the queen is technically “head of state,” almost all of these countries are independent and not beholden to the UK in any way save symbolically.
Ferguson quotes Churchill’s assertion that giving up the empire was due to “a refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the state.” Ferguson asserts himself that in the “unholy mess” Joe Biden is supposedly responsible for in Afghanistan, “at least some of Churchill’s critique of interwar Britain (is) uncomfortably familiar.” But it is he who cannot face “uncomfortable facts.” Britain couldn’t continue to extort resources from countries like India, which has by far the largest number of people living in poverty in the world, and the British “system” in fact allowed that to continue in order to keep the population under control, and that is the “system” that India was bequeathed. Britain’s African colonies, despite some them rich in natural resources, were also similarly beyond long-term control because of their expense.
In fact, it was to the credit of leaders who came after Churchill who recognized reality and pulled out of self-destructive occupations. But it could also be argued that it was unnecessary and came far too late. Instead of occupying these countries, the British could have just maintained favorable trade deals with them. Instead, the cost of military occupation saw the British debt eventually rise to 200 percent of its GDP—that is $2 of debt for every $1 the country produced. The U.S. unfortunately didn’t learn any of the lessons it should have learned from British misadventures for the sake of “national pride.” Neither the expensive occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan came anywhere close to “paying” for themselves, especially in the latter, in terms of trade and natural resources. We had no economic interest in being in Afghanistan, and in “nation-building,” almost as less interest as it turned out.
The U.S. didn’t need to be an “empire builder” like Britain. It could have simply established good trade relations and not butted-in the business of other countries. Let’s remember that Osama bin Laden became the bitter enemy of the U.S. when it placed “infidel” troops in the Muslim “holy land” of Saudi Arabia. Let’s remember that Iran became the implacable enemy of this country when it helped overthrow a democratic government in the 1950s and put in place an unpopular shah who maintained power through a Gestapo-like secret service.
The U.S.’ only successes in international occupation was after World War II, when it helped Germany and Japan to reshape their political cultures, made easier because these countries were already economically and culturally-advanced, where political culture could be changed with the help of American-made goods, which obviously was of significant economic benefit to the U.S. But that could only have been for a brief period as these countries’ economies became more self-sufficient and they established their own trade relationships.
China, on the other hand, has shown that keeping focus on its economy is far more beneficial than international adventurism. Yet Ferguson insists that in order for the U.S. to remain a world power, it must redouble its efforts to be a military power rather than simply as an economic power. It must convince China, for example, that it isn’t showing “weakness” by evacuating an expensive, pointless occupation of one country (Afghanistan), but that it is determined to show “strength” in opposing its international aggressions, such as ignoring the territorial claims of Japan and the Philippines in the South China Sea. Ferguson wrote this op-ed before the announcement of the AUKUS pact between the U.S., the UK and Australia, which aims to establish a military offset against potential Chinese military adventurism in the Pacific.
Yet there remains the “what-if.” Did the U.S. really need to be a military “superpower” to achieve its goals, which only led to the creation of huge deficits and impossible global “responsibilities”? Did we have to interfere with other countries’ affairs, if it meant we would experience the threat of international terrorism? There were of course “good wars,” such as World War II, where the U.S. was able to gain not just “moral” ascendency, but substantial economic benefit—at least for a while. But when the U.S. decided to interfere in countries where there was no economic benefit, and in countries whose social and religious culture could not be easily changed to accept a new political culture, there was nothing to be gained from all the expenditure. Ferguson claims that nothing matters unless there is the “threat” of credible military power behind it. But it never needed to come down to this; the “projection” of military power should have been enough.
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