by James B. Rule
How long has it been since we heard that old catchphrase "late capitalism"? The collapse of the Soviet Empire, and the rush of the leftovers of "real existing socialism" to find a place in the global market economy, give that expression a bizarre ring. For capitalism, we now realize, this may just be mid-morning. And such realization leaves us swimming in questions not just about the shape of domestic politics, but also about the new order of geopolitical affairs-now increasingly dominated by the kingpin of international capitalism, the United States of America.
Only command of the international market economy, it seems, can maintain the economic growth, the technological virtuosity, and the command of scarce resources necessary for world dominance today. Terrorists may threaten; rogue states may menace. These challengers may succeed in imposing much human suffering, but they will not change world boundaries or alter the global pre-eminence of the United States. For the immediate future, the United States has no rival in sustained ability to mobilize vast and sophisticated military forces, to capture and hold territory, and ultimately to make and unmake regimes in any corner of the world. Hence the question: what room do these facts leave those of us on the left for an alternative vision of world order?
It's hard to conceive of a political question bigger or more consequential than this. To get a grip on it, we need to think in terms of what Gunnar Myrdal termed "programs" and "prognoses." Programs are hypothetical scenarios, chains of events and processes through which the present might evolve into some desired future world. Programs in this sense, Myrdal holds, appeal for justification to prognoses-assessments of underlying social forces, of the constraints of entrenched conditions, or of the ripeness of untested situations for change. Programs without prognoses are apt to be nothing other than wishful dreams. Prognoses without programs are mere analytical speculation, holding little interest except to specialists.
Thus, more than sixty years ago, Myrdal and the co-authors of An American Dilemma posited programs for dismantling Jim Crow institutions-basing their arguments on prognoses of the openness of American society to change. Conservative critics loathed the program and derided the prognoses. As counter-prognoses, they cited the supposed resistance of beliefs and attitudes underlying segregation, the blacks' and whites' alleged affection for segregated institutions, the purported unreadiness of black Americans to assume an equal role. Yet today their essential arguments are vindicated. Changes once held utopian or dangerous occurred more rapidly than many could have imagined; seemingly outlandish prospects of formal equality between the races became practical road maps for public action.
The American-dominated world order of the twenty-first century challenges the left to think as shrewdly, and as imaginatively, as the authors of An American Dilemma did about race in America. If I am right about essential elements of the prognosis-the indispensability of mastery over markets and technology in today's world, for example, and the supremacy of America in such mastery-what programs for the future can we entertain? What sort of world order consistent with the values of the democratic left could emerge from present-day realities of American world dominance? What must we on the left fear from this situation? Dare we identify possibilities for progressive change as bold as those named by Myrdal and his collaborators?
For the antithesis of a left vision on these matters, we need look no further than the platitudes of American officialdom. In this view, today's ascendance of American power represents the unanimous verdict of history on the superiority of American values. The superpower status of this country, however-and here come the programs-confers "global responsibilities." America's overweening military, economic and technological power make it "the indispensable country." In practice, this amounts to a mandate for this country to proclaim and enforce its writ throughout the world. Bush the Elder had it right, in this view, when he went to war in 1991; he was giving the world its first lesson that no country could get away with crossing the lines drawn by America for its new world order. Thus a program, in Myrdal's sense, of manifest destiny. Only a world where clear-cut rules of conduct are recognized by all players can support the peace and market-given abundance that all the world craves. And only the United States is in a position to dictate and enforce those rules.
This self-congratulatory emanation of American statecraft points to a vision of America's role that is not just unipolar but imperial, strictly speaking. Indeed, the language of empire is now gaining currency among this country's foreign-policy elites, who use it without apology. What this means in practice is that Washington will increasingly be taking key geopolitical decisions alone, consulting even close allies only after crucial directions have been set. It is a world whose big structures, and basic rules of conduct, radiate from a single national source.
