In my State of the Union column in Management Today, some doubts about American imperialism: Up front, I ought to establish that I trust in the inexorable advance of liberal capitalism, hold the United States to be the foremost force for good, believe multiculturalists to be apologists for backwardness, that I supported the expedition to Iraq, reliably cry at the sight of a fallen statues, and dream of executing every tyrant from Riyadh to Pyongyang. I am, to all intents, a hawk. So why on earth does the prospect of an American Empire bother me?
Some still question the premise, that the United States is intent on Pax Americana. After all, the idea of reordering the entire Middle East holds sway only in a few neoconservative thinktanks, and their Pentagon branches. There is no serious expectation that the US will follow up, after Iraq, with a march on Damascus and Tehran. And the Bush administration has been circumspect in its response to the sabre-rattling of the North Korean dictator.
Nevertheless, the vulnerability of the US to terrorist attacks, and the overwhelming strength of the superpower's military, combine to make a powerful case for intervention. The Bush Administration's national security strategy commits the US to military superiority, pre-emptive strikes against any direct threat, and "a balance of power that favors freedom".
And a growing number of political thinkers, mainly those of the National Greatness school of American foreign policy, scheme to fix the world on a grand scale, from North Korea to Syria. In the Weekly Standard, the journal that is required reading for administration conservatives, Max Boot took the foreign policy discussion to its natural conclusion. "The most realistic response to terrorism is for America to embrace its imperial role," he wrote.
The word alone -- imperial -- is enough to bring out Washington's domestic and foreign critics in a spluttering rage. US motives are impure, it's all about oil, the US system is no more valid than any other, intervention never works, America was designed as a republic, the United Nations, Arab rage, foreign war, domestic oppression, the usual stuff.
Most of these points are tired, and empty, but there is a deeper flaw in the American imperial project: moral hazard. A guarantor, whether an insurance company or a central bank, typically encourages perverse behavior. Countries borrow too much, and their banks lend too freely, both in the expectation of a bailout by the International Monetary Fund.
The US, by assuming the role of global guarantor, runs an analogous risk. By guaranteeing the security of Israel, it ensures that no Israeli government will make a territorial settlement with the Palestinians. By guaranteeing the global order, unilaterally, the US encourages the caprice of a country such as France. By supporting the Mubarak regime in Egypt, the US removes the pressure for democratization. With an external power guaranteeing stability, the people of Egypt and other puppet states can never take ownership of their own predicament. As bankers sometimes say, the road to hell is paved with guarantees.
The smartest individual I met in Tunisia, one of the few at the time who acknowledged that Arabs rather than Mossad might have attacked the Twin Towers, railed against the regime. Why not actually campaign for political reform? I asked. No point, he answered, because everybody knows the US ambassador picks Tunisia's leaders.
So what if the US removed that excuse for inaction, just let go, and allowed history take its course? Let Vietnam go communist, Europe deal with Bosnia, the theocracy hold back Iran until the old ayatollahs die out, let Mubarak fall to the Islamists, and Victor Chavez take on Venezuela's capitalists and landowners.
No one should pretend that the immediate effects of laisser faire would be any other than disastrous. The loss of another generation in Iran, the emigration of the middle class from Egypt, further chaos in Venezuela. But at least these countries would be taking control of their own destiny, free to make their own revolutions, and fumble toward liberal democracy of their own accord. No superpower to bail them out, no one to blame but themselves.
It is amusing that neocons, of all people, do not spot the obvious irony. It is they who have lectured for decades on the perverse effects of government action: that welfare payments encourage sloth and single parenthood; that foreign aid distorts developing economies; and that international bailouts attract defaults like meat to flies. In foreign policy, they retain a touching belief in the efficacy of bureaucratic initiative.
The US rails against the irresponsibility of the European and Asian powers, their failure to manage even their backyards, and despises the impotent anger of the Arab masses. In a particularly self-righteous mood at the moment, the US fails to acknowledge its own complicity. With the best of intentions, the US encourages the very behavior it works against. The more irritatedly interfering the US, the more wayward its charges, as if the world were a family spiralling into dysfunction.
So, a therapeutic suggestion. Now is the perfect time for the United States to withdraw from the Korean peninsula. The prospect of an American imperium is on people's minds. Having demonstrated its power in Iraq, the US can abdicate without revealing weakness.
To be sure, North Korea is probably the most qualified member of the axis of evil. Kim Jong-il's tyranny is industrial rather than feudal; it is an obscenity of design rather than accident. But he has neighbours -- Russia, China, Japan and South Korea -- with both an interest in containing Kim, and the force to do it. Let someone else worry for a change. It will do them good.
