Is Some Form Of Empire Inevitable?
Glenn Greenwald thinks the US really is exceptional:
The idea that the U.S. can, should and must be, more or less, in a state of permanent war, and can start wars in a whole host of circumstances having nothing to do with defending the country from an attack or imminent attack, is as close to an unchallengeable, bipartisan article of faith as it gets. We’re a country that fights wars and uses military force in far more places and for far broader reasons than any other country in the world, by far. Again, regardless of one’s views about whether our wars are really Good and Just — even if one believes that what we drop on other countries are Good and Loving Freedom Bombs — it’s still just a fact that no country views military action as a more appropriate response in more situations than the U.S. does.
I guess. But it seems impossible to divorce the fact of the US frequently intervening militarily from the fact that the US is the world’s biggest country, with the largest military and, since 1945, has basically taken on the role of securer of the world order. This isn’t to excuse the US or view its actions as inevitable, but just to show that large countries, superpowers, and especially hyperpowers, tend to intervene all over the place. Throughout history, it’s hard to think of a large, economically powerful state that wasn’t acting in a similar manner to the US today.
Of course, Britain of the mid-to-late 19th century, Napoleonic France, 15th century Holy Roman Empire, 16th century Spain and any other large country couldn’t intervene the same way the US can now, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t want to, or that they didn’t have exceptionally large military capacities for their time. The one counterexample I can think of is Ming China after the 1371 Hai jin edict, which banned shipping and foreign exploration. China had the world’s largest GDP at the time, and yet it seemed to volunatirly withdraw itself from exploration, intervention and colonialization. But even that example doesn’t quite work. The Han Chinese had already colonized and conquered all of mainland China, which they considered to be the only part of the world worth having.
Also, if you look at military expenditures throughout history, among European states, they’ve been remarkably high. From 1685 to 1813, England’s defense spending never dipped below 55 percent of the total budget (In the US, it’s about 40-50 percent of the discretionary budget). The single Dutch state of Groningen had defense spending over 80% of the total budget for most of the 17th and 18th centuries. During World War I, France and Germany had defense spending at 77 and 91 percent of their total budget. It goes without saying that the Great War isn’t comparable with the current situation the US finds itself in, but it goes to show that high levels of defense spending and runaway militarism are hardly novel, or unique to the United States. What is novel is the United States’ position in the world vis a vis other powers. This makes it so other countries can’t do the types of interventions they would otherwise want to do (just look at France in Africa), so it appears that the US is totally unique. We’re not.
