Colossus: The Price of America's Empire

by Niall Ferguson

"America has never been an empire," declares President George W. Bush. "We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused -- preferring greatness to power, and justice to glory." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld echoes this view: "We don't seek empires. . . . We're not imperialistic."

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Possibly not. Ours, Ferguson explains, is an empire with an attention deficit disorder, imposing ever more unrealistic timescales on its overseas interventions. Worse, it's an "empire in denial" -- a hyperpower that simply refuses to admit the scale of its global responsibilities. Ferguson shows how, on the rare occasions when American occupations have been sustained -- as in Germany and Japan after World War II -- the results have been spectacular. But more often America meddles in haste, on the cheap, and through proxies. And the negative consequences will be felt at home as well as abroad.

"Part of my intention," writes Ferguson, "is simply to interpret American history as in many ways unexceptional -- as the history of just another empire, rather than (as many Americans still like to regard it) as something quite unique. However, I also want to delineate the peculiarities of American imperialism: both its awesome strengths and its debilitating weaknesses. The book sets recent events -- in particular, the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq -- in their long-run historical context, suggesting that they represent less of a break with the past than is commonly believed. ... The later chapters of the book ask how enduring the American empire is likely to prove." Highlights and major topics:

• Challenged: the belief that growing overseas military commitments may drag America towards economic "overstretch"

• Why the true economic "feet of clay" of the American Colossus are the impending fiscal crises of Medicare and Social Security

• Why the American empire could unravel as swiftly as the equally "anti-imperial" empire that was the Soviet Union

• Why the attacks of September 11, 2001 -- though they struck Americans like a bolt from the blue -- represented the culmination of three well-established historical trends

• 9/11 . . . or 11/9? Why the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 changed the context of American power more profoundly than the fall of the World Trade Center

• Why, despite its vast economic and military capabilities, the U.S. had such difficulties in imposing its will on so many of the countries where it intervened during the twentieth century

• Key reasons for the exceptional successes of American "nation building" in West Germany, Japan and South Korea

• Why, malignant though it is, Islamic terrorism remains a far less potent threat to America than the Soviet Union once was

• Has U.S. policy since 1990 shifted from "multilateralism" to "unilateralism"? How, on the contrary, it is the UN that has shifted -- and U.S. policy has been improvised in response

• How America has learned through bitter experience the value of credible military interventions in countries where state terror was being used against ethnic minorities

• The costs and benefits of the last great Anglophone empire -- the British. Its lessons for America

• Why, for many former British colonies, independence has been a failure, both in economic and political terms

• Why, by contrast, an American "empire of liberty" offers the best prospects for economic growth by guaranteeing not just economic openness but the institutional foundations for successful development

• The occupation of Iraq: Do we have the capacity to build effective civilian institutions in Iraq, given our historic preference for short-term, primarily military interventions?

• Compared: the American and European versions of empire

• Are European leaders correct to foresee a time when the European Union will act as a "counterweight" to American power?

• Why, in reality, the European Union is almost the antithesis of an empire

• The imperial origins of the United States. The extent and limits of America's empire up to the First World War

• Why the chief threat to America's empire does not come from embryonic rival empires to the west or to the east -- but from the "vacuum within"
  "HIGHLY PROVOCATIVE"

  "The primary shortcoming of America's approach to empire, Ferguson believes, is that it prefers in-and-out military flourishes to staying in for the long haul. His criticism of Americans as a people who like social security more than they like national security and refuse to confront impending economic disaster are withering . . . The erudite and often statistical argument has occasional flashes of wit and may compel liberals to rethink their opposition to intervention. . . ." -- Publishers Weekly

  "Is America ready to rule the world? Probably not. But, argues the author, it had better gear up to the task. Prolific British historian Ferguson . . . argues that the US is an empire in fact, with client states scattered around the world. Americans are reluctant to accept this fact for many reasons, although in the post-September 11 climate many more are warming up to the prospect. . . . Ideologically, at least, Americans should be well-equipped to administer such an empire, but we remain an empire in denial of the sort that 'tends to make two mistakes when it chooses to intervene in the affairs of lesser states. The first may be to allocate insufficient resources to the non-military aspects of the project. The second, and the more serious, is to attempt economic and political transformation in an unrealistically short timeframe.' Prepare, then, for failure -- and for agonizing years of involvement in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia. Discomfiting, highly provocative reading." -- Kirkus Reviews

  "Ferguson believes that it would be a good thing if the United States were to take over the imperial role once played by Great Britain -- but he doubts that Americans have what it takes to be effective imperialists. Colossus is sure to shake the assumptions of both fans and critics of the American Empire -- including those who deny that such a thing even exists." -- Max Boot, author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power