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America in the Shadow of Empires
David Coates
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america in the shadow of empires
Copyright © David Coates, 2014.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a
division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England,
company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has
companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United
Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978-1-137-48236-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Coates, David, 1946–
America in the shadow of empires / David Coates.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-137-48236-5 (hardback)
1. United States—Foreign relations—21st century. 2. United States—Social
conditions—21st century. 3. National characteristics, American—History—21st century.
4. Imperialism—Case studies. I. Title.
JZ1480.C63 2014
327.73—dc23
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: December 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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2014025146
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Contents
Introduction
1
I
The Problem
1
The Nature of Our Contemporary Condition
2
The Question of Empire
II
The Parallels
3
The Glory That Was Rome
53
4
Spain: The Rise and Fall of a Dynastic Empire
81
5
The Rise and Fall of the British Empire
105
6
Russian Empires Old and New
137
7
The Lessons of Empire
159
7
33
III The Reckoning
8
A New Rome on the Potomac?
171
9
Toward a Better America
201
Notes
219
Subject Index
259
Name Index
265
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Introduction
This study rests on a single premise, it pursues a single question,
and it explores a single theme. The premise is that, internally, the United
States is in trouble, performing less well economically and socially than
it has in its recent past and less well currently than some of its major competitor economies and societies abroad. The question is the contribution,
if any, that the scale of America’s global commitments has made, and is
now making, both to the development of that troubling underperformance and to our inability easily to resolve it. The theme, therefore, is the
likely costs of empire, and the possibilities of avoiding them.
Exploring those costs in the context of America’s contemporary economic and social difficulties will doubtless be neither universally popular
nor welcome. After all, it is not normal in most American political discourse to keep the focus of the dialogue on the debit side of the American
account, and it certainly is not normal to frame America’s global role as
an imperial one. So before this exploration begins, it is necessary to say
something about both underperformance and empire.
Public discourse in America is invariably uneasy with any idea of US
economic and social underperformance. We like to tell ourselves that
everything we do is world class and world leading and that America is
genuinely without equal as a free society; we tend to hold to that set of
beliefs while remaining broadly ignorant of parallel performance by others. Knowing much about the world beyond our shores requires an effort
that most Americans are too busy and too internally focused to prioritize:
the United States is big enough, after all, to call its own internal baseball
finals “The World Series,” even though the bulk of the world doesn’t
even chose to play baseball and certainly does not participate in the competition itself. But broad assertions based on systematic ignorance have
a high chance of inaccuracy, and any unquestioning assertion of unbridled American superiority does not sit easily with contemporary facts.
America is not the best at everything, no matter how often conservative
commentators tell us that it is. Sadly, it is not even the best at everything
we collectively value; indeed, lately we have seriously slipped on a string
of key indicators of both economic performance and quality of life—
indicators on which American supremacy once went unchallenged.1 The
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full examination of that slippage awaits us in Chapter 1, but as a teaser,
note this: levels of social mobility are now lower in the United States
than in at least 6 countries and possibly in 12—countries that include
Canada on this continent and a slew of others in Europe.2 We used to
pride ourselves—and many of us still do—on being the place in which it
was possible to raise yourself socially simply by your own efforts. Well, we
are not that exceptional in the sphere of social mobility any more, and
we would do well to ask ourselves why.
American public discourse is also uneasy with any notion of empire.
We are not supposed to have one. On the contrary, we are supposed to be
the first new nation born from the empire of others. As a country, we are
particularly good at spotting the imperial practices of other nations and
at finding them wanting. Russia, after all, was the “evil empire” whose
global power Ronald Reagan helped break, just as long ago Britain was
the inept empire that Benjamin Franklin chose to advise on how best
to retain the loyalty of its colonies.3 But these days, neither of those
empires remain intact to challenge the enormous global role now played
by American arms and American diplomacy. From outside the United
States, that global role is often seen as imperial in character—no different in kind from that of its British or Russian predecessors—which helps
explain that strangest of modern phenomena: that of the American state
acting abroad and expecting its actions to be welcomed, only to find that
they are not. Donald Rumsfeld was not the first, and probably will not be
the last, American defense secretary to make that fundamental mistake.
So, at the very least, as we examine the costs and benefits of American
global leadership in the twenty-first century, it will be worth exploring the degree to which America’s actions abroad are similar to things
done abroad by empires in the past. That, at least, is the governing wager
underpinning this book—the wager that, because America now operates
globally in at least the shadow of other empires, the fate of those other
empires may have things to teach us both about our present condition
and about our likely condition in years to come.
