What kind of world are we living in, and what role does the USA play in it? T hese two questions have preoccupied analysts and academics since the Cold War ended. In the 1990s, the first question was probed in novel ways provided by Francis Fukuyama (1992) and Samuel Huntington (1996) � �The End of History� and the �Third Wave�, respectively. After 9-11 and the US intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, the debate quickly tilted towards the second question.
The debate has been high-pitched and noisy; it has orbited the controversial foreign-policy of President Bush, his �war against terror� and the visions of the neo-cons; it has produced a good many reports and books, but few conceptual breakthroughs about America�s role in the world. The debate has mobilized three main concepts about America�s role: �hegemony�, �empire� and �imperialist�. A decade and more back, it was commonly claimed that the United States was a �hegemonic power� (Rupert 1995; Keohane 1984). This claim has since fallen out of fashion; pushed aside by the new argument that the United States is an �empire� (Fergusson 2003: Johnson 2004; James 2006; Maier 2006). The charge that the USA is an �imperialist�, is the most lasting of the three terms (Sweezy 1942, pp. 307ff; Williams 1959, Todd).
The main purpose of this article is to define the three terms carefully, and then compare each in turn to the foreign-policy behaviour of the United States. One conclusion of this exercise is that the term �empire� is unsuitable; the foreign-policy behaviour of the USA over the last half century or so can hardly be characterized as imperial. Another conclusion is that �hegemon� is more fitting; however, whereas the concept was highly suitable some decades ago, it is no longer an apt term; although the United States is the world�s most powerful state, it has lost its hegemonic status. Thus, the article must reluctantly conclude that � by the logic of elimination � US foreign policy of today is most suitably characterized as imperialistic.
The discussion about America�s role in the post-Cold War world have been unnecessarily obtuse. One major reason is that the main terms employed � �empire�, �imperialist� and �hegemony� being foremost among them � have been erratically defined. Clearly, the discussion might have been more fruitful if the central concepts had been better defined and their theoretical underpinnings more explicitly identified. This essay will briefly sketch three positions in this debate about America�s role in the world, and associate each position with a concept � �empire�, �hegemony� and �imperialism� respectively. It will begin with the currently most fashionable term of �empire�.
Empire
Authors have for many decades pointed to the imperial status of the United States, and they have done so with a deeply worried voice. It is a novel addition when an increasing number of authors welcome America�s imperial prospects. It may be instructive to compare the USA to ancient empires in order to bring out some aspects of America�s role in the 21 st century world; but how meaningful is it to claim that the USA is an empire?
Definition
The basic problem with this discussion of America�s imperial nature is that the term, �empire�, is not carefully defined. Some commentators do not define the term at all; they simply use it to denote that the United States is a Really Big Power. Others define the term, but they do so in different ways.
Here is a generally accepted definition: An empire is an �extended territory, usually comprising a group of nations, states or peoples under the control or domination of a single sovereign power�. This is the short, main definition given by Webster�s New International Dictionary. It is brief and good. It fits the Roman Empire well. And since Rome has often been invoked in the recent debate, it may be useful to begin this discussion of America�s imperial status with this definition and with the classic case from which it is apparently derived.
In Rome the term imperium referred to a right of command possessed by Roman officials. Originally this right was associated with military command. The term �empire� is still tinged with military associations. Critical authors often use the term to conjure up associations to military occupation of distant lands and the repression of foreign peoples (Johnson 2004; Chomsky 2003). Other authors are informed by more positive associations and argue that this right to command is a necessary precondition for a larger ordering role. This is the attitude of Niall Fergusson (2003; 2004), who argues that the United States is wealthier, more populous and more powerful than the British Empire ever was, but that the USA today plays the same basic ordering role as Britain did during the 19 th century � that the USA is, in short, an ordering or civilizing force in a chaotic world.
Still others try to use the term in a neutral fashion. They conceive of �empire� as a big, composite realm that maintains order over a vast segment of the globe (Doyle 1986; Lundestad 2004). By this definition, Rome is the classical example of an empire. More recent examples include France under Napoleon, Great Britain under Victoria and Russia under the last tsars. These empires all possessed a dominant metropole at its core � Rome, Paris, London and St. Petersburgh � whose political elite exercised control over a surrounding periphery of obedient provinces or satellites.
The American Case
A steady stream of scholars has sought to include Washington to this list of metropoles. Many observers � some from the left of the political spectrum, others from the right � point out several commonalities between Washington and some of the great, historical metropoles. First and foremost they point to the Pentagon�s command over America�s vast military forces and to the unilateral nature of Washington�s military policy � especially in recent years.
However, military superiority and unilateral policies alone do not an empire make. An empire is a political organism. Its territory may be conquered by military force at the outset, but at some point the metropolitan core imposes its institutions and its laws upon that territory. Its representatives are constantly present in the satellites, where they enforce the established law, and generally maintain order on metropolitan premises. An empire is a vast, political organism whose sovereign institutions are located in the metropolis.
