Aiming at the Empire

Targeting Our Provocative Weakness and Unacknowledged Hubris

by Dr. Robert Hickson, Joint Special Operations University

The vulnerabilities of empire—or of the American Hegemony—stunned the citizenry last week and dislocated their habitual sense of Homeland Security. Report has it that some are humbly re-considering Irving Kristol’s earlier approving annunciation of ‘the Emerging American Imperium,’ as well as Richard Haass’ foreign-policy advocacy of an ‘Imperial America.’ (1) The active, and co-ordinated, resentments provoked by our arguably self-vaunting hegemony abroad, or even by our perceptibly peremptory and widely proclaimed ‘sole superpower status’ itself, can no longer be so complacently considered, in any event. But, will the recent, co-ordinated strike on our homeland base and on some of our relied-upon lines of communication prompt us to a deeper self-knowledge, as well? Or will we rather dwell, for example, on our pervasive innocence, at home and abroad, thereby falsifying the deeper actualities?

Real virtues vaunt not themselves, and our vices do forge our fetters. On the premise that hubris itself is a self-blinding, self-sabotaging intellectual and moral disorder (which deteriorates into an even more constricted and subversive moral vice when it has become habitual and deeply ingrained), we must now, as a nation, be especially attentive to our spiritually arrogant, or implicitly self-righteous, over-reaching (which is a characteristic mark of all hubris, as the Greeks tragically knew it). That is to say, we must be deeply alert not just to our own somewhat centrifugal, strategic and ‘constabulary’ operations abroad and to our arguable ‘imperial overstretch’ (in the words of Professor Paul Kennedy), but also to the deeper matters of intellectual and spiritual pride. For, such presumption, like despair, blinds a nation and conduces to joylessness and the corrosion of hopelessness.

As in Thucydides’ haunting depiction of the cruel psychology and stark misuse of language (and power) in the Corcyrean Civil War, as well as during the French Revolution’s merciless ‘Jacobin Democracy’ and intransigently arrogant ‘Democratic Centralism,’ the danger is also, perhaps, now latent in us, and becoming more patent, given our own current and frenetic context of National Security. Is it not likely that, as in Revolutionary France, or Bolshevist Russia, the ‘terrible simplifiers’ will also attempt to energize and ‘emotionalize’ us with ‘newly updated’ Manichean-Dualist categories of absolute good and absolute evil? Who is the Enemy, what are we trying to protect, and why? Will the Enemy be de-personalized and de-humanized and diabolized? Is it so that ‘we’ are the Unalloyed Good and ‘they’ are the Unalloyed Evil? But, to what extent have our own actions and omissions, especially in foreign policy, contributed to the current situation? Are we willing to face this humbling question—even now?

No matter what, we at least must wisely and persistently resist the leaven—and the temptation—of the ‘terrible simplifiers.’ And a temptation wouldn’t be a temptation, if it weren’t attractive. Amidst our jangle of psychological complexities today, and some people’s deeply seething resentments, such self-righteous simplifications—and their reductive emotional focus—are very alluring indeed. Honest self-examination and deep self-knowledge are much less attractive, though indispensable. Will not the incitements and seductions to over-reaction be even greater, moreover, for those whose life is marked by sloth and ennui, by a general sense of meaninglessness and lack of purpose? George Santayana wisely said that ‘A fanatic is he who, losing sight of his aim, redoubles his effort.’ A fanatic gives himself the illusion of partial meaningfulness, amidst his larger universe of meaninglessness.

Two wise and timely quotations—one from Emperor Justinian’s great general, Belisarius, and one from the far-sighted British strategist, B. H. Liddell Hart—may likewise help us to set truly prudent limits for our punitive actions in our current, over-charged strategical context, both in considering the grave issues of ‘war and peace’ and the specific matter of ‘ends and means,’ especially with respect to our foreign and military policy, and our longer-range grand strategy.