The exploration of America in the shadow of empires will move through
the following stages. In Part 1, we will make a preliminary assessment of
America’s contemporary condition and of the degree to which American
foreign policy is, or is not, best understood as imperial in kind. In Part 2,
we will examine in turn each of the empires that have left the most enduring footprint on the modern American condition—the empires of Rome,
Spain, Britain and Russia—before drawing some general lessons from all
four about the internal consequences of any prolonged imperial role. In
Part 3, those internal consequences will be used twice: first to reframe our
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Introduction
3
preliminary assessment of America’s contemporary condition and then
to inform a closing argument on how best to improve that condition by
avoiding such consequences if we can.
In the preparation of so ambitious a project, the accumulation of
private debts is unavoidably huge. The first debt has to be to the many
scholars of empire on whose work all that follows so heavily draws. Every
footnote is really a statement of thanks to them for the quality of what
they have done and for the awe and excitement that their work raises
in all of us who read and benefit from it. The second debt has to be
to colleagues and students here at Wake Forest University, with whom
preliminary drafts of parts of this book were shared and who gave so
generously of their time and expertise to correct errors of fact and interpretation. My thanks are particularly due to Will Waldorf, Jeff Lerner,
and Peter Siavelis; and also to Monique O’Connell, Jack Amoureux, Tom
Brister, and Michele Gillespie. Thanks are also due to my three research
assistants early in the project—Kristen Olson, Peter Gauss, and Jonathan
Coates—and to two sets of students who shared with me a senior seminar
on the rise and fall of empires.4 And, as always, the greatest debt I gladly
acknowledge—a debt about the quality of my life as well as about the
quality of this text—is to Eileen, who is both the great editor of my writing and my fabulous partner in our ongoing American adventure. While
excusing all of them from any responsibility for any errors that remain—
those are mine, of course, and mine alone—let me dedicate this book
to them all, in the hope that its publication can make some small but
important contribution to the creation of that better America for which
so many of us now long.
David Coates, Wake Forest University, July 1, 2014
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PART I
The Problem
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CHAPTER 1
The Nature of Our
Contemporary Condition
It is still conventional in American political discourse to treat this
country as exceptional and to understand the term “exceptional” as actually meaning “superior.” In the national anthem, for example, America
is hailed as “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” and most
Americans still treat that claim as a factually accurate one. As far as I can
tell, it remains largely axiomatic among citizens of all ages, races, classes,
and creeds that here in the United States, we enjoy better and larger
freedoms than do people elsewhere; that we possess a stronger economy
and a higher standard of living than others do; and that we uniquely
experience a higher probability of individual economic advancement and
upward social mobility. America is the land of the free and the home of
the brave—everybody in America is above the global average, so the conventional wisdom runs—because this is the one country on the face of
the earth in which we can all successfully live out the American Dream.
Indeed, immigrants flock to these shores for precisely that reason, eager to
become citizens in the one global power committed to the freedom and
liberty of all peoples. My late father-in-law used to regularly ask his newly
acquired British relative, “Is this a great country, or what?” “Great” was, of
course, the only permitted answer. In fact, more than great—exemplary
indeed—exemplary at home as a uniquely dynamic capitalist economy
based on free-market principles, and exemplary abroad as a global power
uniquely committed to the greater good of all.
We possess many scholarly and popular expositions of this general position.1 The most widely cited academic exposition in recent years has been
that by Seymour Martin Lipset. The leading political sociologist of his generation, Lipset anchored US exceptionalism in the country’s status as what
he termed “the first new nation.”2 He saw the United States as a revolutionary society uniquely committed to the values of liberty, egalitarianism,
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individualism, populism, and laissez-faire. He thought those values were
the key to America’s economic superiority, though Lipset was also well
aware of how easily that superiority could be challenged, when he was
writing, largely by Japan. Seymour Martin Lipset was, at least, sufficiently
sensitive to the nuances of his material to insist that this exceptionalism
was “a double-edged sword”: that it was one with a definite downside that
left the United States as a different (an outlier) society rather than as a
necessarily better one. In comparative terms, the United States was simply
for him “the most religious, optimistic, patriotic, rights-oriented and individualistic”3 society yet devised—and he liked it that way.
Subsequently, other scholars and commentators have been less
restrained in their defense of that exceptionalism. For Thomas Madden,
for example, America is currently and uniquely running an empire of
trust, one to be compared favorably with earlier empires of conquest (like
the Soviet’s) or of commerce and trade (like Britain) and to be likened
to other empires admired by Madden, most notably that of Republican
Rome.4 Equally, for Olaf Gersemann, what Seymour Martin Lipset saw
as a potentially threatened economic superiority is best understood (from
the libertarian perspective of the Cato Institute in which Gersemann
was based) as a highly desirable form of “cowboy capitalism,” and he
defended it as a much more productive way of organizing economic life
than that delivered by any state-led/managed alternative of the kind common in Western Europe.5 Newt Gingrich recently said it best: “The facts
are all on our side . . . America is simply the most extraordinary nation
in history . . . a land of liberty . . . the land of the never-ending ‘second
chance’ . . . a land of infinite possibility.” It is “a nation,” as he put it, “like
no other.”6
These writers differ in the level of sophistication of their arguments
and in their senses of the limits of American superiority, but they share at
least two underlying premises of central relevance to our concerns here.
