The formal postwar occupations of West Germany and Japan continued for, respectively, 10 and 7 years, though U. Troops were also deployed in large numbers in South Vietnam from , though by they were gone. This pattern supports the widespread assumption that the U. Empire — especially unstated empire — is ephemeral in a way that makes our own age quite distinct from previous ages. In the American case, however, the principal cause of its ephemeral empire is not the alienation of conquered peoples or the threat posed by rival empires the principal solvents of other 20th-century empires but domestic constraints.
These take three distinct forms. The first can be characterized as a troop deficit. In , when it successfully quelled a major Iraqi insurgency, Britain had one soldier in Iraq for every 23 locals.
Today, the United States has just one soldier for every Iraqis. The problem is not strictly demographic, as is sometimes assumed. For the United States is not short of young people. It has many times more males aged 15 to 24 than Iraq or Afghanistan. It is just that the United States prefers to maintain a relatively small proportion of its population in the armed forces, at 0.
Moreover, only a small and highly trained part of this military is available for combat duties overseas. Members of this elite group are not easy to sacrifice. Nor are they easy to replace. Each time the newspaper reports the tragedy of another death in action, I am reminded of the lines of Rudyard Kipling, the greatest of the British imperial poets:.
That figure is not much in relation to the size of the U. Other spending priorities, such as the ballooning unfunded liabilities of the Medicare system, have precluded the Marshall Plan for the Middle East that some Iraqis had hoped for. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is the American attention deficit. Past empires had little difficulty in sustaining public support for protracted conflicts. The United States, by contrast, has become markedly worse at this.
It took less than 18 months for a majority of American voters to start telling pollsters at Gallup that they regarded the invasion of Iraq as a mistake. Comparable levels of disillusionment with the Vietnam War did not set in until August , three years after U. All kinds of pat theories exist to explain the diminished durability of empires in our time. Some say that the reach of the hour news media makes it too hard for would-be imperialists to conceal abuses of power. Others insist that military technology has ceased to confer an unassailable advantage on the United States; improvised explosive devices are the ten-rupee jezails of our time, negating at a stroke the superiority of American weaponry by rendering most of it superfluous.
There is a demographic limit to the number of people most nation-states can put under arms. An empire, however, is far less constrained; among its core functions are to mobilize and equip large military forces recruited from multiple peoples and to levy the taxes or raise the loans to pay for them, again drawing on the resources of more than one nationality.
But why fight wars? Again, the answer must be economic. The self-interested objectives of imperial expansion range from the fundamental need to ensure the security of the metropolis by defeating enemies beyond its borders, to the collection of rents and taxation from subject peoples — to say nothing of the more obvious prizes of new land for settlement, raw materials, and treasure.
As a general rule, an empire needs to procure these things at lower prices than they would cost in free exchange with independent peoples or with another empire if the costs of conquest and colonization are to be justified. At the same time, however, an empire may provide "public goods" — that is, benefits of imperial rule that flow not only to the rulers but also to the ruled and, indeed, to third parties. These can include peace in the sense of a Pax Romana, increased trade or investment, improved justice or governance, better education which may or may not be associated with religious conversion , or improved material conditions.
Imperial rule is not just about boots on the ground. Not only soldiers but also civil servants, settlers, voluntary associations, firms, and local elites can all, in their different ways, serve to impose the will of the center on the periphery. Colonists drawn from lower income groups in the metropolis may also share in the fruits of empire.
Those who stay at home may derive emotional gratification from the victories of distant legions. Local elites may also figure among the winners. An empire, then, will come into existence and endure so long as the benefits of exerting power over foreign peoples exceed the costs of doing so in the eyes of the imperialists; and so long as the benefits of accepting dominance by a foreign people exceed the costs of resistance in the eyes of the subjects.
Such calculations implicitly take into account the potential costs of relinquishing power to another empire. At the moment, in these terms, the costs of running countries like Iraq and Afghanistan look too high to most Americans; the benefits of doing so seem at best nebulous; and no rival empire seems able or willing to do a better job.
With its republican institutions battered but still intact, the United States does not have the air of a new Rome. Although the current president has striven to empower the executive, he is no Octavian. But all these things could change.
In our ever more populous world, where certain natural resources are destined to become more scarce, the old mainsprings of imperial rivalry remain. Or ask how long a neoisolationist America would remain disengaged from the Muslim world in the face of new Islamist terrorist attacks.
Empire today, it is true, is both unstated and unwanted. But history suggests that the calculus of power could swing back in its favor tomorrow. Twitter: nfergus. Foreign Policy, Economics, China. Shusha was the key to the recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Now Baku wants to turn the fabled fortress town into a resort. Feature Empires with Expiration Dates Empires drive history. But the empires of the past years were short lived, none surviving to see the dawn of the new century.
Today, there are no empires, at least not officially. But that could soon change if the United States -- or even China -- embraces its imperial destiny. How can they avoid the fate of those who came before them? October 14, , PM. Imperial Dating We tend to assume that the life cycle of empires, great powers, and civilizations has a predictable regularity to it. Why We Fight Empires do not survive for long if they cannot establish and sustain local consent and if they allow more powerful coalitions of rival empires to unite against them.
Tags: China , Economics , History , U. Foreign Policy. What in the World? November 12, , PM. Trending 1. Latest Analysis. Or are they? The Month in World Photos. The Portuguese Empire was the first global empire in history, as well as the longest-lived modern European colonial empires. The empire began with the capture of Ceuta in and ended in with the handover of Macau.
The empire's most valuable colony, Brazil, won its independence in Following a war in to overthrow the regime, the empire's government recognized the independence of all its colonies, except for Macau. Macau was returned to China in The Abbasid Caliphate covered 4. While population numbers are unknown, the empire lasted from to and only went into decline as the Turkish army rose to power.
The Umayyad Caliphate covered 5. The second Islamic caliphate was founded in Arabia after the Prophet Muhammad's death and while the Umayyad family originated in Mecca but chose Damascus as its capital. The Umayyad Caliphate, whose name comes from the great-grandfather of the first Umayyad caliph, ruled between and A. The Yuan Dynasty covered 5. Five years after founding the dynasty, Kublai Khan captured the capital of the rival Southern Song Dynasty and unified all of China. The dynasty enjoyed a bountiful life, encouraging trade with foreign countries as well as a visit from famed Italian merchant Marco Polo.
The Qing Dynasty covered 5. Founded when the Chinese defeated the Mongols, the Qing Dynasty ruled China from the 17th to the 20th century, with the height of its power and reach peaking in the s. The Republic of China took over the government at the end of the Qing Dynasty. The Spanish Empire covered 7. Spain's empire began in the days of Columbus and lasted, in parts of Africa, until the latter 20th century. Spanish is now the second most spoken language in the world.
The Russian Empire covered 9. Russia was the last absolute monarchy in Europe, and prior to World War I, one of five great powers in Europe. During the time of the empire. The Russian Empire ended with the bloody Russian Revolution of The Mongol Empire covered 9. The largest contiguous empire in history, the Mongol Empire emerged from the unification of Mongol and Turkish tribes under Genghis Khan. The Mongols achieved advancements in various technologies and ideologies during the empire.
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