Towards the end of his life, emperor Augustus was given an unspecified imperium � i.e., supreme command over the military forces of all of Rome and decision-making authority in matters of foreign policy � including questions pertaining to the many provinces. The political system which Augustus established during these final years of his life is the very image of a classical empire. Napoleon established a similar system after he had conquered most of Europe in the early 1800s, and imposed his Code Napol�on in the countries he conquered. The Russian tsars allowed his armies to expand southwards and eastwards, occupy new territories and introduce Russian law there � in short, they created new satellites for a growing Russian Empire. When tsar Alexander II was killed during the endgame of World War I, Lenin took over the old imperial institutions. He established branches of his Communist Party in the old satellites, and founded a revolutionary workers� state on the tsars� old, social institutions.
During the 1930s, strategists in the German Nazi party laid ambitious plans for a military expansion eastwards; they wanted to establish a German empire in the East, at the expense of the Soviet Union. Their plans were stopped by a wartime alliance between the USSR and the capitalist powers of the West � with Great Britain and the USA in the lead. When Stalin, during the endgame of World War II, seized the opportunity to expand westwards and occupy new territories in Central-Europe, he imposed institutions and laws that tied their governance to Moscow. In short, he established imperium. He transferred the sovereignty of the occupied territories to Moscow, assumed supreme command over their forces of order and full decision-making authority in all questions concerning foreign policy and defense.
The Soviet Union, then, can easily be subsumed under the classical definition of empire. During the course of the Cold War the USSR conducted a policy marked by intermittent efforts to conquer new territory, rule them from Moscow and impose upon them Soviet institutions and Communist law. The same cannot be said of the United States. True, the USA has also occupied foreign territories, assumed sovereignty and replaced local institutions with American rule � Germany and Japan are historical cases in point; Iraq is a more recent example. However, the USA is different in one crucially important respect: As the examples of Germany and Japan show, the conquered territories were not integrated as satellites on a permanent basis. First, the nations regained sovereignty after a while. Second, the locus of national sovereignty was altered: in both cases sovereignty was conceived as �popular sovereignty� and new political institutions were imposed to safeguard that conception.
In short, the Americans not only returned sovereignty to the occupied nations, they sought to establish democratic rule before leaving. This is what the American occupiers have done time again during the course of the 20 th century. Sometimes with success; however, usually without the principle of popular sovereignty striking root at all � thus warranting a second (or even a third) US occupation in some cases. This is not the way an empire behaves. The USA, in other words, is not an empire � certainly not an empire of the usual kind.
This is not to deny that the United States possesses a considerable military might and that it applies it to foreign states and nations in an effort to affect and shape the international order. The question is not whether the USA applies military force or not; it most certainly does. The question is rather whether the United States applies its considerable capabilities in imperial ways. Here the most reasonable answer is negative.
However, if the USA does not use its capabilities in imperial ways, in which ways does it then use them? This question has often enough been answered by the US Government � by the White House and the Pentagon. The official answer over the last dozen years or so can be briefly captured: The United States applies military force in order to establish hegemony. This can also serve to answer the question of which role America plays in the world. It is to this role we turn next.
Hegemony
The notion of �hegemony� has also been a fashionable label for US foreign policy over the last several years. But again, the term is sparingly defined (some authors use �hegemony� simply as a fancy synonym for �big and powerful�) � or confusingly applied (other authors define the term, but different authors use different definitions).
According to Webster�s, a hegemon is a Great Power that exercises �preponderant influence or authority�. Again: this is a brief and to-the-point indicator � and in tune with an old and fairly simple notion.
Definition
Whereas �empire� has a Latin root, the notion of �hegemony� is Greek: it is derived from the verb hegeisthai, which signifies �to lead�. In ancient Greece, hegemony referred to a state with a leading role within a league or alliance of states. The most classic case in literature is the leading position of Sparta in the Peloponnesian league (ca. 550 BC). It may be argued that Rome, too, at certain times played the role of a hegemon.1 In the modern world, there were hegemonic features to the role which the United Provinces played in the wake of the Thirty Years� War. The role played by Great Britain in the wake of the Wars against Louis XIV and Napoleon, may also be characterized as hegemonic.2 Germany may, to some degree, be characterized as hegemonic under the rule of Otto von Bismarck who, after he had unified Germany in a series of cynical power-political moves, presented Germany as a satisfied and stabilizing force on the Continent.
The American Case
According to this understanding, a hegemon enjoys power and authority because other important powers accept its leadership. Many authors argue that the USA assumed a role as a leader in the wake of World War II, and that most Western states agreed that that this was a good thing � a stabilizing force was needed at the time and only the USA had the capabilities to assume such a role. In Lundestad�s (1986) felicitous phrase, America was �invited in.� Other Great Powers followed America�s lead. They participated in US-led negotiations which produced important institutions of international order � the UN, the IMF and the World Bank foremost among them. They accepted US leadership in these institutions (Rupert 1993).