The most obvious is their shared assumption of continued American
military and economic strength. Most participants in the celebration of
American exceptionalism take for granted that these forms of strength are
both permanent and desirable. The second, less obvious perhaps, is the
shared assumption that one form of strength reinforces the other: that
the American economy and the US global role are so configured that they
produce a self-sustaining dynamic of comparative superiority. Certainly
what the public (and perhaps even the scholarly) conversation about
American exceptionalism does not so readily concede, however, is the
alternative to those two governing assumptions. Advocates of American
exceptionalism do not easily admit even the possibility of America being
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The Nature of Our Contemporary Condition
9
no longer exceptional as a country or as a power. Nor do they regularly
explore the possibility that, instead of a mutually reinforcing dynamic
of superiority, we might rather be on the cusp of a similarly reinforcing
dynamic of decline: one in which economic underperformance and imperial overreach are coming together to weaken America both at home and
abroad.
Yet there are signs that such a mutually reinforcing dynamic of decline
may indeed be building up around us. It is at those signs that we first
need to look.
The US Global Military Footprint
One thing that is definitely building up around us is the scale, extent, and
cost of America’s military role overseas. Historically, that scale was modest
and the role was limited—mainly to the Americas and to a number of
Pacific islands—but no longer. In the last seven decades—that is, in the
lifetimes of the oldest of the baby boomers—the United States has fundamentally reset itself. It has changed from its interwar isolationism into
a global power with an exceptionally large and, in that sense, a genuinely
unique, global military footprint.
That footprint is most evident in the wars that the United States has
fought since 1941. The list is long and well-known: fighting a world war
(alongside a series of major allies) until 1945 and then fighting more localized wars (with different allies each time) in Korea (1950–53), Vietnam
(1964–75), the Persian Gulf (1991), Iraq (2003–11), and Afghanistan
(since 2001, 4000+ days and counting). Any complete record of US military involvement abroad also needs to include a set of wars that are less
generally remembered: a set of more limited military interventions that
included Lebanon in 1958, Somalia in 1991, and Kosovo in 1998. Even
before the “war on terror” was launched in 2001, the United States had
already “employed its military in other countries over seventy times since
1945, not counting innumerable instances of counterinsurgency operations by the CIA.”7 The number of post-1945 American wars is therefore
large—unprecedentedly large indeed in American history—and so too is
the number of military personnel consequently involved. Taking all the
military services together and drawing on figures from the 2012 Quadrennial Defence Review, “including operations in Afghanistan and Iraq,
approximately 400,000 U.S. military personnel are forward-stationed or
rotationally deployed around the world.”8 If we then add to that the further 1.6 million Americans now working in the defense-related industries
on which the effectiveness of the 400,000 depend,9 we can see that the
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current US military effort abroad directly impacts the lives and careers of
probably at least two million Americans.
The American global military footprint is not, however, just a matter of American boots on foreign soil. It is also a matter of foreign real
estate held and developed by American arms. Both where the United
States has intervened directly and where, in addition, the Pentagon has
felt US strategic interests require it, post-1945 US administrations have
built military bases—and have built them in unprecedented numbers.
