The New American Empire

Re “Bush Is No Emperor,” Opinion, Nov. 14: Anthony Pagden sets out a wooden definition of an empire and then contends that the U.S. is not one. But empires have taken different forms in different eras of history. It does not really matter how we define an empire; what matters is how people in a country feel when they are being dominated by a powerful foreign country.

Over centuries, people in Vietnam resisted domination by the Chinese, Japanese, French, British and then the United States. In the same way, people in Iraq now are increasingly enraged at U.S. attempts to shape and define their country. I sense that few Iraqis believe that the U.S. is in their country simply to help them gain democracy without ulterior motives.

Empires have always had ulterior motives. So the masses of people in Iraq are hesitant to resist the more militant ones among them.

This is why the carnage of guerrilla war and the casualties will go on for months and probably even for years to come. Iraqi insurgents see us as an empire.

Joe Everson

Thousand Oaks

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Pagden’s opinion piece suggests our attack on Iraq is not imperialism and President Bush is no emperor. Pagden missed a historic important quote in his defense of Bush and the war in Iraq. “A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.” -- Aristotle, Greek philosopher, 384-322 BC. Democracy is a Greek word.

Jerold Drucker

Tarzana

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Pagden is off the mark in his analysis. What he is missing is that we are now in the 21st century and the methods of “empire” are much different than those used by the British, other Europeans and Romans. The U.S. uses its political unilateralism as well as economic and cultural clout to create empire. The U.S. is imposing its mark on the world just as those countries in the article previously did. The methods may be different, but the result is very much the same.

Greg W. Garrotto

Los Angeles

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Professor Pagden is right that America is not an empire when judged by most of the attributes of empires. But America is similar to the Roman Empire in one way. Rome built roads, waterways, public works, institutions and communications to all corners of its empire. That allowed people to turn their attention away from mere survival, feuds and wars to trade and enterprise. Rome, of course, did not follow up and encourage democracy as America does. Without free-market economies to absorb human interest, democracy probably would not be possible.

It is ironic that the left does not approve of America’s pushy encouragements because such urging is probably the best path to ending or reducing the practice of warfare.

Howard Lohmuller

Seabrook, Texas

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Oh my! Pagden’s little exercise in self-deception has to count as one of the more fatuous lead articles of the year. At a time when less-deluded spokespersons for empire, such as Atlantic Monthly correspondent Robert Kaplan, are dropping the charade, Pagden still insists we are not a new imperium. His evidence: Unlike Rome and Britain, the U.S. does not seek settler colonies. True enough. But that’s a lot like saying we have no real army because, by Roman standards, our missile-firing technicians don’t look at all like their sword-wielding legions.

Time and technology may change, but very little of human substance does. In place of classic settler colonies, modern U.S. methodology employs capital markets like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, stealth operations like the CIA, proxy armies like the Nicaraguan Contras and, when worse comes to worst, our own rapid deployment forces. Call it neo-imperialism or neo-colonialism, if you will. But the substance remains the same: managing and expanding domination, directly or indirectly, over foreign peoples.

Kaplan sees it and admits it; on the other hand, Pagden blinds us with deceptive word games just dogged enough to win a spot in the Orwellian Bush administration.

Doug Doepke

Claremont