The point is that the countries of Western Europe did not see the USA as a rogue state with unilateral ambitions. They perceived the USA as a legitimate leader. They understood that the United States pursued the common interest of a collegial alliance of liberal democracies. They trusted the USA to make its best effort to establish a mutually beneficial peace, and allowed themselves to be swayed by American influence and leadership.
The larger point can, again, be illustrated by the difference between the USA and the USSR in the wake of World War II. America�s relationship to its allies in Western Europe was built on cooperation and mutual trust; Soviet-Russia�s relationship to its allies in Eastern-Europe was marked by repression and exploitation. The American presence in Western Europe was wanted by the countries and the governments there. The Soviet presence in Eastern Europe, by contrast, was generally resented, as the Kremlin rulers usurped the sovereignty of Eastern European countries and imposed on them their own, Soviet-type institutions. In the West, there was a general agreement that the USA was a stabilizing and legitimate leader. In the East no such consensus emerged.
This difference between the USSR and the USA illustrates the essential difference between empire and hegemony. Hegemony consists of several sovereign states, and is based on a political consensus among those states as to the rules and norms of the interstate order. An empire has only one sovereign actor � the metropole � and is, ultimately, based on force (usually in the form of a concrete, military presence). Both the USSR and the USA had bases and a sustained military presence in their spheres of influence. However, the conditions for their presence were different. This difference is, among other things, associated with the rules and norms that legitimized it.
In the Soviet case, the military presence in East-European states was justified by a communist ideology and a repressive practice. It was not accepted as legitimate by the majority of East Europeans, who considered the USSR an alien and occupying power who had robbed them of their sovereignty. The presence of US military forces in Western Europe was justified in different ways. First, as a necessary element in a common security policy designed to deter and contain Soviet influence. Second, to guarantee a common democratic order for America�s Continental allies.3 These reasons were accepted as legitimate by the majority of West Europeans, who considered the USA a friendly ally, a stabilizing force and a rich uncle.
The Legitimating Base
A �hegemon�, then, is a state � a preponderant and authoritative state.4 �Hegemony� is a constellation of states � a concert of countries that accept the hegemon as their legitimate leader. In order to understand a particular hegemony, it is necessary to grasp the reasons why such sovereign states accept the authority and the leadership of their hegemon. In the American case, this is not very difficult to do. Most of the Great Powers of Europe were allied with the USA during World War II and accepted American leadership in the war-time alliance. A few additional Great Powers � Germany foremost among them � joined the ranks of the accepting powers after the war.
The power and wealth of the United States was attractive to these Western states. As war-time cooperation was replaced by Cold War, the capitalist democracies of Western Europe felt threatened by a seemingly aggressive Soviet neighbour. The USA was the only state that was wealthy enough to help them out of a post-war depression, and strong enough to deter and contain the Soviet threat.
However, the Atlantic alliance was more than a marriage of convenience in the double shadow of depression and the totalitarian threat. European acceptance of US leadership cannot be accounted for solely in terms of European Realpolitik: the US-European relationship was a partnership. Its members constituted a community of states (Adler & Barnett 1998). Their relationships were cemented by a set of common norms and values that the United States embodies and championed. The common norms and values had been called upon during the war. It was now self-consciously emphasized in its wake.
One of these was a common faith in the principle of progress � a notion that the world could finally, in spite of two destructive wars, evolve to the better. Also, in the wake of the war they all repudiated the old, dogmatic laisser-faire view of markets and embraced the idea that government ought to intervene in society on the side of progress and fairness.
Another unifying norm was the common embrace of popular sovereignty. As Europe realized the deep American commitment to the principle of popular sovereignty, they relaxed their fear of US power. The USA, on its side, interpreted the embrace as a European come-around to the view that the USA had always entertained: that liberal republics are inherently better � more fair and peaceful � than any other kind of government. Indeed, not only are republics more inherently peaceful, they are doubly peaceful in relations with each other, because war would not occur between them.
When World War II ended, these common ideals legitimised a common opposition to the Soviet Union. However, these ideals were quickly overshadowed by a competing vision developed as a response to the challenges of Soviet enmity and Cold War: the doctrine of Containment. Although the ideals of the republican peace continue to dominate America�s relationship to Europe, the doctrine of Containment quickly came to dominate America�s behaviour towards other regions of the world. As a result, many observers began to argue that America�s foreign policy has been illogical or inconsistent.
In cases where American rhetoric bore the rhetorical imprint of republican ideals, but foreign policy practice was guided by the doctrine of Containment, critical observers have charged the USA with hypocrisy. They have commonly assumed that the best way to account for this anomaly, is to follow the money � to identify the economic interests at work and rationally reconstruct the best way to satisfy those interests in the circumstances. According to this view, the United States is not a hegemon but an imperialist � a notion which is often erroneously tied in with the concept of empire.