The US military reportedly built 505 bases in Iraq in the years following the 2003 invasion. The US military has currently built more
than 400 in Afghanistan10 and the global total of American military bases
abroad is now probably nearer 1,000 than the earlier Chalmers Johnson figure of 865.11 These bases differ significantly in size, “ranging from
micro-outposts to mega-bases the size of small American towns.”12 Many
of them are extremely large, including some that were simply abandoned as US troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011. The 505 bases once
in US hands there declined to just 39 by September 2011.13 The AlAsad Airfield in Iraq, for example, is said to cover 25 square miles. When
completed, Base Balad covered 15 square miles, and included a football
field, a softball field, a movie theater, and a 25-meter swimming pool
among its major facilities. Construction costs associated with these bases
exceeded $2.4 billion, according to an analysis of Pentagon annual reports
by the Congressional Research Service. The US Army Corps of Engineers alone was responsible for $1.9 billion in base construction between
2004 and 2010.14
Moreover, in addition to the public face of the American military presence overseas, there is the covert one. Since at least the days of the failed
raid to rescue American hostages from Iran in 1980, the US military has
trained and used special operations forces in an increasing number of
countries. During Barack Obama’s first term as president, black-ops teams
operated in at least 75 countries for certain (and possibly in as many
as 120), up from the 60 countries into which such units were deployed
under George W. Bush. SOCOM, the US Special Operations Command
to which they answer, now has some 60,000 personnel and a budget of at
least $6.3 billion;15 and CIA operations, though never publicly recorded,
have now clearly expanded to include the maintenance of secret prisons,
rendition, and torture.16 The United States has also covertly financed a
series of proxy wars since 1945, arming resistance movements keen to
topple regimes that Washington also wished to see removed. Such proxy
wars included covert support for the mujahidin in Afghanistan against
the Soviets in the 1980s, support that came back to haunt us in a very
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Subject Index
Adrianople, Battle of, 57, 59, 85
Afghanistan, 9–13, 15, 35, 39, 75, 107,
138, 140, 173, 180–81, 183, 200,
202, 205
Algeria, 133
American: century, 15; DNA, 35, 46;
Dream, 22, 194; economic decline,
1, 9, 30–31; Empire, 8, 33–40,
45–50, 178; exceptionalism, 1,
7–8; freedom, 29–30; hegemony,
47, 48; new imperialism, 49;
power, 183; power (benign),
35–36, 195; power, resentment of,
183; superempire, 47; superiority,
1, 7–8; supremacy, 1; three
empires, 46
Anti-Corn Law League, 112
Antioch, 67
Argentina, 100–101, 107, 153
Arms exports, 124–25, 207
Assassinations, 39, 179
Augustan Threshold, 54, 72
Australia, 26, 28, 106
Austria, 82, 115, 138
Authorization to Use Military Force
Act, 180, 205
BAE Systems, 125, 126
Balkans, 11, 50, 148
Baltic, 148
Bankers, 90–92
Bases, 10, 38, 48, 125, 206
Belgium, 115
Belize, 125
Benghazi, 203
Berlin Wall, 47
Blowback, 62, 183
Bolivia, 83, 100
Bosnia, 75
Bourbons, Spanish, 93, 96, 100, 101–2
Brazil, 16, 115
Bread and circuses, 66, 199
Bretton Woods, 114
British Empire: imperial mindset, 128–
31; liberal militarism, 123–28; loss
of, 113–17; loss of manufacturing
dominance, 117–19; retreat from
empire, 132–35; rise (economic),
111–13; rise (military), 110–11;
scale (formal), 105–8; scale
(informal), 108–9; separation of
industry and finance, 119–23
Brunei, 125
Bureaucracy, 58–59, 70, 85–86
Burma, 113
Canada, 2, 26, 28, 40, 46, 106, 115,
153
Canary Islands, 83–84
Capital export, 120
Capital punishment, 31
