FPIP-Retiring the American Empire

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By John Feffer , August 1, 2013 . Originally published in Hankyoreh .

Retiring the American Empire

As people near ret irement age, t hey ent er the twilight years. Sometimes, they rebel against ret irement. They

want to keep working. Theyre not interested in shuffling out of their office never to return. And if theyre in

f act the owner of the workplace, conf licts o f ten ensue. Those who have power rarely want to give up that

power.

The United States is relatively young as a count ry. It is even younger as the leader of the f ree world. But f or

at least three decades, reports have circulated t hat t he American empire has entered its twilight years, perhap

even its dotage.

The U.S. government itself cautioned us to scale back our expectations in the late 1970s when President

Jimmy Carter called on Americans to cut back on consumerism and adjust to an age of diminishing

expectat ions. Then, af ter the Reagan rebound, we were warned by Yale prof essor Paul Kennedy of imperial

overst retch in the late 1980s. The Clinton years saved us f rom bankruptcy and the George W. Bush

administ ration again reasserted American power in the world.

But now, the United States has again sunk into economic malaise and the wars o f the last decade have lef t t h

count ry badly bruised. Historian Alf red McCoy believes the U.S. empire wont make it until 2025. Norwegian

sociologist Johan Galtung pulls the horizon a litt le closer to 2020. Its also possible that the empire already

ended and somebody f orgo t to make the announcement. In 2011, Standard and Poor s removed the United

States f rom its list o f risk-f ree borrowers, putting us below Canada and Australia. That could very well have

been the death knell.

Predicting the end of American empire is complicated by the f act that the United States is no t a t raditional

empire. It does not t ry to maintain territorial contro l over distant lands (though many residents o f Hawaii and

Guam might disagree). It doesnt practice a st raightf orward policy of pillaging overseas possessions f or their

material wealth. It ractices a f orm of consensual ive-and- take with its allies in Euro e and Asia.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8686610/Is-this-the-end-of-American-empire-Its-tempting-to-answer-Yes.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/The-Fall-Empire-Development-Environment/dp/8230004927http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175327/http://fpif.org/retiring-the-american-empire/http://fpif.org/


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But the American Goliath does st raddle the globe militarily, with hundreds and hundreds of military bases and

Special Forces operat ing in 71 countries. The United States remains number one in the dubious categories o f

overall military spending and overall military exports.

Economically, the United States attempts to use the size of its economy to negotiate favorable deals with

smaller countries (think: NAFTA) and of ten def ines its national security priorities by their proximity to valuable

natural resources (think: oil). It wields disproportionate inf luence in international economic organizations like

the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Culturally, Hollywood and the music industry and the television studios all set the standard fo r cool around th

world. English is the world language, and the dollar (f or now) is t he world currency.

This is, in other words, an empire of consent. Other governments ask for our military bases (though often

over the objections of their citizens). Other governments want t o t rade with the United States. No one makes

people watchAvatarorTitanic, the top-grossing movies worldwide. No one f orces consumers at gunpoint t o

eat at McDonalds or drink Coca-Cola. Its t rue that Washington does what it can to tilt the playing f ield

through export subsidies, diplomatic arm-t wist ing, and the occasional show of f orce. And it can be a very lone

world for those countries, like North Korea, that consist ently def y the United States. But this st ill remains a

much more complex set of relationships t han Pax Romana or Pax Britannica.

However one def ines U.S. power, though, a fundamental shif t is clearly taking place in the world. China is slate

to surpass the United States as the worlds largest economy as early as 2016. According to a recent Pew

Research Center po ll, many people already believe that China has done so. Indeed, if measured by purchasing

power, China nosed past the United States a couple years ago.

Its not just China. The other celebrated members o f the BRICS Brazil, India, Russia, South Af rica are mor

quietly building up their economic and geopolitical power. Then theres MIST Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea

and Turkey another group of rising powers. The prolif eration of ot her groupings t he Next 11, CIVETS a

test ifies to the transformation of world power.

Meanwhile, the United States is behaving like a country desperately trying to maintain its edge. It has

proclaimed a Pacif ic pivot even though it doesnt have the resources t o execute any signif icant shif t f rom th

Middle East t o Asia. It has at tempted to maintain unsustainable levels o f military spending at a t ime of serious

budget const raints . It has tried to maintain a surveillance state in the f ace of considerable challenges f rom

both individuals and organizations. Detro it has gone bankrupt; bridges have collapsed in Washington state an

Arizona; t housands in New York and New Jersey are st ill homeless af ter las t year s Hurricane Sandy; gun

violence annually claims tens of thousands of lives.

And on the issues where t he world t ruly needs leaders hip global warming, global poverty, global militarism

the United States is either out to lunch or very much part o f the problem.

An aging chief execut ive who resists calls f or ret irement will of ten whip out his trump card: aprs moi, le delug

In other words, if the top person goes, whatever their vices might be, the organization will collapse because n

one else can provide ef f ective leadership.

The United States f requently resorts to this kind of argument. In Asia, f or instance, the U.S. military bills itself

as the only force that prevents China, Japan, the two Koreas, and the various claimants to the South China

Sea islands f rom tearing out each other s throats . Afghanistan, we are to ld, will fall to the Taliban without U.S

assistance. U.S. drone warfare, worldwide surveillance, and overseas cont ingency operat ions, according to

Washington, are the only things between al-Qaeda and global domination.

Whether the U.S. military and U.S. corporations are a f orce f or stability or instability is a question Ill leave to
http://fpif.org/the_paradoxes_of_the_pacific_pivot/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-14/china-tops-u-s-as-biggest-economy-by-purchasing-power-update1-.htmlhttp://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/poll-us-top-economic-power-19695133http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/03/23/within-three-years-u-s-no-longer-no-1/http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/04/world/la-fg-special-forces-20120505


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f uture debate. But to extend the ret irement metaphor, responsible executives prepare for t heir own eventual

and inevitable retirement by preparing others to f ill the shoes. Empires, o f course, never do this. They simpl

collapse and thereby cause tremendous chaos.

But the United States is no t a typical empire. Perhaps it can dist inguish itself in this one additional category:

legacy.

Imagine if the United States helped to refashion current inst itutions like the United Nations and the World Ban

to ref lect the current geopo litical balance of power instead of the realities of the immediate post -World War II

era. Imagine if the United States helped to create a new global mechanism devoted t o penalizing countries f or

high rates o f military spending and rewarding them for increasing their budgets to address poverty and climate

change. Imagine if the United States sat down with China to talk about how the two leading world economies

can work together on global problems rather than at cross-purposes.

If the United States were to change its global behavior, it might discover that the calls f or early retirement f ad

Then, as a more cooperative international player, America could truly enjoy its imperial twilight in the sure

knowledge that the deluge is no t imminent.

John Feffer is an Open Society fellow studying Eastern Europe. He is on leave from his position as co-director of

Foreign Policy In Focus.

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FPIP-Retiring the American Empire