EMPIRE OR NOT? A QUIET DEBATE OVER U.S. ROLE

People who label the United States "imperialist" usually mean it as an
insult. But in recent years a handful of conservative defense intellectuals
have begun to argue that the United States is indeed acting in an
imperialist fashion -- and that it should embrace the role.

When the Cold War ended just over a decade ago, these thinkers note, the
United States actually expanded its global military presence. With the
establishment over the last decade of a semi-permanent presence of about
20,000 troops in the Persian Gulf area, they contend, the United States is
now a major military power in almost every region of the world -- the
Mideast, Europe, East Asia and the Western Hemisphere. And even though the
United States is unlikely to fight a major war anytime soon, they believe,
it remains very active militarily around the globe, keeping the peace in
Bosnia and Kosovo, garrisoning 37,000 troops in South Korea, patroling the
skies of Iraq, and seeking to balance the rise of China.

The leading advocate of this idea of enforcing a new "Pax Americana" is
Thomas Donnelly, deputy executive director of the Project for the New
American Century, a Washington think tank that advocates a vigorous,
expansionistic Reaganite foreign policy. In ways similar though not
identical to the Roman and British empires, he argues, the United States is
an empire of democracy or liberty -- it is not conquering land or
establishing colonies, but it has a dominating global presence militarily,
economically and culturally.

In some ways, the quiet debate over an imperial role goes to the basic
question now facing American foreign policymakers: Was the military
activism of President Bill Clinton -- from invading Haiti to keeping peace
in Bosnia, missile attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan, and bombing Yugoslavia
- -- unique to his administration, or was it characteristic of the post-Cold
War era, and so likely to be the shape of things to come?

The discussion of an American empire also helps illuminate the running
battle for the last six months between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
and his Joint Chiefs of Staff over how to change the U.S. military. The
defense secretary wants to prepare the armed forces to deal with the
threats of tomorrow, and so hints at cutting conventional forces to pay for
new capabilities such as missile defense. But the Joint Chiefs respond that
they are quite busy with today's missions.

Siding with the chiefs, Donnelly, a former journalist and congressional
aide, argues that "policing the American perimeter in Europe, the Persian
Gulf and East Asia will provide the main mission for the U.S. armed forces
for decades to come." He contends that the Bush administration has tried to
sidestep this reality, and instead is trying to formulate a more modest
policy in the tradition of the "realist" or balance-of-power views
associated with Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft.

The Kissingerian course is mistaken, Donnelly says. He argues that the
sooner the U.S. government recognizes that it is managing a new empire, the
faster it can take steps to reshape its military, and its foreign policy,
to fit that mission. Events of the last six months tend to support his
argument: While Bush and his advisers talked during the presidential
election campaign about withdrawing from peacekeeping missions in the
Balkans, once in office they emphasized that they would not leave before
European allies did, and they also faced the prospect of becoming more
involved in a third Balkans mess, in Macedonia.

If Americans thought more clearly and openly about the necessity of an
imperial mission, Donnelly argues, "We'd better understand the full range
of tasks we want our military to do, from the Balkans-like constabulary
missions to the no-fly zones [over Iraq] to maintaining enough big-war
capacity" to hedge against the emergence of a major adversary.

Donnelly has few open supporters, even among conservatives. But he said he
believes many people quietly agree with him. "There's not all that many
people who will talk about it openly," he said. "It's discomforting to a
lot of Americans. So they use code phrases like 'America is the sole
superpower.' "

One of Donnelly's somewhat reluctant allies is Andrew Bacevich, a retired
Army colonel who is a professor of international relations at Boston
University. Bacevich does not much like the idea of an imperial America.
But like it or not, he says, it is what we have.

"I would prefer a non-imperial America," Bacevich said in an e-mail
interview. "Shorn of global responsibilities, a global military, and our
preposterous expectations of remaking the world in our image, we would, I
think, have a much better chance of keeping faith with the intentions and
hopes of the Founders."

But he went on to dismiss that as wishful thinking. Rightly or wrongly, he
said, maintaining American power globally already has become the unspoken
basis of U.S. strategy. "In all of American public life there is hardly a
single prominent figure who finds fault with the notion of the United
States remaining the world's sole military superpower until the end of
time," he wrote in the current issue of the National Interest, a
conservative foreign policy journal that has been the major venue of the
imperial debate.

So, Bacevich concluded, "The practical question is not whether or not we
will be a global hegemon -- but what sort of hegemon we'll be."

Until American policymakers candidly acknowledge they are playing an
imperial role on the world stage, Donnelly and Bacevich argue, U.S.
strategy will be muddled, the American people frequently will be surprised
by the resentment the United States meets overseas, and the military will
not be given the resources necessary to carry out its missions -- such as
more troops trained for a "constabulary" role of peacekeeping and
suppressing minor attacks, along the lines of the 19th century British
military.

But Donnelly and Bacevich split on the ultimate cost of taking an
imperialist course. Like many critics of empire, such as conservative
commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, who in 1999 wrote a book called "A
Republic, Not an Empire," Bacevich worries that imperialism abroad could
carry a high cost at home.

"Tom Donnelly sees all of that as really neat, exciting, return-of-the-Raj
adventure," he said. "I see it as merely unavoidable, and suspect that
we'll end up paying a higher cost, morally and materially, than we
currently can imagine."

Donnelly responds that such concerns lack historical basis. He notes that
as America has grown more powerful over the last 150 years, so too has it
expanded domestic liberties, freeing its slaves and extending voting and
other rights to women and minorities.

For an idea with so few public adherents, there are a surprising number of
critics of taking up the imperialist burden. In a 1999 speech at the
Council on Foreign Relations, for example, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, then
Clinton's national security adviser, argued that "we are the first global
power in history that is not an imperial power."

Many of the critics believe that embracing an imperial stance would
backfire precisely because of the foreign reaction it would provoke, or
maybe already is provoking. "People have got our number," said Chalmers
Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, an independent
think tank outside San Diego. He believes that the United States is
pursuing an imperialist course, and that "Coalitions are forming left and
right around the world to thwart it." He points to closer cooperation
between Russia and China, to a united Europe that is becoming less of an
ally and more of a competitor, and to the swift rise of the
anti-globalization movement. Last year, Johnson published a book titled
"Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire." It was, he said,
"ignored" in this country.

Joseph Nye, a former official in the Clinton-era Pentagon who is dean of
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, has just completed another book
denouncing the idea. In "Soft Power: The Illusion of American Empire," to
be published next year, he argues that the notion that the United States
is, and should strive to remain, the world's only superpower has become
widely accepted among conservative commentators.

Nye says this hegemonic view pays too much attention to military might. "I
think that people who talk about 'benign hegemony' and 'accepting an
imperial role' are focusing too much on one dimension of power and are
neglecting the other forms of power -- economic and cultural and
ideological," he said. Overemphasizing U.S. military strength, he
continued, ultimately would undercut those less tangible forms of power,
and so curtail any effort to maintain an empire.

Along the same lines, Richard Kohn, a University of North Carolina
historian, argues that most Americans wisely would reject an imperial role
if it were put to them openly. "The American people don't have the
interest, the stomach or the perseverance to do it," Kohn said. "A few
bloody noses and they'll want to pack it in. They recognize that it would
cost us our soul, not to speak of the moral high ground -- in our own minds
most of all."

To his critics, Donnelly responds that they are arguing with reality, not
with him: "I think Americans have become used to running the world and
would be very reluctant to give it up, if they realized there were a
serious challenge to it."