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BOOK DETAILS
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TITLE: America's
Inadvertent Empire
AUTHOR: William E. Odom and Robert Dujarric
INFO: Yale University Press, 2004, 285
pp., 30.00
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Wednesday, April 6, 2005
America's liberal empire
When I read this book a few months ago it was mainly for
the information in it and to get an idea of how someone who
had become a valued source on military and foreign affairs
issues - retired Lt. Gen William E. Odom, who headed the
National Security Agency in the 1980s and has taught at
Georgetown and Yale - saw the big picture.
Thumbing through it for this review, I was more impressed
than ever at the amount of knowledge and striking insights
Gen. Odom and his co-author, a Council on Foreign Relations
Hitachi fellow, have crammed into it. The book is a
multidisciplinary tour de force, incorporating and integrating
considerable recent scholarship in history, military studies,
economics, sociology and political science in service of a
thesis that should get most readers to look at their country
in a new light.
Briefly, the thesis is this: The United States is not just
the sole superpower and an economic dynamo (without which the
superpower status would disappear quickly). By responding to
crises and opportunities rather than by design it has evolved
into a new kind of empire, a complex and mostly voluntary (as
opposed to colonial-oriented) empire that "comprises 17
percent of the world's population but controls about70 percent
of the gross world product. Because nearly all of the
developed countries are included, the network's share of
science, technology, and corporate resources is closer to 90
percent of the world's total."
The key to understanding this phenomenon is that this is
what the authors call a liberal empire (liberal "in [the]
original European definition of limited state power and the
primacy of individual rights" or alternatively "the
proposition that individuals have rights, which no state can
justly abridge.")
Because it consists of countries that have experienced a
liberal constitutional revolution - a rarity in the world - in
which the state is a third-party enforcer of uniform rules
rather than the tool of private interests, is bound by its own
laws, and generally (though not absolutely) respects private
property rights, it attracts adherents without conquest and
has a chance to last a good long time.
The main thing that could derail this hegemony (which the
authors see as largely beneficial) is for American leaders to
misunderstand that it is liberal principles that give it its
unique power, especially the ability to maintain economic
growth.
A key distinction the authors insist on is liberalism vs.
democracy. Liberalism, embodied in the Declaration as an
insistence on inalienable rights, is the key American
accomplishment. The founders valued it over democracy and even
feared the "tyranny of the majority" democracy could
bring.
Today, when most Americans speak of democracy they probably
mean liberal democracy - a regime with the rule of law that
mostly respects individual rights - but the term and the
understanding are disappearing from popular usage.
George W. Bush doesn't seem to understand that the
important feature of constitutional societies is the rule of
law - which takes generations to establish and might not
happen in many countries - rather than regular elections,
which are often the prelude to arbitrary power.
Most of thebook consists of explaining why U.S dominance
has developed - going beyond the obvious likemilitary prowess
and technology to include demographic trends, economic
performance, university excellence, science leadership, and
media and mass culture gaps - and why it is likely to persist.
They believe the "realist" scenario - other powers combining
to provide a countervailing force to balance American power -
is unlikely because it makes more sense to play ball with
America (even while complaining, chafing and occasionally
influencing the behemoth) than to oppose it.
If U.S. leaders don't understand the importance of liberty
to their dominance and start acting like empires of old - see
Iraq - however, they could undermine American power from
within. I don't buy everything in the book - but it is
compelling and conceptually pathbreaking thinking.
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