Imperialist
The argument that the USA is an imperialist, is of fairly recent vintage. Some authors argue that to the extent that the USA built its pre-eminence on an international consensus, then this consensus was both limited and artificial. It was limited to a Western elite � a trans-Atlantic bourgeoisie � and its general acceptance was the product of an intensive political propaganda. Many of these authors reject the doctrine of American exceptionalism; they argue that the United States is no different than other Great Powers: that the USA is governed by a wealthy and powerful elite, whose members do all they can to satisfy their own narrow interests and perpetuate their own power � consolidate their ruling position at home and safeguard American interests abroad.5 The image presented by this elite � e.g. the portrayal of the USA as a defender of the principle of the democratic peace � is pure propaganda.
These are arguments of the American left � indeed, they are arguments of the global left. In their orthodox versions, these arguments orbit economic variables and stress the dominating role of big business in American politics and society. Adherents tend to argue that the USA is an economic giant, but likes to point out that the US economy is dependent on steady and smooth imports of raw materials and on exports of American commodities to global markets.
Many left-wing critics add that the USA stands at the cusp of an economic crisis. Some authors argue that this is due to deficiencies in the US economy: American industries have lost their competitive edge and can no longer maintain their position in the world economy. Other authors invoke the undemocratic nature of the American political system: the United States is an elitist, corrupt system which enjoys a dwindling legitimacy among its own citizens. Both agree that the US is forced to resort to increasingly draconian means in order to secure its global dominance.6 The US invasion of Iraq is interpreted in this light as a desperate measure to secure access to oil.
Economic need � and especially the need for oil � is a central precept in the left�s portrayal of the USA as a repressive and exploitative force in world affairs. Multinational corporations are portrayed as formative agents who work behind the scenes and shape US foreign policy. The fact that George W. Bush has been governor of Texas and has close ties with domestic and foreign oil- and energy corporations are often taken as supporting evidence for these claims.
Nature, Origins and Utility
It is useful to be reminded of the origins and the nature of these three concepts � empire, imperialism and hegemony. This discussion of terms may help organize a debate which is high-pitched and unnecessarily complicated by participants who use their terms loosely. Niall Ferguson, for example, has argued in two popular books that the USA is an �empire�; however, the logic of his argument draws substantially on the concept of �hegemony�. Noam Chomsky has analysed the behaviour of the �American hegemony�; however, it is apparent that he rather sees the USA as the world�s leading imperialist power.
The debate about America�s role in the world, then, is unnecessarily complicated by a rhapsodic use of labels: different authors use a small set of terms in very different ways. Even a most cursory sketch of the etymology of the key terms of the debate will clear away a good deal of unnecessary brush. So let�s begin by asking where the three presented terms come from? And then continue by asking how fruitful they are.
Hegemony and Republican Peace
The notion of a Republican Peace is old in America, and central to one of the most formative discussions of America�s political history: the debate about the nature of the American republic. Its ancient origins are better suggested by the label �republican peace�, which hinges on two old Enlightenment notions: that a republic represents the will of the people, and that the people (whose will is represented) is fair and peaceful.
Late 18 th-century authors extended that argument by introducing the argument that adjacent republics would not fight each other. As a consequence, they would rather constitute a peaceful zone in the world. The idea was broached in the debate that followed the American victory in 1776, and the establishment of 13 states along the American east-coast. The notion was implicit when these states joined together in a federation during the 1780s.
This idea of a republican peace harmonizes nicely with the notion of American hegemony. It is intimately associated with notions like fairness, trust and consensus. A hegemon is a powerful state which enjoys a high degree of trust from other states and is accepted as a leading actor playing an organizing or ordering role in interstate relations.
Recent theorists have sought to identify more precisely the kind of ordering role that the hegemon actually plays. They emphasize the role of making, defining and enforcing rules of interstate conduct. They argue that as long as a Great Power maintains a system from which other Powers also benefit, its dominance will be considered legitimate and its leadership authoritative. In short, it remains hegemonic. �Hegemony� then, implies a particular constellation of states that is ordered by a state that is not only a pre-eminent power but that is also widely considered an even-handed and fair guarantor of international order.7
Imperium and imperialism
Alexander Hamilton suggested that the United States was an empire as early as 1787 � and even likened the American Republic to Rome. Through the 19 th century, the term �empire� was sometimes used to characterize the United States. Some authors described the growth of the USA in terms which suggested the emergence of a classic empire: they cast Washington DC in the role of a metropole that systematically acquired control over a steadily growing number of satellites.8 Many sceptics argued that the growth of such an American empire would endanger the institutions of the Republic. For them, �empire� has been a negative term.
This notion, that empire endangers the Republic, has been a central concern among authors on both the right and the left. During the early years of the 19 th century, the spectre of empire was substantiated with references to Roman history � to leaders like Marius, Sulla and Caesar who used the army to undermine the institutions of the Roman republic and established the rafters of an empire.