Surprisingly, visions of Imperial America seem to be getting serious and not-altogether-unfavorable attention even among observers on the left. Empires are not always so bad, people point out. At least they ensure a modicum of order and peace. Why prejudge the American Empire, just because it is an empire? Fair is fair. Let us not miss some signal accomplishments of American power on the geopolitical scene. One thinks of the defense of democracy in Europe fifty-five years ago; or the reversal of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo; or the quiet support for pluralism in Taiwan, even as the United States trims its sails to deal with Beijing; or the American willingness to broach human rights issues (however selectively and ambivalently) in world forums. Other empires would not have gone this far. But of course, if we credit such accomplishments, we are also obliged to take account of historic miscarriages of American power: support of some of the world's worst regimes, indifference to the sufferings of the poorest countries, plunder of scarce environmental resources and raw materials, and all the rest. But we on the left ought to be devoting ourselves to something more than a balance sheet of pluses and minuses in American foreign policy. The question is not how we should rate the American Empire as empires go, but whether we want to live in an imperial world. Can't we expect something better than a regime where one country lays down the law for all others? Don't the values of the left incline us to a geopolitical system that is multilateral and collegial, rather than unilateral and peremptory? Shouldn't we be seeking a world order in which narrow national interest gives way to collective decision-making on joint problems? To the masters of realpolitik now calling the shots in Washington, such aspirations are utopian in the worst sense. I believe that they are utopian, much as Myrdal's program for undoing Jim Crow was utopian in the late 1930s.
In fact, the American Empire is hardly the only profound rearrangement of global affairs to arise in the last twelve years. In the eye of history, it may not appear the most important. Running counter to the consolidation of global power in Washington are a collection of diametrically opposite tendencies-more diffuse and harder to read, but full of potential to yield a better world. These are trends toward multilateral decision-making among the world community of nations, an evolution toward collective definitions of global problems and away from maximization of national sovereignty and zero-sum definitions of national interest. These trends are manifest in the actions of states, but also in the expanded participation of non-state activists, from grassroots community groups to sophisticated global social movements.
These tendencies have borne some striking fruit over the last decade, in arrangements both heralded and obscure. These include efforts to limit emissions of greenhouse gases, to ban land mines, to protect privacy of personal data transmitted across international boundaries, to prosecute crimes against humanity, and to establish permanent UN forces available for peacekeeping. No one can say which of these efforts will ultimately matter the most, and any of them could yet fail completely. But what commands attention is not so much the ultimate outcome, but the quality of the underlying vision and the willingness of important elements of the global community to subscribe to it. Participating countries have been willing to identify supranational interests that could clearly run counter to specific national interests in future situations-and to build authoritative institutions to implement such larger interests. The underlying logic is diametrically opposed to that of a world governed by imperial diktat.
No doubt that is why Washington has gone to such lengths to oppose all these efforts. In case you hadn't noticed, the United States has carved out for itself the role of global naysayer to such multilateral developments. That opposition arises both from the executive branch and from Congress, but the Bush administration has orchestrated it to a fine pitch. In this view, no international engagements must be allowed in any way to diminish American sovereignty. America may mobilize its "allies"-read, clients-to support one worldwide initiative or another, after the crucial directions are set. But no one will get a hearing from this administration for the notion that the well-being of ordinary Americans might be better served by transferring decision-making power from the American state. One might as well propose steak tartare for the banquet of the next world congress of vegans.
For the prophets of empire, of course, aspirations for a more collegial organization of world power represent nothing more than self-deluding froth atop the deep currents of geopolitics. What matters in world affairs, they will remind us, is what has always mattered: the ability to "project" military power; the economic might to support and sustain such projection; and mastery of the technologies that generate national superiority, both military and economic, in the first place. If a few enlightened souls now have the luxury of concern for the environment, human rights, or the worldwide distribution of wealth, it is only because such high-minded thinking is protected by imperial power. No one should imagine, in other words, that yearnings for a more liberal or egalitarian geopolitical order have any weight of their own. How many divisions can Greenpeace put in the field? What disagreeable regime has Amnesty International ever ousted?
There is no reason to accept at face value the prognoses embodied in these statements-any more than one should accept the imperial programs they are intended to support. True, we must never imagine that ideas or ethical concerns alone, or the sheer desire for a better world, will automatically prevail over earthier forces. But it would be no less foolish to discount the weight of specific ideas and moral imperatives at specific historical moments. Joseph Nye, in The Paradox of American Power, speaks of "soft power," the knack of "getting others to want what you want." America, he holds, can muster a good deal of soft power, if it puts forward its most appealing face to the world. He might well have added that America swims against powerful currents when it seeks to impose its interests against worldwide consensus. Good ideas and shared impulses can generate "soft power" of their own, even when arrayed against the forces of empire.
To be sure, the potential power of a particular ideas and values in any setting is a matter for subtle assessment. It was the genius of Myrdal and his collaborators to see that the intellectual and moral foundations of Jim Crow were vulnerable-and that alternative understandings and practices might replace them relatively quickly. The prognoses so identified made it plausible to envisage a program of change that most at the time dismissed.
