What we support and defend

[Dayuhan]

I do not believe America needs to go out and make the world more like us. I do believe, however, that America needs to act in accordance with our own principles when we go out into the world.

"When you say "our own principles, do you mean the established traditions of how America deals with other countries (or used to deal with other countries), or the principles by which America manages its own citizenry?

We might believe that the ultimate solution to conflict in Mindanao or Afghanistan, Yemen or Somalia, Nigeria or Iraq, is a government that provides equitable inclusion, civil rights, and economic opportunities to all citizens. We might even be right, an the rather abstract sense in which completely aspirational beliefs tend to be right. If we try to act on that belief, we're likely to make quite a mess. I'm not saying that it would be any better to support the status quo or invest ourselves in supporting any given party in these conflicts; that's likely to make quite a mess too. Far better, it seems to me, to stay out of it, and I think that would be very much in accordance with our own principles for managing relations with other countries.

Americans seem to believe they have a right to as much of the world's natural resources as they want. (Sound like John Locke?) The rest of the world seems to resent that (sound like Thomas Hobbes).

The people selling the stuff don't seem to resent it. Neither do the other people who want the stuff, as long as they can pay for it. Those left behind in the bidding featuring Americans, Chinese, Europeans, etc aren't too happy, but that's hardly "the rest of the world".

[Fuchs]

Do you want to assert that Hitler died with his honor intact because he never backed off from his principles?

It's beside the point, but he actually did.

During his last days he married AND became convinced that the German race is not the superior race, but the inferior one (possibly even to the Slavs!).
After all, it had obviously lost the war despite his leadership.

[slapout9]

If we adopted the "principles" held by the rest of the world the Middle East would be an American gas station and every piece of geostrategically key terrain and waterway around the world would have a US Flag over it. We would pay far less than wholesale for any products we extracted, and we would pay with some form of currencny that in no way depleted our own national treasury.

And those would be very good principles indeed, which is why they have been around for 2,000 years. Contrary to what is taught they are very moral and we are complelty de-moralized just like Boyd tried to explain.

[Fuchs]

Contrary to what is taught they are very moral and we are complelty de-moralized just like Boyd tried to explain.

I probably misunderstood you, but I don't think what you think is moral would stand the Kant's Categorical Imperative test.

[Bob's World]

And those would be very good principles indeed, which is why they have been around for 2,000 years. Contrary to what is taught they are very moral and we are complelty de-moralized just like Boyd tried to explain.

History will judge. America is undoubtedly the first Empire to pay retail.

What gets us in trouble is that we are stuck in the middle. We want to be a good guy, we think or ourself as a good guy, but we have all these bad guy urges that we keep acting out on, along with a bit of a control freak personallity that gets very insecure when others think about things differently than we do. That would be "Dr. Bob's" assessment if I had Uncle Sam on my couch. Do we blame our father for this, the good ol' British Empire? Or is it due to growing up rich and under supervised? I am sure a real shrink would have a field day.

[Fuchs]

History will judge. America is undoubtedly the first Empire to pay retail.

Come on. The Romans (original, Western and Eastern Empires!) even paid Barbarians for maintaining peace!

They didn't even get anything for it - instead, they paid to not lose something!

[Bob's World]

I doubt the Romans paid market price or did not extract heavy taxes from those they exercised dominion over or offered their protective services to. Paying someone not to attack you or to protect you is a very different matter. We aren't there yet, but we are drifting in that direction. But I am not an expert on that facet of Rome, so I could be wrong. To me this seems uniquely American.

[Fuchs]

I doubt the Romans paid market price or did not extract heavy taxes from those they exercised dominion over or offered their protective services to. But I am not an expert on that facet of Rome, so I could be wrong. To me this seems uniquely American.

Well, you first need to conquer AND defeat an eventual insurgency fully before you can play master fully.

The U.S. gets as much tribute from Iraqis after their insurgency as did the Romans from the Cherusci after their insurgency.
Instead, both pay subsidies to a wide range of foreign folks, supposedly in their own security interests.