During the 19 th century knowledge about these ancient events was thorough and common. Today it is neither. The notion that an empire threatens the republic is repeated in the 21 st century, but it is now more of an empty slogan and less of a reasoned argument.9 Besides, as the 19 th century progressed, our understanding of �empire� has changed. By the end of that century, the classic understanding of empire as a political entity was hard pressed by a new understanding which emphasized the role of economic.
Critics like Gaylord Wilshire and James Conant embraced this new, economy-centred argument. They argued that industry and big business had pushed the Great Powers of Europe into an imperialist expansionism during the final quarter of the 19 th century. Early in the 20 th century, the USA was pursuing the same policy of economic expansionism. As the decades passed, this economy-based argument became the staple interpretation of the term �imperialism�. In the wake of World War II, it was applied to America�s behaviour in the world.10
Hegemon, not an Empire
Which term is most suited to describe America�s international role at the threshold of the 21 st century? In some respects the definition of empire fits. However, it fits the relationship established among the American states more than its fits USA�s relationship with the outside world. For when the history of the USA is considered in the light of the concept of empire, it is easy to see how federal forces have been used to conquer and safeguard one territory after the other, include each of them in a federation of states and impose upon them laws made in Washington. This praxis certainly satisfies Webster�s definition of empire as an �extended territory, usually comprising a group of nations, states or peoples under the control or domination of a single sovereign power�.11
When this definition is applied to US relations to the rest of the world, it fits less well. In relation to other states, the USA has not behaved the way a proper metropole should. The USA has not usurped the sovereignty of other states on a regular and permanent basis. As noted above, the Soviet Union conquered other states by force, usurped their sovereignty and replaced native laws with its own laws and institutions. The USA has, as a rule, not done this.12 Three reasons may help explain why:
First, in a more general, international and 20 th-century perspective US behaviour is not characterized by the systematic, enduring usurpation of other states� sovereignty that is the mark of empires. The USA may occupy other states; the USA may also seek to export its values and its institutions � Germany, Japan and Iraq being cases in point. However, the United States does not seek to rob these territories of their sovereignty. Quite the opposite. True to its convictions, the United States seeks to introduce the principle of sovereignty � understood as �popular sovereignty� � to occupied territories. The Americans do not see themselves as occupiers but as liberators. They perceive occupation as a necessary but temporary task. As soon as the principle of popular sovereignty has been established, and the occupied nation can rule itself, the Americans want to withdraw.
Second, the United States is not an empire because this would run against the American respect for the principle of popular sovereignty. Also, it would run against the grain of History. The 20 th-century world constitutes an interstate system based on the principle of sovereignty � today, universally construed as �popular sovereignty�. Any ambition to build an empire would fly in the face of this very basic premise of the interstate system.
Third, an American attempt at empire-building would buck another large-scale, 20 th-century trend: that of de-centralization � of fragmentation of large political units, which are entirely in turn with the expansion of the doctrine of popular sovereignty, and of a consequent rapid growth in the number of sovereign states. Empire-building would, by contrast, mean a centralizing process on large scale and buck the overall decentralizing trend.
A final point is intimately related to this: Past empires have been built on the metropole�s ability to control not only vast military forces, but also knowledge and information. The decentralized nature of contemporary information technology makes such control a very unlikely future scenario.
In sum, the classical notion of �empire� does not fit America�s role in world affairs particularly well. The term �hegemony�, is more suitable. �Hegemony� is also consistent with the nature of the established international system and its founding principle of popular sovereignty. Whereas empire implies a system of domination by one sovereign power (the metropole), hegemony involves a principle of primacy among several sovereign and interdependent powers � or primus inter pares.
Still a Hegemon?
�Hegemony�, then, harmonizes with the established international order, which presupposes a system of sovereign, formally equal states that are endowed with equal rights and duties under international law, regardless of size, wealth of military might. �Empire� is flatly inconsistent with this vision of international order.13
In the wake of World War II, at least, the United States was a hegemon, and the post-War, Atlantic concert of states was a hegemonic system. That, however, may no longer be true. The United States is still a pre-eminent state � indeed, in terms of military force and economic wealth, the USA commands greater material resources than ever and appears to be more pre-eminent than in many decades. Yet, the basis for the US hegemony has weakened since World War II. Many observers argue that this weakening began around 1970, and that it began with the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War represented a turning point in the Atlantic relationship, because it alienated large segments of Europe�s population. Many of America�s allies observed the war in Vietnam with incredulity. Particularly the younger Europeans who organized protest rallies against the American engagement14 � and who brought their anti-American sentiments with them when they subsequently attained positions of authority and power in European politics 10, 20 or 30 years later.
However, the transformation of the Atlantic relationship goes deeper than disagreements about neo-colonial wars in Asia. The transformation is related to at least three additional factors. First, Europe�s declining need for US economic support � this need waned in the 1960s as Europe�s post-war reconstruction neared completion.15 Second, Europe�s security needs were transformed with the diminishing threat from the Soviet Union � which finally unravelled around 1990. Third, the norms and values which have lain at the base of the Atlantic relationship during the entire post-War era, were transformed. This final factor has been greatly underestimated. And it is high time to investigate it more closely.