Capitulaciones, 84
Catholic Church, the, 86, 102–3
Catholic Kings, the, 82
Center-periphery relations, 41, 67–68,
101
Central planning, 152
Child care, 29
Chile, 83
China, 12, 17–21, 24–25, 27, 30–31,
55, 113, 115, 124–25, 138, 147,
153, 172, 184, 187–88, 197, 204,
211
Christianity, 56, 74, 199
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Subject Index
CIA, 10, 180
City, the, 109, 121–23
Civil wars, 57–58
Class: contradictions of, 71–72;
divisions, 193–94; issues of, 70–74
Cold War, 16, 47, 145, 181–85, 207
Colonial ingratitude, law of, 161–62
Columbia, 100
Comintern, 146–47
Commonwealth, the, 114
Communeros, 87
Communism, 156
Conquistadores, 83, 99
Counter-Reformation, 82, 87, 98
Crimea, the, 110, 138–39, 142, 203
Crimean War, 139, 142
Cuba, 81, 102
Culture: arrogance, 31, 99, 128–30,
141–42, 166–67, 194–97;
degradation, 76, 77, 78, 97–100,
197–200; parochialism and,
134–35, 197; sclerosis of, 164; of
slavery, 64–65
Cyprus, 107, 114, 125, 132
Czechoslovakia, 140, 148, 154
Debt, 18, 28, 89–93, 187
Deindustrialization, 24–25, 118–19,
192–94, 208
Democracy: support for, 179; threat
to, 178
Denmark, 115
Dictatorships, support for, 179
Dodd-Frank, 210
Double lie, the, 147–48, 197
Double standard, 166, 195–96
Drones, 49, 182–83
Economic: backwardness, 142–43,
150–53; decline, 93–97, 165;
development, 67; growth, dash for,
143; growth, new model of, 212–
13; miracles, 16; reconstruction
(Germany), 16, 23, 184–85;
reconstruction (Japan), 16, 23,
184, 186; reconstruction (South
Korea), 16, 184, 186; superiority,
111–13, 115–16
Economy, rebalancing of, 208–14
Ecuador, 100
Education, 18–22, 198
Egypt, 107, 110
Elites, 70, 85
Empire: American and, 33–40, 45–50;
borders of, 61; cost of, 1, 78;
definition of, 40–45; dialectic
of, 162; fall of, 44–45, 133; by
franchise, 83; hegemony and, 341;
lessons of, 2, 159–67; question
of, 33–50; retreat from, 201–8;
varieties of, 42, 43, 45, 48
Encomienda system, 85
Enlightened despotism, 102
Equality, need for, 214–17
Ethnic cleansing, 46, 140
Finance: fragility of, 189–90; growth
of, 209; need to shrink, 208–10;
regulation of, 201; in UK, 108–11,
119–23
Finance and Empire, 90–91, 187–91
Financial arbitrage, 164, 187–88
Financial crisis (2008), 17, 190–91
Financial terror, balance of, 188
Financialization, 188
Finland, 20, 28, 115, 138–39
Fiscal-military state (UK), 11–12
Flawed Fordism, 118, 123
France, 12, 16, 25, 28, 46, 92, 106,
113, 115, 131, 137, 139, 142, 174
Free trade, 131, 186–87
Gender divisions, 193–94
General Motors, 26–27
Generational change, 22
Gentlemanly capitalism, 121–23
Germany: contemporary, 12, 28, 115,
188; East, 148; pre-1945, 53, 82,
87, 90, 92, 106, 113, 117, 120,
130–31, 144, 146, 150; West, 16,
50, 184, 204
Ghana, 114
Gibraltar, 100, 107, 125
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Subject Index
Glasnost, 155
Governance, problems of, 58–60,
162–63
Grain imports, 67, 95, 153
Guam, 46, 81, 100, 172
Guatemala, 173
Guerrilla warfare, 86, 132, 181
Gun lobby, 203
Gun ownership, 31
Habsburgs, 82
Hard power, limits of, 161–62, 207
Hegemony, 34, 45, 47, 48
Hidalgos, 89
Holland, 106
Hong Kong, 114, 125
Hours worked, 27
Hubris, 31, 99, 128–30, 141–42,
166–7, 194–97
Hungary, 82, 138, 140, 148, 154–55
Huns, 57
Ideational inertia, 131
Illness, 27
Imperial: closure, 198; preference, 121;
presidency, 163; rationales, 129;
trajectories, 160
Imperialism, 36–40, 77, 107, 108–11,
134, 145, 157
Incarceration, rates of, 29, 31
Index, the, 98
India, 16, 21, 27, 55, 106–7, 113, 115,
132, 157, 161
Indian Army, 110
Indispensable nation, the, 49–50,
203–4, 205–6
Industrial policy, 210–14
Industrial revolution, the, 112–13
Industry ministry, 127–28, 210
Inequality, 25, 28, 97, 98
Institutional rigidities, 117–18, 166
International division of labor, 112
International Monetary Fund, 114
Iran, 31, 107
