The Un-American Empire

I recently saw a statement that said “900 (military) bases in 153 countries is not fighting for your freedom. It is an empire.” While most Americans wouldn’t think of the United States as such, the evidence is hard to dispute. In 2012, the U.S. spent $646 billion on “defense”, 41% of  the combined defense spending of every country in the entire world. To put that in perspective, the U.S. spent nearly seven times as much as the next closest country, China.

What does the U.S. gain by spending so much on its military? Well, there are those those 900 bases in 153 countries. We also get decade-long ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We get constant military intervention and preparation for intervention in countries like Libya, Syria and Iran. We get a drone program that indiscriminately bombs other countries and spies on its own citizens at home. We get a heightened surveillance state. We get incessant meddling in revolutions and counterrevolutions across the globe.

If this is not empire, then what is? Would we hesitate to condemn these as the actions of an empire if they were taken by Russia, China or Iran? That question answers itself. It must be admitted, then, that if this kind of foreign policy is imperial for other countries, it doesn’t magically transform into benevolent leadership just because the U.S. does it.

Despite this, many Americans, especially on the right, not only defend empire, but vehemently attack anti-imperialism an un-American. These defenses notwithstanding, the truth is that there is little that is more antithetical to the principles of the American Revolution than empire, of which America’s founders were extremely critical along with its concomitant institutions, continual war and standing armies.

James Madison made the marquee argument against empire when he said,

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too…all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people.”

He concluded, “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

Madison was under no delusions about the root of politicians’ desires for war. He observed, “The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”

Historian Kevin Gutzman, a prominent Madison biographer has stated that Madison and many of his contemporaries

“…warned that standing armies led to endless wars, and that endless war meant more authority in the central government, more power in the Executive Branch, more government secrecy, more government borrowing, higher taxes, more concentration of wealth, dead soldiers, and, in short, the distortion of republican government into something very different.”

The founding generation had a very different vision for the country’s foreign relations. In his farewell address, George Washington advised his countrymen about what a truly American foreign policy should be:

“Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and…great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.”

In other words, eschew empire, mind our own business and display an example of peace and freedom to the rest of the world. The failure of nations to do this has had dire consequences throughout history. As Patrick Henry cautioned, “Those nations who have gone in search of grandeur, power and splendor, have…been the victims of their own folly. While they acquired those visionary blessings, they lost their freedom.”