Abstract
This review paper focuses on the most recent cycle in the debate about the history and future of the ‘New American Empire,’ both in relation to the rise and fall of the Roman Empire specifically, and against the wider backdrop of the extensive debate about the US position in the changing global order more generally. It argues that much of the literature, including some of the books under review, rest on a misreading of history (Roman or otherwise) and a flawed grasp of the fate of the American ascendancy in relation to the contemporary crisis of the nation-state system and the far from unexpected boom–bust cycles of ‘genuinely existing’ liberal capitalism (globalization) in the twenty-first century. The washout on Wall Street in the latter part of 2008 could only come as a surprise to those who have not been paying attention to the vicissitudes of ‘genuinely existing’ liberal capitalism over the past 30 years or more. The paper argues that the American ascendancy, contrary to much of the contemporary prognostication, remains in its prime and Pax Americana will only begin a downward spiral when it has been successfully challenged and displace by an equally powerful and systemic alternative. In the meantime, the New American Empire, especially under new leadership, looks set to continue and even flourish.
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Notes
For example, the widespread acceptance that there is something that can be called an American Empire in the post-Cold War era is apparent in an edited book by James J. Hentz. In the introduction, Hentz argued that the book as a whole represented an attempt to come to grips with the ‘American obligation of empire’ (Cox, 2004; Hentz, 2004, p. 9; see also O’Rourke, 2004; Gardner and Young, 2005; Berman, 2006; Thayer and Layne, 2006; Calhoun et al, 2007; Scott, 2007).
The late 1960s, arguably was characterized by a burgeoning debate about whether the US was in decline as was the late Cold War era. The Declinist-in-Chief in the late 1980s was, of course, Paul Kennedy (Kennedy, 1987; Black, 2008).
Of course, the debate over the decline and fall of the Roman Empire itself has been a subject of study and debate among historians since Gibbon's time, if not before. In recent years, new archeological evidence and close reading of the extant sources has resulted in a re-evaluation of the idea that Roman decline was a result of internal decay and decadence, or ‘immoderate greatness’ and imperial overstretch. If nothing else, the complexities of the debate about the fall of the Roman Empire – a lengthy process now being attributed to a conjuncture of crucial political and military errors of judgment rather than collapse from within or overthrow from without – highlights the problems associated with too close a reliance on drawing lessons or analogies from the Roman experience to understand the history and contemporary trajectory of the American Ascendancy (Gibbon, 1994, pp. 156–157; Heather, 2007, pp. 14–15, 31–32).
The literature on globalization is immense. For a good synthesis see Shankar (2006).
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Berger, M. From Pax Romana to Pax Americana? The history and future of the new American Empire. Int Polit 46, 140–156 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2008.48
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2008.48