Iraq, 9–10, 12–14, 31, 39, 48–49, 114,
173, 181, 183, 200, 202
Ireland, 105–6, 115, 124
261
Isolationism, 205
Israel, 204–5
Italy, 16, 63, 67, 90, 106, 117
Japan, 8, 14, 16, 28, 47, 120, 128,
130–31, 144, 173, 184–86, 188,
204
Jews, expulsion of, 97, 98
Jihad, 49
Jim Crow, 29
Kenya, 114, 129, 132
Keynesianism, military, 209
Kosovo, 9
Kulaks, 152
Kuwait, 48
Labor: force, 17, 24; movement,
moderation of, 40, 130; power of,
26–30, 40; productivity, 28; skills,
21–22, 213
Labour Party, British, 130
Labourism, British, 130
Landowners, 58, 72, 84–85, 121,
140–41, 151
Latifundia, 64, 85
Latvia, 140
Lebanon, 9, 173
Leninism, 145–46
Liberalism, classical, 131
Liberal militarism, 123–28
Libya, 39
Lie, beautiful, 194–95
Lie, double, 147–48, 198
Life expectancy, 27–28
Liquidationism, 155
Living standards, 65, 73, 149, 152–53
Long eighteenth century, 113, 123–24
Loss of industrial spirit, 130
Luxembourg, 115
Malaya, 113, 132
Malta, 107
Malvinas (Falkland Islands), 100, 114,
125, 130
Managerial capitalism, 118
Manchuria, 138
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Subject Index
Manifest Destiny, 45, 194
Manufacturing: China and, 22–23;
decline of Castilian, 94–97;
hollowing out of, 25, 122–23;
importance of, 25–26, 213–14;
loss of dominance, 117–19;
strengthening, 208–14; United
States and, 22–26
Marxism, 145–46, 156
Maternity leave, 29
Mesta, 93, 95
Mexico, 24, 27, 46, 83, 86, 100, 102,
188
Middle class, 27–28, 75, 98–99, 208
Military: bases, 10, 38, 48, 125,
206; casualties, 13–14, 89;
composition of, 60–61, 74,
89; control of, 60–62, 162–63;
cost of, 11–15, 87–93, 148–50;
footprint, 9–11; multiplier and,
176; privatization and, 11; R&D,
14, 125–26; size of, 9–10, 60,
70, 91, 141; spending on, 12,
175–76, 208; success of, 14–15,
180–81; superiority of, 15–16,
86, 88–89; technology and, 14,
176–77, 181
Military-industrial complex, 127–28,
141, 176–77, 178, 203
Minimum wage, 29
Monarchy, 54, 85, 81–83, 93, 96, 100,
101–2, 105
Moriscos, 97
Multinational corporations, 24,
186–87, 191–94
NAFTA, 24, 114
NATO, 47
Navy, 110, 123–24
Nazi-Soviet Pact, 146
Neoconservatives, 48–49
Netherlands, 90, 115
New class, the, 148
New Labour, 126
New Zealand, 28, 106
Nigeria, 157
Nobel Peace Prize, 50
Nomenklatura, 165–66
Norway, 28
Obesity, 27, 213
OECD, 19, 20, 22
Opportunity costs, 13, 177
Outsourcing, 24, 191–94
Pakistan, 11, 39, 49
Path dependency, 103
Patriot Act, 180
Pax Americana, 75
Pax Britannica, 123
Pax Romana, 61, 71, 73, 75
Perestroika, 155
Permanent revolution, theory of,
145–46
Persian Gulf, 9, 107
Peru, 86
Philippines, 36, 46, 81, 100, 172–73
Pied-noirs, 132
PISA, 19–20
Plague, 94
Poverty, 28–29, 214–17
Preoccupied state, the, 183–87
Principate, 54, 83
Prisons, secret, 10
Proprietary capitalism, 118
Prussia, 138
Poland, 138, 140, 148, 154–55
Portugal, 82–83, 96, 137
Puerto Rico, 46, 81, 100, 172
Punic Wars, 53
Pushback, 110, 132–33, 140, 148, 154,
161, 180–83
Racial divisions, 193–94
Racism, 99, 107
Reagan era, 26–27
Reaping machine, 65
Red Army, 139, 146
Reformation, the, 82, 98
Reform from above, 142–43
Rendition, 10
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Copyrighted Material - 9781137482365
Subject Index
Research and development, 14, 23, 24,
125–26
Rhodesia, 114
Rome: armies, brutality of, 61–62, 76;
armies, changing composition of,
61; armies, size of, 68; civil wars,
57–58; class and culture, 70–74;
debate on, 55–58; division of,
59–60; fall of Republic, 54, 167;
fiscal crisis, 66–67; parallels to
United States, 74–79; problems
of governance, 58–60; sack of,
55; slave-based economy, 62–66;
western empire, 53–55
Russian empire, 137–39, 140–42,
151–52
Samoa, 46, 172
Sardinia, 82
Scotland, 18, 105–6
Second serfdom, the, 140–41, 151
Serfdom, abolition of, 142–43
Settler colonialism, logic of, 103, 132
Sheep farming, 93–94
Siberia, 139