The common norms and values, which constituted an important basis for Atlantic trust and cooperation during the post-War era, began to seriously unravel in the 1970s. A major reason behind this was that a new and different political culture emerged in the United States during that turbulent decade. It broke up the USA�s own political consensus � consensus which had been established during World War II, which had forged the premises of the rule of the Democratic Party and which had lasted for a generation of Cold War. The 1970s, however, saw the rise of a new generation of Republicans. They expressed more traditional and religiously-anchored values, which informed controversial stands on issues like abortion, capital punishment and social-security at home and on issues of national security abroad. Europe was very slow to discover this change in American politics. But when they noted it, they reacted negatively.
European liberals disliked the change towards a new, patriotic and conservative America. European conservatives disliked it as well; they did not recognize it as conservatism at all.16 Thus, the emergence of the new conservative themes in American politics shook the Atlantic community at its core. During the 1970s, it quietly acted as a solvent to the very consensus on which the Atlantic hegemony was founded. During the 1980s, it opened up wide, normative fissures in the Atlantic relationship. The unilateral foreign-policy of George W. Bush forced the issue into the open, and split the very foundation of America�s post-war hegemony asunder.
Concluding remarks
An empire is a system of dominance; a web of power relations. It consists of several societies, but only one of them (the metropole) is sovereign; the rest (the satellites) are not. Any Great Power which seeks to establish an empire in the 21 st century world, will rob other societies of their sovereignty. This would buck the trend of contemporary history. It would contradict the basic principle of the extant international order. The United States is not an empire. Indeed, throughout its history, the USA has consistently conducted anything but an imperial foreign policy.
The Case against Empire
If the United States harboured ambitions to establish an empire, it would buck a major trend in contemporary history, and work against the grain of the extant international order. In addition, it would break resoundingly with its own foreign-policy tradition. For it has never been the policy of the United States to rob other nations of their sovereignty. Quite the opposite: the policy of the United States has always been to sponsor the principle of sovereignty � to introduce rights, freedoms and democracy to other societies. Thus, it cannot be an empire. If the United States harbours imperial ambitions, its habit of bringing freedoms and democracies to its satellites would be counterproductive. It would, in fact, dissolve the established ties of dominance and thereby dissolve the empire itself.
The United States is not an empire. Thus it must be either a hegemon or an imperialist. If we revisit the definition of hegemony, the following conclusion is easy. The United States was a hegemon in the wake of World War II; in recent years, however, the USA has lost its hegemonic status. It has become an imperialist.
The Case against Hegemony
Niccol� Machiavelli (1960) once explained that there exists two kinds of power. One relies on the wise use of reason; the other on force. Hegemony is constructed only by the first kind (i.e., soft power). A state is a hegemon if it rules by the virtue of reason, justifies its actions with reasonable arguments and convinces other Powers that it works in a just and common cause. The United States emerged from World War II as such a reasonable and hegemonic actor. Its leading role in the struggle against fascism during the war, and its magnanimity after the war, gave the United States enormous goodwill and a broad legitimacy.
However, that goodwill lost its lustre as the United States increasingly was seen to rely on force, rather than reason, in its foreign policy. America�s goodwill began to erode during the 1960s and was shaken beyond repair by the Vietnam War. Other Great Powers perceived America�s engagement in Vietnam as unreasonable. Many learned commentators branded it as irrational.17 Large segments of the American as well as the European populations protested America�s conduct. The protest was especially strong in a new generation of young people, who organized their protests in a veritable youth movement. Rather than embracing the USA as a legitimate guardian of international order, the new generation portrayed US leaders as a clique of decisionmakers, easily swayed by material self-interest rather than common high-minded ideals; by stubborn doctrine rather than by carefully reasoned grounded analysis.
This attitude became more common among America�s European allies during the 1980s. After the unravelling of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the United States lost its traditional role as the leading power of the liberal democracies of the West. During the first few years of the new century, European scepticism towards America�s behaviour in the world burst in full bloom with a thousand flowers of incredulity. During the presidency of George W. Bush, America�s European oldest allies � Micklethwait and Wooldridge�s (2005) excellent exposition notwithstanding � were at a loss to fully understand how the world�s pre-eminent state could replace its traditional, largely respected and legitimising world-view with a vulgar cluster of home-spun truisms.
Petroimperialism
The United States was never an empire and is no longer a hegemon. By a simple logic of elimination � given the limited menu of choices furnished here � the US must be an imperialist. But what kind of imperialist is it? Since imperialism is a term deeply rooted in macro-economic theories, it is reasonable to first turn to the field of International Political Economy, and there consult one of the most central and consequential of world-economic visions for an answer.
