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Weight of our empire crushes domestic freedom
By Steve Lewis
slewis42@mscd.edu

America is an empire. Its militarism invites resentment and violent opposition, and its maintenance comes at a cost for both the economy and democratic ideals we purport to hold dear.

One does not have to be a knee-jerk liberal to discern the faintest glimmer of truth contained within Chalmers Johnson’s premises of America’s foreign policies. Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Empire, the third installment of the University of California professor’s trilogy exploring American foreign policy and its consequences, sets out Johnson’s apocalyptic vision for our fair nation, but will the outcome be as dire as he predicts?

As a Scot growing up in Europe, I never considered the American military umbrella to be an imperial one. As time went by my impression evolved. America was an empire, but an accidental and fundamentally benevolent empire.

For those still unwilling to swallow the tag of empire, consider the following figures from the Department of Defense in 2003. The United States owns or rents 702 overseas military bases, not including such oases of peace as Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar and Uzbekistan. The 2007 post-Iraq figure will be higher. In contrast, there are zero foreign military bases in America. Johnson’s contention is that the modern empire is one of garrisons or bases rather than territory and that the American Empire is as real as its Roman and British predecessors. Who in their right mind could disagree?

To what extent, though, does America’s militarism invite resentment and violent opposition? Take your pick: Taliban, Saddam and radical Islam all grew stronger in reaction to, with the support of and despite American hegemony. Terrorism in the ’70s, be it the IRA, the Baader-Meinhof or the Red Brigade, however loathsome, seems positively quaint compared to the global variants we fear today.

Johnson’s final point is the cost of empire. The financial aspect is obvious: bases, bullets, bombs, etc. Supplements and casualties pile up while universal healthcare, education, infrastructure and other pressing domestic concerns are sacrificed on the altar of what President Eisenhower warned would become a self-perpetuating military-industrial complex.

Johnson also believes it will cost us our own democracy. It was Hannah Arendt who said successful imperialism requires domestic tyranny. If the Patriot Act, the denial of due process, domestic wiretapping, the disdain for the Geneva Conventions and the determinedly isolationist approach to international treaties say anything, they demand less democracy. By contrast, when an exhausted Britain contemplated its post-World War II future, it chose to relinquish its empire rather than its democracy. Despite violence in Kenya and India, the decolonization process was relatively peaceful. The same could be true for America’s demilitarization process. Or do we prefer emperors, Huns and Visigoths?