Besides, I cannot remember the Soviets getting much tribute out of Afghanistan during the 80's or out of their Arab allies during the 70's.
How much tribute do the Brits get out of Iraq today?


Being ingrained with the idea of exceptionalism creates the strangest perceptions of uniqueness...

[Bob's World]

Fuchs your examples miss the mark.

The Brits milked the world for decades, but that ended long ago. I doubt the Russians purpose in going to Afghanistan was a quest for tribute so much as an effort to attempt to extend their influence toward the south and warm water.

What I describe might be "exceptionalism," I don't know, I think much that gets bundled under that kind of thinking is based in the fantasy of the false self-image I described briefly above. I am simply talking cold facts. Vast amounts of American capital are currently held by Middle Eastern royals and Asian businesses who owe their liberty and protection to America. Do we get Hyundai's at half price? Oil at cost? No.

At some point we will wake up and realize these "friends" were never friends at all and wonder why they do not help us in our hour of need as we helped them. The Chinese study American closely, but I suspect they find this aspect of our nature to be rather curious.

[Fuchs]

Why should you? That wasn't the deal.

Besides, the age of overt empires is gone. We'd have World War 4 and the U.S. would lose if the U.S. attempted to grab the riches of the world.
It's not THAT kind of power. You guys can barely occupy a small country or two.

Try to subjugate all what the English oppressed by the end of the 19th century and you'd see real quick that the super power U.S.A. is much better at breaking things and killing people than at forcing people.

All real empires mastered at all three disciplines.

[ganulv]

Try to subjugate all what the English oppressed by the end of the 19th century and you'd see real quick that the super power U.S.A. is much better at breaking things and killing people than at forcing people.

All real empires mastered at all three disciplines.

By those criteria the British Empire wasn’t even an empire, what with indirect rule an’ all that.

[Fuchs]

Indirect rule merely means that the lower and medium level bureaucracy are hired foreign personnel. The English were still in control and able to extract wealth - and the net transfer was likely bigger with indirect rule than with direct rule.
English soldiers were more expensive than Sepoys.

The Americans never really mastered this indirect rule and the setup of effective indigenous sepoy-like forces either.


Only true empires that mastered the "empire" business get true empire benefits.

The problem is of course that the whole "empire" thing has never benefited more than a tiny faction of the people. See Gracchus reforms, or the fact that England was already wealthier than the continent long before it built an empire thanks to the availability of maritime trade and rich natural resources (back then).

Extraction of wealth from others is a stupid path, preferable to incompetents and simple minds.
High productivity, near-full employment, balanced trade, long-term policies and a good distribution of income (7:3 for income from capital : labour in a developed country, with moderate top management incomes) is the way to go. You don't need to care about how much you pay for imported crude oil if your economy is doing its job just fine.

[ganulv]

Indirect rule merely means that the lower and medium level bureaucracy are hired foreign personnel.

From p. 199 of the article previously linked:

While the British were scrupulous in their respect for traditional methods of selection of chiefs, the French, conceiving of them as agents of the administration, were more concerned with their potential efficiency than their legitimacy. We need not wonder then that as a young French administrator, after serving in Senegal and Dahomey, M. Robert Delavignette should have been astonished, on his way to duty in Niger, to find that the British political officer in Kano actually called on the Emir when he had business with him and paid him the compliment of learning Hausa so that he could speak to him direct.

Which is to say that there was more to administration of the British Empire than compliance from the natives; there was also cooperation with. To say that the British were the more powerful party in the indirect rule relationship is stating the sort-of obvious (“sort-of” because the when of the relationship[s] as well as the scale do matter) but that didn’t put the British in complete control of their Empire in any other–than–simplified sense.

[carl]

The Romans are misjudged. They conquered and subdued but many of the places they conquered and subdued became Rome. Gaul, Iberia, Britain, North Africa, Italy, they fit this pattern. And those places fought to remain Rome, losing in the end.

