With this posting I inaugurate a new feature to the blog: The Occasional Review of Books. As the name suggests, I will write about a significant political book from time to time, but by no means on any sort of schedule, and only occasionally. Today, the work in question is Niall Ferguson's Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire.
If anything is to be said of Ferguson it is that he has a remarkable candor. The man is a unabashed proponent of a liberal empire, and he believes the United States is the only world nation currently able to fill this role. Ferguson seems to have a degree of nostalgia for the bygone days of his nation's empire. In chapters of the book he argues something that for the past few decades has been unthinkable in mainstream thought, that former colonies of the third world would be better off if they were still colonial possessions. Other comments of Ferguson are equally taboo. He essentially advocates for gutting the welfare state to bankroll American neo-Colonialism, but unlike fellow supporters of a militant Pax Americana, Niall Ferguson says what he means and means what he says. A passage that really came as a shocker to my sensibilities was this:
"There is undoubtedly something perplexing about the apparent lack of American combat-effective troops... [I]f one adds together the illegal immigrants, the jobless and the convicts, there is surely ample raw material for a larger American army... Reviving the draft would not be necessarily unpopular, so long as it was properly targeted." (292)
Even Dr. Ferguson realizes in the end however that the United States is unlikely to live up to his image of a great and terrible new imperium. The part where the reader is supposed to be alarmed, the "fall" in the books title, is when Ferguson informs us that Americans simply lack the correct character to invade and subjugate foreign nations. And I am relieved to say that I agree with Niall Ferguson. I for one would much rather see the United States as a sort of benign Santa Claus figure than Darth Vader with an American flag lapel.
1 comment:
American Empire? Indeed interesting, though Furgeson is, of course, not unprecedented in his views. Colonialism has its ostensible benefits, but the fact is that autonomy and hegemony can never compromise to each other, they never shall, and it is foolhardy to expect as much.
The cost of maintaining stability in rebellious national possessions is not worth the possible enterprisal benefits, in my opinion. But the points are definitely interesting.
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