Sicily, 63, 82
Silence of Pizarro, 99
Silver, 83–84, 86, 90, 95
Singapore, 125
Slave-based economies, problems of,
62–66
Slave rebellions, 72
Socialism in one country, 146
Social mobility, 2, 28, 216
Soft power, 207–8
Somalia, 9, 11, 35, 39, 173
South Africa, 106, 110
South Korea, 9, 16, 50, 172–73, 180,
184–86, 204
South Yemen, 11, 39, 49
Soviet Union: collapse of, 16, 38;
crisis of legitimacy, 154–57, 158;
economic backwardness and,
150–51, 152–53; military burden
and, 148–50; pushback, 140,
263
148, 154; rise of empire, 139–40,
144–48
Spanish Empire: culture of, 97–100;
economic underpinnings, 93–97;
finances of, 89–93; last rites of,
100–103; longevity of, 84–86;
military and, 87–89; rise of, 82–84
Spark, theory of, 145–46
Sri Lanka, 42
Stagnation, the great, 23
State, fiscal crisis of, 66–70, 164
STEM graduates, 20–21
Stolypin reforms, 152
Subempires, 107–8, 134
Sudan, 107
Sweden, 28, 115, 216
Switzerland, 28
Syria, 53, 206
Taxation, 68, 69–70, 78, 89–93, 96
Technology, 64–65, 67, 75
Tercio, 88
Tertiary sector, 96
Textile industry, 24–25
Thatcher, contribution to world peace,
52, 80, 104, 136, 168, 170
Torture, 10, 129, 179
Trade deficit, 17, 18, 24, 119
Ukraine, 139
Unemployment, 18, 190–91
United Kingdom, construction of,
105–6
Urbanization, 66
Utrecht, Treaty of, 88
V2 Rockets, 182
Venezuela, 101
Versailles, Congress of, 139
Vietnam, 9, 36, 48, 172–73, 176, 180
Visigoths, 56, 57
Wages: increase in, 211–12, 216–17; in
manufacturing, 25–26; Roman,
64; in United States, 17, 20,
26–27, 187, 193
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264
Subject Index
Wales, 105–6
Wall Street, 189–91
Walmart effect, 26, 208, 212
War on poverty, 28
War on terror, 205
Wars, 9, 48–49, 87–88, 110, 180, 181
Water mill, 65
Welfare provision, 29
Westphalia, Treaty of, 88, 161
West Point, 205–6
White dominions, the, 106
Winners curse, the, 44–45, 117, 167
Working class, 28, 149
Workshop of the world, the, 113
Copyrighted Material - 9781137482365
Copyrighted Material - 9781137482365
Name Index
Alexander I, 138, 141
Allende, Salvador, 179
Anderson, Perry, 38, 64, 65, 67, 89,
110, 121
Attwood, Paul, 38
Augustus, 54, 58
Bacevich, Andrew, 38–39, 49
Barboni, Aurelio, 73
Barnett, Corelli, 116, 128, 130–31
Beinart, Peter, 194, 196–97
Bello, Walden, 38
Berger, Sandy, 33
Berman, Morris, 77, 200
Bin Laden, Osama, 8–9, 38, 179–80,
207
Blair, Tony, 114, 129, 194
Blank, Stephen, 127
Blundell, Michael, 163
Bonaparte, Louis-Napoléon (Napoléon
III), 135
Bonaparte, Napoléon, 87, 100, 112,
138, 161
Boot, Max, 34–35
Branfman, Fred, 182
Bremmer, Paul, 49
Brezhnev, Leonard, 155–56
Brown, Gordon, 130
Burbank, Jane, 43, 159
Bush, George Herbert, 195
Bush, George W., 10, 37, 38, 114,
180–81, 195
Cable, Vince, 127
Cain, P. J., 121–22, 160
Caracalla, Emperor, 71
Carter, Jimmy, 182
Carville, James, 115
Cassidy, John, 189–90
Catherine II, 141
Catherine the Great, 138
Chamberlain, Joseph, 122
Charles III, 102
Charles V, 82, 87, 89–91, 93
Cheney, Dick, 195
Chomsky, Noam, 38
Chua, Amy, 73–74
Churchill, Winston, 114, 116
Cipolla, Carlo, 160, 166
Clinton, Hilary, 49
Cohen, Elliott, 37, 204
Columbus, Christopher, 82, 99
Constantine, 55, 66, 69
Cooper, Frederick, 43, 159
Córdoba, Gonzalo de, 88
Cortés, 83, 86, 101–2
Cowen, Tyler, 23
Cox, Michael, 36–37
Cox, Robert, 75, 183, 187
Creamer, Robert, 210
Cromwell, Oliver, 88
Crouch, Colin, 187
Crowley, Ambrose, 124
Darwin, John, 86–87, 107–9, 113, 124,
139–40, 159
Davis, Ralph, 87, 94
Demandt, Alexander, 56
De Witte, Sergei, 143, 149
Diocletian, 55, 59, 66, 69–70
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich, 142
Doyle, Michael, 40–41, 44, 54, 62–63,
72–73, 85, 99, 159
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266
Name Index
Edgerton, David, 123, 177
Edward VII, 105
Eisenhower, Dwight, 173, 177–78
Elbaum, Bernard, 117
