[lit-ideas] Re: Empires, Liberal Democracies, and Core States

  • From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 1 May 2014 22:36:39 +0200

Well, I think that you might be misreading me. I was considering the
possibility that the US might be an empire in the sense that the 19.
century Russia or Austria were, i.e. an empire with more or less contiguous
territories. Nobody is seriously believing any more that the U.S. is a
global empire. An empire that cannot even control Afghanistan certainly
should be relieved of its imperial duties.

I was pointing to the more pertinent analysis of Hardt and Negri about a
global empire which isn't geographically centered.

O.K.


On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 10:22 PM, Lawrence Helm
<lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> Various “assertions” have been made alleging that the U.S. is an empire,
> but I’ve seen no “arguments” in the sense that you produce evidence and
> then draw a conclusion from the evidence that comprises the end point of an
> argument; ergo the U.S. is an empire.   I think of Niall Ferguson asserting
> that the U.S. is an empire, just not a very good one since it doesn't do
> any of the things that earlier empires did allows him to get away with a
> very soft definition, something along the lines of “the U.S. is the most
> powerful nation in the world therefore it is an empire.”  To assert as some
> do that “empires operate differently nowadays” is an assertion in search of
> an argument.
>
>
>
> To put it another way, if Rome, Britain, Spain, France and the Netherlands
> were at one time empires but the U.S. is “a different sort of empire,” then
> where do we find in this a definition of what an empire is?  And if you
> reply that the new definition is merely whatever the U.S. happens to be,
> then how is that a definition of “empire”?
>
>
>
> For the above reasons and many others, those who think about the modern
> era in mega-terms, especially Fukuyama and Huntington do not apply the term
> “empire” to the U.S.  Fukuyama doesn’t see the U.S. as being unique, merely
> the best example of a Liberal Democracy.  He sees all nations becoming
> Liberal Democracies in the future.  A state needs to become on if it is to
> succeed economically.  In fact, the most successful nations already are,
> either wholly or partly.  Think of the nations which aren’t successful
> today and the common explanation for why they are not is that they are not
> Liberal Democracies and do not have modern economies that participate in
> the “world economy.”
>
>
>
> Huntington, without addressing economies, as I recall, argued that wars
> will continue between Civilizations (using the common definition of
> “civilization” which he references in *Clash of Civilizations) *occurring
> along “fault lines,” those being the borders where a nation of one
> civilization is up against that of another, as in the case of Pakistan and
> India for example.  He also uses the term “core state.”  Within most
> civilizations there is a “core state.”  The U.S. is the “core state” in the
> “West” civilization.  Russia is the “core state” within the Eastern
> Orthodox civilization.  In Huntington’s terms, the U.S. is the most
> powerful nation in “the West.”   Things have indeed changed, and there are
> no more empires in the sense that Britain, Spain, France and the
> Netherlands were empires up until WWII the end of WWII.  Now you have “core
> states” and spheres of influence.  The problem with the Middle East isn’t
> that their states aren’t in the world economy as Liberal Democracies; it is
> that they don’t have a “core state.”
>
>
>
> Lawrence
>
>
>
>
>

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