Belisarius said, as quoted by Liddell Hart, as follows:

True victory lies in compelling one’s opponent to abandon his purpose with the least possible loss to oneself. If such a result was obtained, there was no real advantage to be gained by winning a battle. (Belisarius, 505-565 AD)(2)

B. H. Liddell Hart himself would also remind us that:

The object in war is a better state of peace—even if only from your point of view. Hence it is essential to conduct war with constant regard to the peace you desire. History shows that gaining military victory is not in itself equivalent to gaining the object of policy. But as most of the thinking about war has been done by the military profession, there has been a very natural tendency to lose sight of the basic national object, and to identify it with the military aim. (B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy: The Indirect Approach 1967 edition, p. 351)(3)

Furthermore, in his book, The Functions of Social Conflict, published during the year of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising against the intrusive Soviet Empire, Lewis Coser said:

Conflicts in which the participants feel that they are merely the representatives of collectivities and groups, fighting not for self but only for the ideals of the group they represent, are likely to be more radical and merciless than those that are fought for personal reasons. Elimination of the personal element [as in impersonal, anonymous modern warfare] tends to make conflicts sharper, in the sense of modifying elements which personal factors would normally introduce.(4)

Likewise, says Coser:

Disappearance of the original enemy [such as the Soviet Empire or Christendom] leads to a search for new enemies so that the group [especially if it is decadent] may continue to engage in conflict, thereby maintaining a structure that it would be in danger of losing were there no longer an enemy [or an ‘enemy image’—Feindbild, in German].(5)

According to an ironical and witty book, The White Flag Principle: How to Lose a War and Why, we further learn that,

As there are no foolproof ways to secure a given enemy, the best guarantee of not being suddenly deprived of an enemy is to make as many enemies as possible.(6)

Such an orientation would also confirm one of the Corollaries of Murphy’s Law, namely: ‘Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.’

Recalling the recent strike on the Pentagon and on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, let us freshly consider what The White Flag Principle itself said, back in 1972, during the contentious Vietnam War:

If we agree that a military disaster may produce a better postwar situation than victory [as was evident in the sad case of the East-European countries after the ‘victory’ of World War II and their occupation by our cruel and merciless ‘Soviet Ally’], then there should be a science of military disasters as there is a science of military victories. Such a science must comprise a theory and a practice. The practice should provide the armies with handbooks and textbooks for the accomplishment of defeats and surrenders. The fact that the big powers of today [such as the United States in 2001] are powerful enough to make absurd any effort by lesser powers to overcome them in the traditional way, makes an alternative to victory the more urgent.(7)

To what extent may the recent, strategically co-ordinated network of anti-U.S. commandos have learned strategic lessons from The White Flag Principle: How to Lose a War and Why, and what may the U.S. also learn, by way of response, so as not to indulge in rash, much less self-sabotaging and myopic reprisals? By way of forestalling our opponents’ diversion-and-deception operations, should we not at least consider how ‘the JUDO PRINCIPLE’ could also now be employed against us? That is to say, if the adversary were ‘to oppose power with weakness, and with a sudden giving way, and to use the enemy’s strength (here the U.S. strength) to put him (here the U.S.A.) out of balance!’ In this context, we are also reminded of the public Congressional testimony of Henry Stimson, F. D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, as well as that timeless (as well as timely) strategic question of ‘Cui Bono?’

The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. (Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, U.S. Congress: Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Pearl Harbor Attack (Washington, DC, 1946)—Part II, p. 5433)

We may also now more usefully consider, in our current situation, a catena and counterpoint of additional insights, in unsuspected combination:

‘This was a declaration of economic war’ [i.e., this freezing of Japanese assets and credits in the United States by F. D. Roosevelt and his team in the early 1940s, and Roosevelt’s further embargo on the export of aviation fuel and machine tools to Japan] (J.F.C. Fuller, The Conduct of War (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1962) p. 270)

‘War—the highest form of struggle in existence…for settling [’DIALECTIC’] contradictions between classes, between nations, between states, or between political groups.’ (Mao Tse-Tung, Strategic Problems of China’s Revolutionary War, (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1954), p. 2)

‘Warre consisteth not in Battell onely, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend is sufficiently known [as in ‘a protracted war’]; and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of Warre; as it is in the nature of Weather’ (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan—1651 (London: Dent, 1914)—Chapter 13)

‘Victory at all costs is strategic humbug.’ (J.F.C. Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1958), p. 312)