Elliott, Sir John, 90–91, 93, 98, 101,
164
Engelhardt, Tom, 38
Ferdinand, King of Aragon, 82, 84, 88,
98, 102
Ferguson, Niall, 37, 44, 77
Franklin, Benjamin, 2
Friedman, Howard, 31
Gaidar, Yegor, 92, 153
Galtung, Johan, 64
Gamble, Andrew, 115, 128
Garrett-Peltier, Heidi, 177
George V, 105
Gerschenkron, Alexander, 117
Gersemann, Olaf, 8
Gibbons, Edward, 56–57, 159
Gindin, Sam, 39–40, 188–89, 191
Gingrich, Newt, 8
Go, Julian, 44, 160, 173–74
Godunov, Boris, 138
Goldsworthy, Adrian, 57–58, 60, 68,
75–76, 166
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 153, 155–58, 163
Gordon, Robert J., 211
Haass, Richard, 201, 205
Hadrian, 54
Hamilton, Earl J., 94, 103
Hardt, Michael, 39
Haywood, Richard Mansfield, 58, 69
Heather, Peter, 57–58
Hedges, Chris, 199
Helprin, Mark, 208
Hitler, Adolf, 182
Hobson, J. A., 106
Hopkins, A. G., 121–22, 160
Hoskins, Geoffrey, 42
Hunt, Michael, 36, 173
Hurrell, Andrew, 34
Hussein, Saddam, 48, 180–81, 196
Ignatieff, Michael, 36–37
Isabella, Queen of Castile, 82, 84, 88,
98, 102
Ivan the Terrible, 138
James, Simon, 54, 61–62, 71–72,
76–77
Jefferson, Thomas, 100, 198
Joffe, Josef, 34–35
Johnson, Chalmers, 38, 48, 76–77,
129, 133, 158, 166, 178, 182,
196, 207
Johnson, Lyndon, 28
Kagan, Kimberly, 75
Kagan, Robert, 30–31, 35–36, 39
Kamen, Henry, 89, 92, 99, 167
Kennedy, Paul, 77, 89–90, 92, 111,
125, 138, 143, 150, 153
Khrushchev, Nikita, 154–56
Konings, Martijn, 77
Kotkin, Stephen, 152–53, 156
Krauthammer, Charles, 30
Kyl, Jon, 204
Landers, Brian, 157
Lazonick, William, 117
Lenin, Vladimir, 146–47, 156
Lieberman, Joseph, 204
Lieven, Dominic, 139, 141, 155,
157–58, 161
Lipset, Seymour Martin, 7–8
Levine, Stephen, 36, 173
Louis XIV, 87
Louw, P. Eric, 46
Mabee, Bryan, 37
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 161
Macmillan, Harold, 114
Madden, Thomas, 8, 34–35, 76–77
Maddow, Rachel, 11, 180, 207
Magdoff, Harry, 38
Maier, Charles, 40–41, 67–68, 159
Mann, Michael, 38
Marquand, David, 131
Marx, Karl, 135
McCain, John, 202
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Copyrighted Material - 9781137482365
Name Index
McCoy, Alfred, 15
McNally, Terrence, 39
Mitchell, Lawrence, 209
Mitchell, Stephen, 59
Motyl, Alexander, 41, 44
Münkler, Herfried, 43–44, 159
Murphy, Cullen, 58, 76, 78
Negri, Antonio, 39
Nelson, Lord, 100, 124
Nicholas II, 138
Nove, Alec, 155–57
Obama, Barack, 10, 38, 50, 179, 206,
212, 214
Olivares, Count, 96
Palin, Sarah, 154
Panitch, Leo, 39–40, 188–89, 191
Parsons, Timothy, 83
Perot, Ross, 24
Peter the Great, 138, 139
Phillip II, 82, 87–93, 97
Phillip III, 97
Phillip of Burgundy, 82
Pierce, Justin R., 25
Piganoil, André, 57
Pirenne, Henri, 55
Pizarro, 83, 99
Pollin, Robert, 177
Pollock, Sheldon, 174
Porter, Bernard, 47, 106, 133–34, 174,
179
Pushkin, Alexander, 158
Rachman, Gideon, 181
Read, Colin, 44, 117, 167
Reagan, Ronald, 2, 26–28, 195
Rhodes, Benjamin, 206
Romulus Augustus, 55
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 213
Rumsfeld, Donald, 2, 33, 181
267
Said, Edward, 195
Saunders, Lee, 216
Scheer, Robert, 179
Schiavone, Aldo, 63–64, 66, 68
Schiller, Robert, 209
Schlesinger, Arthur, 36
Schott, Peter K., 25
Schwartz, Herman, 187, 189, 191–92
Seeley, J. R., 37
Simms, Brendan, 138
Simon, William, 216
Smil, Vaclav, 74–75
Smith, Tony, 49
Snyder, Jack, 174
Spartacus, 72
Stalin, Joseph, 139, 149–50, 156, 158
Steinmetz, George, 41, 45
Stephens, Bret, 203
Stokes, Doug, 48, 185
Stone, Oliver, 38
Strange, Susan, 77
Summers, Lawrence, 188
Suny, Ronald Grigor, 162
Talleyrand, Charles-Maurice de, 161
Thatcher, Margaret, 114
Thayer, Bradley, 34–35
Theodosius I, 59
Thompson, Helen, 92
Todorov, Tzvetan, 99
Trotsky, Leon, 145–46, 151
Valens, 59, 70
Walbank, F. W., 65
Washington, George, 183
Weber, Max, 59
Weiner, Martin, 130–31
Yeltsin, Boris, 153
Zakaria, Fareed, 20
Copyrighted Material - 9781137482365