An empire, if you can keep it

National Interest, The, Spring, 2003 by Stephen Peter Rosen

At the same time, conventional challenges to the U.S. Navy; or to the navies of its subordinate states, are unlikely because of American naval supremacy. But as was the case during the era of British naval mastery, adversaries of the United States have shifted to guerre de course, or commerce raiding, openly in the Persian Gulf in the 1980s and indirectly, by means of ballistic missiles launched into the waters around Taiwan, in 1996. In both the 19th and 20th centuries, the imperial response was the same: convoys to stabilize and reassure friendly nations, and thus to remove the need for them to arm themselves for naval operations. So it will be, most likely, in the 2 1st century, too.

Imperial governance also involves the creation and enforcement of rules. The first rule of the empire must be to prohibit behavior that threatens its basic power position. Nonproliferation treaties and alliance diplomacy are today part of the set of imperial rules drawn up and enforced by the United States. NATO, ANZUS and the U.S.-Japan defense agreement are not really alliances among equals, but security guarantees offered by the imperial power to subordinates. As such they are mechanisms for codifying interstate hierarchy. The position advanced by the U.S. government in 2002, that it will act pre-emptively to destroy the programs of hostile states to construct weapons of mass destruction, is a logical extension of that policy, and one enabled by the improved power position of the United States after the end of the Cold War.

Economy of Force

THE PROBLEM of sustaining hierarchy comes down, in the main, to achieving economy of force. This is because imperial powers have predominant but not infinite amounts of military power. While they have a near monopoly on the organized means of violence, they face numerous potential challenges from less well-organized groups and peoples both within the empire and, more particularly, outside of it. In an interstate system, the land boundary of one state marks the beginning of another state that is capable of maintaining order within its frontiers. The boundaries of an empire, however, are often marked by peoples who are less well-organized socially and who do not accept imperial dominance. In the old and impolite language of empires, these are the barbarians at the gates.

This exactly was the problem shared by the Romans, the various Chinese empires and the British in India and Africa. Lasting peace was difficult to establish with the peoples beyond the frontiers because of their fluid internal social orders and their hostility to the empire. They thus constituted a chronic problem that could drive up the cost of empire. The historical repertoire of imperial techniques employed to manage this problem is still relevant today. That repertoire was composed of three parts: walls, which were part of a system of defenses in depth; the application of overwhelming force followed by withdrawal; and indirect rule. Imperial strategy could combine or alternate among these techniques, but the fundamental goal was the same--economy of force. Each of these techniques was supposed to reduce the number of soldiers and the expenditure of treasure needed to maintain order at the frontier.