‘All history teaches that no enemy is so insignificant as to be despised and neglected by any power, however formidable.’ (Henri Jomini, Summer of the Art of War (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Military Service Publishing Company, 1947), p. 46)

By way of further ironic introduction to his Chapter Three—’Managing a Bad Foreign Policy’—Shimon Tzabor also said:

‘However simple and easy, a military disaster cannot be achieved in one go. There are some necessary preparations as well as other prerequisites. The progress toward the final disaster [or what some American ‘Protestant Christian Zionists’, as they call themselves, now more hopefully call the preparatory, rescuing ‘Rapture’ and then ‘the Armageddon’] must be made carefully, in stages, the first of which is THE ESTABLISHMENT OF BAD FOREIGN POLICY’ (p. 28).

Tzabor then proposes to CLARIFY our understanding, as follows:

‘A bad foreign policy is not the maladministration or the corruption of the ordinary good policy, nor is it a passive policy of doing nothing while waiting for things to happen. A bad foreign policy is an active policy, internally consistent, with its own means and ends’ (p. 29).

In his three-page essay, entitled ‘Empire or Not? A Quiet Debate over U.S. Role’ (Washington Post, 21 August 2001), the Post’s Staff Writer, Thomas E. Ricks, says that ‘in recent years a handful of conservative [?—but conservative of what?] defense intellectuals have begun to argue that the United States is indeed acting in an imperialist fashion—and that it should embrace the role.’

An official of ‘the Project for the New American Century,’ Tom Donnelly, even argues that, in Ricks’ words, ‘the United States is an empire of democracy or liberty’! (Will George Orwell please call home?) ‘The discussion of an American empire’ implies, for Donnelly, that the U.S. government is, even now, actually ‘managing a new empire’ and must thus ‘reshape its military, and its foreign policy, to fit that mission.’

‘It’s discomforting to a lot of Americans,’ says Donnelly, to think ‘more clearly and openly about the necessity of an imperial mission’ (in Rick’s words), and ‘so they use code phrases like ‘America is the sole superpower’’ (Donnelly’s words).

Professor Andrew Bacevich (Colonel-U.S. Army-Retired) of Boston University is, says Ricks, ‘one of Donnelly’s somewhat reluctant allies,’ because ‘Bacevich does not much like the idea [?—as distinct from the reality? Or?] of an imperial America’—unlike the State Department’s Richard Haass—but ‘like it or not, he [Bacevich] says, it is what we have.’

In his interview with Ricks, Bacevich said:

I would prefer a non-imperial America. Shorn of global responsibilities, a global military, and our preposterous expectations of remaking the world in our own image, we would, I think, have a much better chance of keeping faith with the intentions and hopes of the Founders [and the Citizens?].

But, Ricks continues, Bacevich then ‘went on to dismiss that [i.e., his personal preference] as wishful thinking,’ since, ‘rightly or wrongly, maintaining American power globally already has become the unspoken basis of U.S. strategy.’ In the current issue of The National Interest (August 2001), Bacevich explicitly said: ‘In all of American public life there is hardly a single prominent figure who finds fault with the notion of the United States remaining the world’s sole superpower until the end of time,’ and, so, ‘the practical [sic] question is not whether or not we will be a global hegemon—but what sort of hegemon we’ll be.’

‘U.S. Strategy will be muddled,’ as ‘Donnelly and Bacevich argue’—’until American policymakers [name four!] candidly acknowledge they [?] are playing an imperial role on the world stage.’ Moreover, until then, in their view, ‘the American people frequently will be surprised by the resentment the United States meets overseas, and the [U.S.] military will not be given the resources to carry out its [resented ?!] missions.’

’Like many critics of empire’—e.g., Patrick Buchanan, Chalmers Johnson, and Joseph Nye—’Bacevich worries that imperialism abroad could carry a high cost [?] at home.’ Differentiating himself from Donnelly, Bacevich explicitly says: ‘Tom Donnelly sees all of that as really neat, exciting, return-of-the-Raj adventure. I see it as merely unavoidable, and suspect we’ll end up paying a higher cost, morally and materially, than we currently can imagine.’

