I concede that the USA is an empire. Not just HAS and empire but IS an empire to the core. I mean the people who won our colonial revolution certainly weren’t indigenous, right?

But you have only a rudimentary understanding of what makes American exceptionalism tick.

For example, unlike China and Russia and all the other empires you mention, we don’t have a “core” territory. All we have is what we “settled”.

And what settles things like losing a war?

Doesn’t this make the USA “exceptional”. What other countries claim nothing but a “voluntary” history?

No pretense of ancient history and ties to the land or blood.

Also, American exceptionalism is much more tied to not having an emperor than not being an empire.

Take Iraq. We’re concerned about Bush exceeding his authority than that we invaded.

Reread my initial post (#155) or take a look at my extended version on my group blog. Informal empires operate in a kind of gray zone between hegemony and formal empire. Influence isn’t sufficient for informal empire, but will lead to results in countries that would be different in the absence of such influence. Indirect rule – which does take us into the domain of informal empire – also produces changes in a periphery from its “natural course” (if there is such a thing).

We know, I think, that Soviet control over Eastern Europe was imperial because we have evidence from “off the path” behavior. When the Hungarians or Czechs deviated too much, they got punished with overwhelming coercive force. When Gorbachev decided to abandon the regimes, they fell apart. We can infer from such events decent answers to the counterfactual questions raised by the question “hegemony or informal empire”?

I agree, moreover, that the US once did exert imperial control over Japan (I illustrated this point on my blog post with the first page of the US policy of occupation), but I’m very skeptical of claiming that such a relationship exists now. I guess we’d have our best evidence if the Japanese tried to do something that ran totally against the “bargain,” and the US reacted with some sort of very costly stick. The problem, though, as I think you isolate well, is that an informal empire that ran very well would (1) generate consent from the governed and (2) involve far more subtle uses of power. So I default back to the need for careful analysis using a variety of different metrics.

One thing I will add, however, is that there’s an implicit issue here: does it matter whether the US is more like an informal empire or a hegemon vis-a-vis a particular lesser power? Very little of the existing literature convinces me that it makes any difference for questions of grand strategy or policy, although I’ve been trying to argue that there is a great deal at stake in my own work. In this respect, what matters is what dynamics we think flow from the distinction, and whether those dynamics help us to understand contemporary politics.

…After its defeat in World War II, Japan recovered to become an economic power and a staunch ally of the US. While the emperor retains his throne as a symbol of national unity, actual power rests in networks of powerful politicians, bureaucrats, and business executives.

Does this all look like something that happens naturally? If so, then who’s to say that Honecker’s regime in East Germany wasn’t a natural expression of the will of the East-German people?

How is this the extent? The Soviet military stationed in Eastern Europe had to actually come out and kill some Hungarians and Czechs only a couple times in 45 years. 99.9% of the time having military there was enough to keep the locals in check. So, why should we assume that the purpose of the basing agreements is just to have basing agreements? That’s not logical. The purpose is to subjugate, to maintain hegemony, to project power. Is it not obvious?

One argument is that the basing agreements themselves create elements of empire (e.g., Chalmers Johnson’s claim in Blowback). Countries like Japan and the ROK clearly give up elements of sovereignty with respect to those bases, a fact that the people of Okinawa understand too well. In that sense, America does have a “Leasehold Empire” (to use C.T. Sander’s phrase).

On the other hand, if this is the extent of the exercise of “indirect rule” than we aren’t looking at much of an empire. Sanders argues that the “Leasehold Empire” is qualitatively different, in that the relationship is largely voluntary and that the US generally shows a willingness to renegotiate basing arrangements in favorable terms.

So, in the end, I would say that basing agreements do suggest some dimensions of empire, but I’m not convinced that, in the absence of further investigation into the nature and implications of overseas bases, “empire” is the best analytic category to understand these relationships.

The “you can’t be serious” part didn’t help.

So, yes, Abb1, I am serious. A useful definition of empire is: “(1) heterogeneous subordinate political communities, (2) rule through intermediaries who enjoy significant-but not unlimited-lattitude over rule-making and enforcement within a subordinate political community, and (3) a core-periphery structure characterized by limited political ties between peripheries.”

Sometimes the presence of military forces indicates an imperial relationship; sometimes it just indicates an alliance. As in the case of Germany and the United States. Of course, if you can convince me that the U.S. restricts German foreign and domestic policies, and that the threat of using the military forces stationed in Germany provides the force behind those restrictions, then I’ll say that you’ve indeed found a case where bases indicate empire. On the other hand, if you have no evidence that such is the case, then I’ll have to conclude that you’re not being serious.

Everybody can understand every one of these and million other examples – until the military in question is the US military. Then for some reason everyone finds a million caveats: what about Germany? yeah, but what about all those (alleged) good intentions?

C’mon people, you can’t be serious. Bases=Empire, simple as that.

Don’t know enough about the actual history, so I’ll just do what everyone else does and side with Thucydides :-). Imperialist and empire.

1) Some of the colonies.
2) The transformation of the Delian League.

Change the timeframe and your mileage will vary on both issues.

Ah, yes, I forgot the pro-invasion quick step. First: ‘no of course we have no intentions of having a long term military presence in Iraq, idea never crossed our mind, what, PERMANENT? Never, you must be a conspiracy theorist/communist/islamo-fascist.’

And then: ‘But what’s wrong with having a long term military presence in Iraq anyway? We did it in Germany…..’

Then: ‘But of course we have no intention of having a long term….’ etc. etc. etc.

Repeat until dead.

Do you think Germany is a democracy?

In the long term, of course, it would seem to be difficult to maintain a democratic culture and an Empire. Famously, the attempt to combine the two failed in ancient Rome. And the UK was eventually forced to lose its colonies (mainly by the colonies themselves). So it may well be that eventually the US will be forced out of Iraq (finding the conflict between neo-colonialism and keeping a democratic culture too difficult to resolve), but the extent to which the US can continue to hold onto Iraq (and Afghanistan) is precisely the issue, is it not?

Incidentally, Iraq is now, so we are told, a democracy, and yet there are no signs of a UK or US withdrawal yet….(nor in Afghanistan either)…strange, don’t you think?