Governing the Empire

by Mary

Bush must have found Robert Kaplan's latest article in the Atlantic Monthly quite welcome. Although the article is not online, an interview with Kaplan can be found here.

In "Supremacy by Stealth," his cover story for the July/August Atlantic, Robert D. Kaplan states simply that we have gotten ourselves into the business of empire. (He leaves it to others to debate the necessity or morality of such a move.) Concentrating on empire's practical side, he asks, How do we manage this world?

In order to answer that question, Kaplan has spent much of his time over the past several years traveling with the U.S. military, observing the implementation of American power on a day to day basis by Special Forces troops who work on the ground in countries around the globe. Based partly on these extensive travels, Kaplan has come up with a list of "Rules for Managing the World":

1. Produce More Joppolos
2. Stay on the Move
3. Emulate Second-Century Rome
4. Use the Military to Promote Democracy
5. Be Light and Lethal
6. Bring Back the Old Rules
7. Remember the Philippines
8. The Mission is Everything
9. Fight on Every Front
10. Speak Victorian, Think Pagan

In essence, these rules are an articulation of power on a global scale. Have the best men possible on the ground; be everywhere; use American citizens - foreign and native born; use the military to further democracy; do a lot with a little; covert means and dabbling in moral ambiguity are sometimes necessary; a country united under one name may need more than one policy; the mission cannot be forgotten or compromised; sell the product; be idealistic, but know that realism wins the day.

For now, Kaplan argues that maintaining American pre-eminence is paramount - both for the sake of other countries and for our own. He cautions, however, that the American empire is not meant to last forever. We are here as a self-interested but liberal power, shepherding the world along only until a "kind of civil society for the world" exists.

Jonathan Schell found the article to be quite unsettling. [Schell's review in the July 7th issue of the Nation is also not online.]

Because Kaplan is a serious reporter, his recommendations deserve to be taken seriously -- the more so as they closely parallel the actual policies of the Bush Administration. That America now "possesses a global empire," he says, is a given -- a "cliche" -- and the only real question is how it should be run, which is to say how the United States should "manage an unruly world." ... Kaplan is an unapologetic imperialist. He frankly advocates a policy of American global domination that others leave between the lines.

There is, Kaplan admits, a contradiction between the democratic princiiples the United States professes and the empire it seeks. The solution, he says, must be deception -- the "stealth" of his article's title. The United States will have to operate "in the shadows and behind closed doors." The CIA and Special Forces will play key roles. They should not bother too much with instructions from Washington.

---- snip ----

The media, too, must be neutralized. Their problem is that they have a way of "undermining political authority." The solution is to improve state propaganda: "Just as leading companies harvest the best former government officials, our government will have to find the budget and the will to hire away the best communicators for this marketing effort."

---- snip ----

In one respect, at least, Kaplan departs from current Administration policy. He prefers small, clandestine operations to large-scale ones like the Iraq war. The latter may become a "rallying point around with lonely and alienated people in a global mass society can define themselves through an uplifting group identity." Better to keep public opinion "as divided as possible."

Kaplan recommends studying the policies of the Roman emperors Trajan and Hadrian.

He believes that the UN has no relevance: the Security Council "represents an antiquated power arrangement unreflective of the latest wave of U.S. military modernization in both tactics and weaponry."

Kaplan says that the model for running the world should be "U.S. policy in Latin America over the past several decades." He discusses our involvement in Colombia where despite the fact that the Congress has specified that a very limited force of 400 "advisors" can be deployed, by using private companies, a large contingent of mercenaries are now fighting in that war.

He also wants the US to get over the Vietnam syndrome. His old rules include "pre-Vietnam War rules by which small groups of quiet professionals would be used to help stabilize or destabilize a regime."

I found it quite ironic that Kaplan hopes that the overwhelming superiority of the American military might only last a few decades:

Hopefully [US dominance] will last only a few decades. If we have this much power in the world a hundred years from now, we would be far less benign and idealistic than we are now.

Our ideals have already been betrayed and whether we are considered benign could be disputed as well. Schell is right in calling this policy militarism. And as he says, we must work to keep this nightmare from happening.