by Manuel Miles

In a recent article, I opined that antiwar activists need to educate ourselves and others on the history of empires.  I suggested that we might be less given to shock and surprise at every predictable move of the US Empire if we read histories of Rome, for example.

History has saddled the US state with pretending to be the heir to the American Revolution, an insurrection that was, in part, an anti-imperial rebellion.  This is awkward for the US government and its minions of the mass media, as the USA is obviously a rampaging empire.  When faced with such a conspicuous contradiction, statism always falls back on The Big Lie.  Thus, we are exposed to the hilarious spectacle of various apologists for the US Empire claiming (and, sometimes, even believing) that the government of the USA is an altruistic, humanitarian helper to the world’s downtrodden masses, and nothing at all like a nasty old empire.

The reason that this sounds almost exactly like stale Soviet propaganda is because the USSR had the same problem; it was supposedly the heir to an anti-imperial revolution, too.  So, much of the systematic denial has a familiar sound to it, at least to those over forty years of age.

Contrary to the agitprop, the inescapable fact is that the USA has its soldiers stationed in dozens of other countries, and that it dictates foreign, domestic and economic policy to many of the nations of the world.  So how do the Empire’s apologists “explain” that the USA cannot be an empire?  Let’s examine some of the current (you know there will be new ones tomorrow) rationalisations:

1) “The USA is a republic.”

To the uneducated (and the Ms-educated products of government schools), an empire has to be led by a guy who calls himself “the emperor”.  That sounds good to simpletons, but it is historically incorrect.  The Roman Empire was built under the Roman Republic; it only expanded under Octavian and his successors.  It should be noted that even the emperors pretended to be the servants of the SPQR (Senate and People of Rome), however.  Denial of the obvious is not a recent political invention.

The (pre-Rubicon) Roman Republic, controlled and extorted various payments from all of Gaul, most of Iberia, the coast of North Africa, Greece and the Balkans, and parts of Asia Minor.  None of those places are located in Italy, so if that isn’t an empire, then they don’t exist.  Yet, this was done by a republic which held elections for consuls, had a Senate that met frequently, occasional popular assemblies, comitia, et cetera.

There is no historical law prohibiting a republic from possessing an empire.  There is a trend toward autocratic takeovers of imperial republics, however, especially after they reach a certain stage of growth.  Even now this process is under way in the USA -- the President, like the first Roman emperors, decides when and where to wage war, and his Senate rubber stamps and extorts the funding for his imperial adventures, just as the original came to do in the time of Caesar and Octavian.

2) “The USA doesn’t call any country a ‘colony’.”

The republican Romans didn’t call anything a colony except settlements of Roman citizens (usually disbanded Roman legionnaires) in the midst of other peoples.  They called some of their client states “allies” and “friends of Rome”, and they called the (initially) relatively few places which they ruled directly “provinces”.

The USA has a myriad of controlling agencies, from Nato and the UN to the IMF and the World Bank, through which it exercises its imperial will.  This is (at times) slightly more sophisticated than the old Roman patchwork of client states and allies, but not fundamentally different.  [Indeed, the old Roman system was often more sophisticated than the American one.]

Michael Grant, in his History of Rome, points out that, “The client kings were tied to the service of Rome in order to defend its frontiers and... In return, they were supported by the Romans against internal subversive movements and allowed a free hand inside their own countries.  Thus Rome was spared the trouble and expense of administering these territories; and the formula worked well.” 

It still does. 

3) “The USA doesn’t rule other countries directly by imperial governor.”

Neither did Rome, in many instances.  The ideal is to rule through a puppet government; one which owes its existence to the imperial power, and knows it.  Rome often had “treaties” with its subject nations which forbade them from going to war without Roman approval.  This calls to mind the US Empire’s attack on Iraq in the “Gulf War”.  The Iraqis actually invaded Kuwait after seeking and receiving the permission of the US government.  The imperial envoy who granted this permission was later recalled and dismissed, as she apparently misunderstood the empire’s intentions in the region.  Similar awkward little gaffes happened when Roman envoys made agreements which the Senate didn’t like or approve of.

Numidia, a North African “client state” of Rome, was divided by Roman decree between Jugurtha and another Numidian prince.  These two were kings of their respective lands, yet when Jugurtha decided that he wanted the whole cake, and attacked his neighbour without Rome’s permission, the gloves (and the pretence) came off.  Rome fought and finally captured and executed Jugurtha.  In the aftermath of the Gulf War, many American politicians cried for Saddam Hussein’s head, much as the Roman mob demanded Jugurtha’s.  This is a typical imperial reaction to an act of defiance by the leader of a client state.

In the Balkans, in our day, the US and its allies have encouraged and financed rebellions to break up the strong state of Yugoslavia.  The Romans were involved in similar scheming as they made their way down Dalmatia into Macedonia and Greece.

The USA does, in fact, sometimes rule directly by imperial government, as in its “trust territories” in the Pacific.  And some colonies, like Puerto Rico, which is a “commonwealth”, are allowed local self-rule while the Empire runs its foreign policy.  This is identical to the Roman empire’s practice.

4) “The US military goes abroad to protect the ‘national interests’ of the USA not to conquer other nations.”

The Roman legions were often sent abroad to “protect the lives and property of Romans” who lived in other countries.  By definition, having “national” interests in other nations is to be an empire.  A nation has no right to have “interests” requiring military interventions beyond its own borders.  Of course, empires never seem to see it that way.  The Romans usually ended up staying where they had temporarily intruded to protect their imperial interests.

Clinton said, back in the last century, that the US would only be in the Balkans for a year.  Then his successor, Bush the Second, said that he wanted to get US troops out of the Balkans and other countries.  He really would like to, I am sure, but the locals keep on defying the empire by attempting to defend themselves from its barbarian allies.  This requires the long-term occupation of half the nations of the earth in the “national interests” of the USA and its various puppets like the KLA.

5) “The USA is altruistic and goes about the world helping others.”

That this one is used to justify the same “interventions” as number 4 above, does not seem to bother the apologists of the US Empire.  Neither does the fact that it is so obviously, laughably false.

Those who refuse this “help” need to be forced to see the superior ways of the supposed American democracy, of course, and this involves a bit of bombing now and again.  Collateral damage is such a shame, but if they’d only surrender, the savages would all benefit from the Pax Americana.

Thomas Jefferson and the signers of the Declaration of Independence would never have surrendered to any empire, no matter how “helpful” and “altruistic” it claimed to be.  They would have taken up arms against the present US Empire, and that is why it has to deny its own existence.

We who oppose the existence of this empire must continue to point out its nature; because its toadies will continue to say that there’s no such thing... and it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.

January 21, 2002