We ought to apply the same sort of hard-headed skepticism to the ideas underlying the program of American empire-notions that only overbearing and unilateral American power can provide for a decent geopolitical regime. Many straws in the wind support quite different prognoses. Among these is the simple force of example: multilateral measures, and the popular feelings giving rise to them, can be seen at least sometimes to work. Prosecutions of crimes against humanity are beginning to occur. The treaty against land mines was in fact signed, albeit without the crucial participation of the United States. When countries, the United States very much included, fly in the face of such broadly based multilateral arrangements, they pay a cost. As Myrdal pointed out, there comes a moment when information on alternatives to prevailing arrangements can no longer be ignored. World public opinion may well now be at such a point regarding the feasibility of multilateral institutions.
Note that many multilateral accomplishments registered thus far stem from the engagement of alert and assertive publics. Organized global citizens have been willing to challenge what were once sovereign prerogatives of states, on matters ranging from protection of whales to the exploitation of women and children in the international sex trade. Around the world, it appears, educated people are less and less willing to defer matters of grave ethical concern to the discretion of governments. And as such concerns are acknowledged, national elites are less willing, and less able to turn away such popular concerns. As Paul Wapner remarked in these pages eight years ago ("Environmental Activism and Global Civil Society," Summer 1994), the result is increasingly a "world civil society," in which organizations from Amnesty International to Greenpeace mobilize pressure and focus conscience across national boundaries. Globalization, obviously, is not just an economic affair.
I have never been much of an admirer of Hegel, with his notions of improvements in public life reflecting an ever-evolving world spirit. But it is hard to deny that public unwillingness to tolerate certain palpable, humanly engineered evils is growing, however incrementally. A growing slice of world opinion finds plunder of natural resources, destabilizing environmental conditions, torture of political opponents, government by armed bullies, suppression of indigenous cultures, debilitating international arms races, and a host of parallel developments unconscionable. Much as in the slow but relentless shift in world public opinion that ultimately undercut slavery-even as that peculiar institution produced great economic benefits for some-world opinion now seems capable of condemning certain atrocious actions that were long regarded as virtually inevitable, however unpleasant.
This is why it will not do for us on the left to restrict ourselves to providing a running "box score" on the successes and failures of imperial policies. That view simply takes for granted the most consequential issues now in the balance. If we miss this point, we remain helpless against the next gross abuse of imperial power-the next Vietnam, let us say-when it occurs. The left ought to choose a better role for itself than simply reacting to the workings of the American Empire after the fact. And the best way to do so is not just to support or criticize specific policies of the current regime, but to articulate a distinctive vision of a world community.
Inevitably, multilateralism brings its own costs and risks. Should world power indeed grow more collegial, America will experience new constraints. Meaningful limits on greenhouse gas emissions could limit economic growth. More egalitarian world economic relations could end some advantageous terms of trade for America. These are the fruits of empire, and Americans share in them, whether they intend to or not.
But such benefits will not outlast the heyday of the system that enforces them. The one thing that we know for sure about empires is that they do not last forever. In America's case, the magic formula combining economic might, technological mastery, and overwhelming military power will surely one day fail. Living through imperial decline is never pleasant for the parties concerned-witness, most recently, the collapse of the Soviet Empire. We ought to be asking what will be left, when America can no longer, at least single-handedly, enforce its will anywhere and everywhere around the world?
Americans-and thoughtful, politically active citizens of the entire world community-have a historic opportunity to help create arrangements that can endure, even as particular world power constellations come and go. This could mean institutions for environmental protection, for ready defense against aggressive war, for protection of rights of embattled minorities; for prosecution of crimes against humanity-the list of alluring possibilities goes on and on. In the long view, these opportunities surely warrant extraordinary efforts to attain.
By contrast, the imperial wisdom of the Bush administration betrays a shockingly short time perspective. As in its energy policies, the inner circle of the current regime insists on exploiting short-term advantage, disparaging any consideration of the world we will leave our children when the conditions of that advantage are exhausted. Like the world's reserves of fossil fuels, the conditions supporting American hegemony are finite. But for the imperial vision, what matters is supremacy in the here and now. It is a profoundly irresponsible approach to statecraft; the future it portends is desolate.
The worst of it is the chances that are being wasted. The world is arguably a less dangerous place now than it has been in many decades. With the end of the Manichean struggle between the Soviet system and the "free world," we ought to realize a "peace dividend" in terms of more than just money. The pre-eminence of the world's liberal democracies, in command of successful market economies, could well provide an incubator for the sort of multilateral global community entertained here. One has to wonder: if the shift to such an order is not possible now, at a moment of relative prosperity and stability, when will the moment come?
It is our role, on the left, to pose this question. We have no more crucial or distinctive contribution to make.