The benefits to being Roman were enormous. The pattern of town construction in Celtic areas and Gaul I believe show this clearly. Before the Romans, hilltop fortified towns. During the Roman times, towns in the valleys where the water was. After the Romans, back to hilltop fortified towns.

The Romans did pay at the end when the empire was weak. But that was when the empire was weak. When it was strong, for the most part, they killed you if you bothered them. Which leads us to how did the empire get so weak. Goldsworthy argues that it essentially destroyed itself through continuous civil war over centuries. I think that is a good argument. Others have different ideas.

[carl]

Ganulv:

I have a question. I think that for an empire to endure and be truly successful, like the British and Roman, for example, they have to bring some benefits to the subjects. It can't all be just suppressing and taking. That doesn't cut it over the long run. The empire has to benefit the subject people in some way, internal peace and order, increased opportunity for trade, suppression of suttee, things like that. I also think that is why Isreal, which runs a mini-empire, has continuous trouble. All they offer the subject people is suppression and humiliation. There is no great benefit.

What do you think?

[Bob's World]

Empires always rationalized their behavior by the very real benefits they brought, and then typically fall unable to understand why people might prefer ineffective freedom to effective control.

The US does not run an "empire." We pay retail, we do not demand tribute, etc. We do attempt to excessively control political outcomes though, and in the modern era, even that degree of manipulation is unacceptable and unsustainable.

[carl]

Empires always rationalized their behavior by the very real benefits they brought, and then typically fall unable to understand why people might prefer ineffective freedom to effective control.

The US does not run an "empire." We pay retail, we do not demand tribute, etc. We do attempt to excessively control political outcomes though, and in the modern era, even that degree of manipulation is unacceptable and unsustainable.

The key phrase is "the very real benefits they brought." And in the case of Rome, those places I mentioned became Rome.

Perhaps people may prefer ineffective freedom to effective control. The idealistic young probably do. But the older ones with families to feed, maybe not so much. I think the appeal of the various independence movements was not "We won't do as good a job but it is us, not them doing it." I think the appeal was more along the lines of "We will do a better job than they do."

I don't know if the modern era has much to do with a high degree of manipulation being unsustainable. Perhaps that is just a function of the relative power of states waxing and waning as the years pass.

[Fuchs]

Ganulv, your example is from a region where there was almost nothing to extract and thus very little effort on part of the English.
They were much more involved in places with natural riches and decent possibilities for their transportation.

[ganulv]

Ganulv:

I have a question. I think that for an empire to endure and be truly successful, like the British and Roman, for example, they have to bring some benefits to the subjects. It can't all be just suppressing and taking. That doesn't cut it over the long run. The empire has to benefit the subject people in some way, internal peace and order, increased opportunity for trade, suppression of suttee, things like that. I also think that is why Isreal, which runs a mini-empire, has continuous trouble. All they offer the subject people is suppression and humiliation. There is no great benefit.

What do you think?

there are no guarantees. From the stuff I can claim either a good (American Indian relations with the British, French, and U.S. & Latin American relations with the Spanish) or passing (West African relations with the French and British) knowledge of my impression is that at some point the folks in the periphery are going to expect comity of treatment or reasonable privileges. One does have to wonder about the good faith of empires in general given how many of them stood on principle rather than renegotiate the status quo. What would it have cost the British Empire to have really and truly extended political enfranchisement to the Founding Fathers? What would it have cost the French to have extended liberté, égalité, and fraternité worth calling such to the Arab inhabitants of Algeria?

[ganulv]

Ganulv, your example is from a region where there was almost nothing to extract and thus very little effort on part of the English.
They were much more involved in places with natural riches and decent possibilities for their transportation.

So your telling me that going to the effort to consult with local leaders indicates lack of involvement? That makes no sense to me.

On the other hand the British had a notoriously uncooperative relationship with the Pashtun. What exactly were they extracting resource-wise from their territories?