This vision was produced during World War II by the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. During the middle of the war , the Roosevelt-administration designed a vision of a stable, post-war order of a world built by open and democratic trading states. The industrial states would, according to this vision, produce goods and trade freely with each other and establish a self-adjusting market economy of global reach. To ensure the stability of this order, the Roosevelt administration vowed to build four regulatory or governing institutions. The first such institution would be a world bank, which would ensure convertibility of all currencies and thus guarantee a global market for the goods produced. The second institution was a monetary fund which would stabilize the world financial system and cushion the blows of cyclical swings.
The first pair of institutions � the IBRD and the IMF � was successfully established during the war (1944), the sturdy children of the Bretton-Woods agreement. The third institution was a runt. The effort to establish an international trade organization, which would ensure the free flow of the products that were produced by the industrialized states and sold all over the world, was defeated. However, a series of improvised post-war negotiations were conducted in the wake of the war, and they performed some of the intended functions of a trade organization; over time, subsequent rounds of such negotiations produced a growing web of agreements on tariffs and conditions of trade that served to liberalize world trade.18
The fourth institution was still born. The Roosevelt-administration realized that if the industrialized states were to make products and sell them freely across the world, they needed secure, stable and affordable supplies of energy. The US Department of State drew up a plan for an International Petroleum Commission to coordinate production and exportation activities among the various concessions in the Middle East . Its purpose was to prevent �the disorganization of world markets which might result from uncontrolled competitive expansion� (Anderson 1981:95; Yergin 1991:401f). The plan quickly came up against a formidable coalition of US oil interests, free-market arguments, anti-trust laws, bureaucratic battles for control and British scepticism. It was easily defeated in Congress.
No single institution was subsequently established to impose control over Middle-Eastern petroleum. Initiative thus passed to oil companies and producer governments. As the decades passed, this basic resource on which the world�s productive activities increasingly depended, were governed by the laws of supply, demand and military force. No single world-wide regime emerged to draw up a coordinated plan for the extraction and the consumption of oil, coordinate its traffic or monitor its prices.
The failure to establish such a regime may have been a good thing for many producer countries.19 However, for the industrial consumer countries it was not. Control resorted to the forces of the market � i.e. to a handful of giant companies and a few major producer countries � located in a volatile, pre-modern region encased in a competitive international system. Leaders of the industrial world have long seen the writing on the wall, and developed concerns for three things in particular: first, that the world�s oil production may have peaked; second, that most of their oil comes from a region that is marked by increasing turmoil; third that no other energy resource, as easy and cheap as oil, is immediately in sight. In short: the world economy is deeply dependent on the stable and smooth supply of cheap oil, and that cheap prices and stable supply are no longer to be taken for granted. This realization has consequences for every country in the world. Not least for the United States, whose economy is not only addicted to oil, but who is the pre-eminent actor in an interdependent world of oil-addicted trading states.
These concerns constitute the larger context of the US policies in the Middle East. The Bush-administration did not mention the vast oil reserves of Iraq when it invaded that country � instead, the rationale behind the invasion emphasized the need to liberate the Iraqi people from a vicious dictator and to introduce democracy to the area. The overarching concern, however, was stabilization of the region and control of its oil supplies.
It is likely that the leaders of America�s industrial allies understand that. It is also likely that, although they oppose the invasion on principle and are pressured by public opinion at home to mark their distance from it, oil addition prevents them from condemning America�s action outright. Finally, it is also likely that one of the things which puzzle them most, is the self-serving mode in which the Bush-administration has executed its invasion: It has not even bothered to pretend to act in the interest of all. The collective-security rhetoric of the hegemonic era of the early Cold-War years, is gone. Instead, US foreign policy seems to have reverted to the rapacious egotism of the last decades of the 19 th century � when American politics was, in the words of John Dewey, philosopher and member of the anti-imperialist league, �merely the shadow cast on society by big business�.
The Bush-administration�s policy of limiting contracts in Iraq to coalition countries in general and to US firms in particular, leaves little room for doubt: It is conducted on the principle of the commonest sort of imperialist cronyism. The vast contracts that Texas-based Halliburton Energy Services holds in post-Saddam-Iraq20 appear to outsiders as a shocking instance of high-level American corruption. Europeans may be ignorant of the more subtle aspects of American politics, yet it is common knowledge that vice-president Dick Cheney used to be Halliburton�s chief executive. In the eyes of the world, the United States is appropriating Iraqi resources in ways reminiscent of late-19 th century European efforts to obtain control over the abundant raw materials of Africa.
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1 This is the Argument of Michael Mann (1986, chapter 9).
2 These cases are discussed in Knutsen (1999)
3 In Lord Ismay�s famous post-war quip, the US presence was designed �to keep the Soviets out [and] the Germans down��.
4 And �authority� is, as Max Weber has taught us, �legitimate power�; it rests on a set of norms or rules that are considered legitimate.
5 This is the argument of e.g. Noam Chomsky (2003).
6 Cf the arguments by Immanuel Wallerstein (2002; 2003) and Emmanuel Todd (2004) � and, one may add, Michael Moore.
7 In recent years, there has been a good deal philosophizing as to whether this pre-eminence is rooted in economic, in military of in normative power. We will not elaborate on these definitions here. Such an elaboration can be found e.g. in Knutsen (1999).
