America’s Late Imperial Dilemma

"US President Barack Obama is under attack – from so-called liberal hawks, more or less to the left of center, as well as from active interventionists on the right – for being a weak president, leading a war-weary (even world-weary) America in retreat.

Obama’s critics, whether on the left or the right, believe that the United States has a unique calling to impose its will on the world. The only difference is that the former justify their views with talk of democracy and human rights, while the latter do not need any such justification, because, after all, America is the greatest country on earth.

Either way, the premise that the US should lead forcefully rests on the idea that without a benevolent hegemonic power to police the world, chaos will ensue and more malevolent forces will take over. This opinion was expressed most clearly in a recent article by the conservative foreign-policy thinker Robert Kagan.

Kagan’s argument is that other countries cannot be relied upon to behave responsibly without strong US leadership. Like other hawks, he warns not only that dictators will behave badly if given the chance, which is certainly plausible, but also that democratic allies need to be kept in their place by a firm hegemonic hand.

In East Asia, for example, China must be “hemmed in” by strong US allies. But if Japan, America’s main ally in the region, were “much more powerful and much less dependent on the United States for its security,” it, too, should not be trusted.

Kagan may be right in thinking that a precipitous US retreat from East Asia could have dangerous consequences. But this argument has the familiar whiff of the late stages of empire. The European imperial powers of the twentieth century would periodically hold out the distant prospect of independence to their colonial subjects – but not yet, not before they were ready, not before their Western masters had educated them to take care of themselves responsibly. How long this education might take was anybody’s guess.

That is the paradox of imperialism. As long as the colonized are under the imperial cosh, they can never truly be ready, because the authority to run their own affairs, responsibly or not, was taken away from them.

Empires can impose order and stability for a long time; but imperialists – rather like many Americans today – become tired, and their subjects grow restless. The imperial order becomes brittle, and, as Kagan rightly notes, when the old order finally breaks down, mayhem often follows..."

at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ian-buruma-defends-barack-obama-s-retreat-from-pax-americana#PAy1SM52CF1ldjO1.99