In addition to Patrick Buchanan’s book, A Republic, Not an Empire and Chalmers Johnson’s book, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, the gentler—or foxier—Liberal dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Joseph Nye, will soon publish ‘another book denouncing the idea [of a harder, military Empire],’ entitled, Soft Power: The Illusion of American Empire. More slyly, Nye says that ‘this hegemonic view’ of ‘the world’s only superpower’ gives ‘too much attention to military might,’ whereas ‘overemphasizing U.S. military strength…ultimately would undercut those less tangible forms of power, and so curtail any effort to maintain an empire.’

Thus, we may reasonably conclude that Nye is not really against an American Empire, but wants a subtler—or sophistic—version of Hegemony. Ricks quotes Nye himself as saying: ‘I think that people who talk about ‘benign hegemony’ and ‘accepting an imperial role’ are focusing too much on one dimension of power and are neglecting the other forms of power—economic and cultural and ideological.’ Nye’s version of ‘Soft Power’ might inspire and seductively allure the American citizenry into a New Kind of Hegemony or Empire, and engage a citizenry who are normally, according to historian Richard Kohn, very reluctant to execute an imperial role. This same Professor of History from the University of North Carolina, in Rick’s words, even ‘argues that most Americans wisely would reject an imperial role if it were put to them openly,’ which is exactly the kind of candor that the blunt Bacevich explicitly recommends! Very soberly, Kohn says, moreover: ‘The American people don’t have the interest, the stomach, or the perseverance to do it [i.e., to execute the imperial mission and its exhausting set of roles]. A few bloody noses and they’ll want to pack it in. They recognize that it would cost us our soul, not to speak of the moral high ground—in our own minds most of all.’ Although Bacevich admirably wants honesty in our debate over national purpose and the military’s role in supporting that purpose, he seems now more ambivalent about our ability ‘to sustain global hegemony.’(8)

Ralph Peters, in his Wall Street Journal article (14 September 2001), entitled ‘Will Our Resolve Last?’, says: ‘I will be surprised if we sustain the resolve to do what is truly necessary [?] to avenge these [11 September] attacks and to prevent—to the extent possible [?]—future terrorist successes,’ like ‘the tragedies [sic] in New York and Washington.’

Prompt to answer his own question, Peters then acutely asks: ‘What would it honestly take to punish the guilty and deter future strikes?…. The best defense is a good offense…. Our abiding task must be to curtail, severely, the liberties of the terrorists. We must go where the terrorists are, and to where their sponsors are, and kill those responsible.’

Will this new Imperial America, however, sustain such a mission, or is Professor Richard Kohn wrong? Yet, even the unfailingly peremptory Peters has his doubts, since all people are, alas, not like him, inasmuch as ‘we clutch at euphemisms that lull us into torpor.’ But, does Peters recognize the implications of his own words? If the U.S. will not likely sustain long-range counter-terrorist missions, to what extent will we be sacrificially ready—able and willing—to ‘sustain global hegemony,’ really, no kidding?

Although Peters’ tough hubris should be savored in its entirety, the reader will also bump into his anemic and bathetic formulations, such as: ‘Perhaps our greatest national weakness is our short attention span.’ Moreover, not only does he fear that, ‘in a surprisingly short time, we will forget our just anger,’ but he also fears that, ‘after the rhetoric fades and billions of dollars have been spent on more inappropriate technologies and studies, we will content ourselves with symbolic [?] gestures while our enemies continue to slaughter us.’

Do the American people, American nation, and American government, such as the obdurate Peters describes them, sound like the kind of strategic culture that could manage an American Empire? I wonder what the Alpha-Male Peters himself would say to the more winsomely candid Bacevich about the practicality (and efficacy) of our Global Hegemony as the ‘World’s Sole Superpower.’ Even as an Inchoate or Incipient Empire, to what extent are we willing and able to exercise with deftness and wisdom the various forms of ‘Hard Power,’ or even ‘Soft Power’?

Aiming at Empire—an American Empire—do we not thereby exacerbate our cumulatively provocative weaknesses and flaunt our hubris, unto our self-subversion? We are supposedly at war. Now what?(9)