8 Alpheus Snow for example explained (in 1902) how new areas were settled, cultivated and annexed during the 19 th century; at the same time they also became the subjects of the laws and institutions of Washington DC � laws made by Congress, executed by the President, enforced by armed forces under his command and evaluated by the Supreme Court.
9 At the beginning of the 19 th century, knowledge of these events were both thorough and common among members of America�s educated elite. As the old Latin schools were replaced by more modern institutions, this knowledge faded. By the beginning of the 21 st century, this knowledge is neither common nor deep. The argument is nevertheless repeated � it rings like an echo in American political debates as well as popular entertainments like George Lucas� Star Wars moves.
10 Marxist millionaire Gaylord Wilshire got an important boulevard in Los Angeles named after him; in this respect he differs from other US Marxists like Paul Sweezy (1942), William A Williams (1959), Immanuel Wallerstein (2003) and Noam Chomsky (2004). In terms of imperialist theories, however, similarities can be spottet among all of them.
11 Older political scientists seems more alerted to this than more recent authors. See e.g. the description by Alpheus Snow (1902) of how federal forces have subjected new territories to federal control.
12 This is a huge controversy in the literature. It is, of course, easy to find an example or two where US behaviour towards other states lies close to imperial practice. The annexation of Hawaii, is an obvious instance. Also, America�s policies towards some Caribbean and South-American countries may also provide seductive instances. I will however, argue, that these instances are less fitting than commonly assumed. Hawaii was acquired under very peculiar circumstances more than a century ago, and may be considered a unique case. In a more general, international and contemporary perspective, America�s behaviour in the world can hardly be defined as imperial.
13 Modern history offers some examples of powerful statesmen who have sought to establish imperium in order to impose order and stability on a region. Such efforts have regularly been attended by military force, repression, violence, conflict and war and has � in some cases � brought the entire state system to the brink of collapse. Modern history also offers examples of the opposite: of instances in which the Great Powers have respected the principle of state sovereignty, have agreed on the basic rules of the interstate game, and orchestrated their interrelations by establishing mechanisms of consultation and coordination. Modern history also offer instances in which Great Powers agree on which of them is pre-eminent and who is the authoritative, ordering and co-ordinating power. Such constellations � which have some times emerged in the wake of major wars � have described the most stable and peaceful epochs in international history (The system which emerged in the wake of major peace conferences � Utrecht [1713], Vienna [1820s], Versailles [1919] � are cases in point (Knutsen 1999)). This includes the relatively peaceful decades in the wake of World War II, when the USA was the ordering authority of the Western world.
14 It is a testimony to their continued faith in America, that the young Europeans� criticism of the America�s engagement in Vietnam was largely imported from the United States.
15 This point was hammered home when the Nixon government removed the dollar from its gold-base in 1971. This largely pulled the rug out from underneath the old Bretton-Woods system. In the short term, this encouraged the Europeans to devise their own mechanisms for ensuring the stability and the convertibility of their currencies. In the longer term it stimulated the integration of the European Union.
16 The Webster Dictionary defines conservatism as �the disposition in politics to preserve what is established�. In Europe, conservatism means adversity to rapid change. It involves moderation and studious efforts to avoid extremes. The conservative winds that began to blow across American politics during the 1970s did not conform to such traditional precepts at all. Its emergence shook the Atlantic community at its core. Thus, while the American Left has equivalents overseas, the American Right is distinctly American. In no other country is the Right as defined by values rather than class � by church attendance rather than annual income.
17 It is here important to note that this charge of irrationalism was not levied by European socialist or by bleeding-heart liberal critics; American scholars � some of them patriotic beyond reproach, other staunch advocates of Realpolitik � strongly protested America�s warfare in Vietnam. Cf. the deep scepticism voiced e.g. by Reighold Niebuhr, George F. Kennan and Hans J. Morgenthau.
18 The proposal was did not pass the US Senate in 1946. However, its envisioned function was performed by several negotiation rounds which emerged during the Cold War under the acronym of GATT (General Agreement for Tariffs and Trade). These several rounds were replaced in 1994 by the Uruguay Round which produced the World Trade Organization (WTO).
19 The International Petroleum Commission would prepare estimates for global oil demand, and distribute suggested production quotas to various countries on the basis of factors like available reserves, the needs and interests of producing and consuming countries and on �sound engineering pracrtices� (Anderson 1981:218ff). The Commission would, in effect, have established a cartel of oil producers dominated by the USA � some 15 years before the founding of OPEC. It could well have been used as a devise to exploit poorer and weaker producers as well as consumers of oil. We can only begin to guess what would have happened if such a cartel had, in fact, been established and had been caught up in the East-West rivalries of the Cold War.
20 The contracts are supposed to have generated $13 billion in sales before their 2006 expiring dates.
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