Message to the Empire

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, spoke for a lot of people earlier today when he attacked American foreign policy. According to news reports, he accused the United States of "an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations" . He went on to say that not only did the US overstep its national borders "in every way", but also that the situation was very dangerous because "nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law."

Putin did not comment on American efforts in Afghanistan or Iraq, but he did comment on the expansion of NATO and American plans to place a missile defense system in the Soviet Union's former Warsaw Pact vassal states, so it is clear that Russia, at least, is feeling hemmed in by the American empire. One has to wonder how China -- the next world superpower and the not-so-secret rival in the Bush regime's mind -- views the situation. Somehow, I doubt they would disagree.

Americans, of course, disagree with Putin's assessment. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declined to comment, but Senator (and presidential candidate) Joe Lieberman felt Putin was provocative as well as inaccurate. "Even our involvement in Iraq, certainly Afghanistan, is pursuant to United Nations resolutions," he is quoted as saying. This is certainly an optimistic interpretation of history, not to mention a surprising commitment to international organizations considering the propensity of the United States to thumb its nose at any and all forms of international agreements over the past decade.

Perhaps now would be a good time to remind America's political elite of the inevitable fate of empires, a fate that was so eloquently summarized by Chalmers Johnson in The Sorrows of Empire:

"Empires do not last, and their ends are usually unpleasant. Americans like me, born before World War II, have personal knowledge -- in some cases, personal experience -- of the collapse of at least six empires: those of Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the Soviet Union. If one includes all the twentieth century, three more major empires came tumbling down -- the Chinese, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman. A combination of imperial overstretch, rigid economic institutions, and an inability to reform weakened all these empires, leaving them fatally vulnerable in the face of disastrous wars, many of which the empires themselves invited. There is no reason to think that an American empire will not go the same way -- and for the same reasons."

Perhaps it is too soon to write the obituary of the American Empire. However, as Putin's remarks illustrate, the world's patience with America's imperial hubris is wearing pretty thin.

The Sorrows of Empire - Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic
Chalmers Johnson
Henry Holt & Company, New York City, 2004
ISBN: 0-8050-7004-4
Page 310