Is the US an Empire?by
Dmitry Chernikov
Here is Max Borders' original essay.
Does the state have ambitions for permanent territorial expansion? As of this writing the U.S. is still in Iraq with its own puppet government to some extent running the show. When it is going to leave no one knows. If popular opinion turns unequivocally against Bush and the war, then we might see a withdrawal, but so far we seem to be in for a "permanent territorial expansion". Does not Borders understand that "For ambitious kings and generalissimos the very existence of a sphere of the individuals' lives not subject to regimentation is a challenge. Princes, governors, and generals are never spontaneously [classically] liberal. They become liberal only when forced to by the citizens."? (Mises, Human Action, p. 324) Does the state install a subsidiary bureaucratic infrastructure (e.g. its own governors, laws)? Would Borders really claim that the laws and governors in Iraq will not be chosen according to the pleasure of the United States government? The whole point of the war was to install a "better", from the point of view of Bush and Co., regime. Of course a "subsidiary bureaucratic infrastructure" will be put in place. Does the state have a highly centralized sovereign authority? Oh, that is right, Iraq, according to our author, is going to be a model free market society, having been straightened out from its primitive ways by the all-good United States. Now who is being naïve? And has Borders bothered to familiarize himself with the new Iraqi constitution? It features such interesting items as "No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.", "Equal opportunity is a right guaranteed to all Iraqis, and the state shall take the necessary steps to achieve this.", and "The accused cannot be tried for the same accusation again after he has been freed unless new evidence appears." Again, Mises: "However illegal and unbearable the oppression, however lofty and noble the motives of the rebels, and however beneficial the consequences of their violent resistance, a revolution is always an illegal act, disintegrating the established order of state and government. ... A revolution is an act of warfare between the citizens, it abolishes the very foundations of legality and is at best restrained by the questionable international customs concerning belligerency." (Ibid., p. 286) What applies to a revolution applies even more to an external invasion. And what applies to "unbearable" oppression applies even more to what was the freest country in the Middle East even with Saddam Hussein until recently. Now Iraq is probably the least free. To paraphrase the favorite trick of our departed "conservative" brethren, if Borders likes the new Iraq so much, why doesn't he just move there? Does the state extract taxes and/or resources from its territories? So all that talk about Iraqi oil being available to pay for the reconstruction of Iraq's economy was, what, for the benefit of the public that did not want their taxes to go to paying for the war? It was all a political legerdemain? At any rate, how about some real loot from Iraq going into my pocket? I demand to benefit at least a little bit from the U.S. non-empire! Otherwise why bother, right? Does the state force its territories to adopt linguistic, cultural or social practices? So the fetish of democracy and the "Western culture" that Iraqis are being forced to adopt, is that a "linguistic, cultural or social practice"? How about the mentality of a military superpower that recognizes no limits to its own war-making other than raw power of its adversaries? Will that be adopted, too? How about the U.S. hypocrisy in wanting "open markets" for everyone but herself? Will Iraqis learn that, as well? Does the state use coercive and/or military means to arriving at 1-5? Yes. 3. Now perhaps we are a better empire than our predecessors. At least we have true libertarians like Lew Rockwell who fight against it. Early empires did not seem to care at all. (Then again, perhaps we just do not know about their heroes.) 4. But suppose now for the sake of argument that the U.S. is not an empire according to Border's definition. So what? How does the fact of the U.S.'s not being like certain empires in the past justify the war on Iraq? Our author would have to show that not being such an empire makes the war OK. He has not done so. Perhaps the U.S. is a new kind of empire, a touchy-feely welfare state empire that supposedly, according to "libertarians" like Borders, does everything for the good of those countries that it conquers. In fact, let us coin a term: a welfare empire that seeks to put every country it likes on permanent dole. Any way you look at it, the U.S. is exactly that. September 13, 2005 Dmitry Chernikov [send him mail] is a graduate student in philosophy at Kent State University. Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com |