Making the World Safe for Empire

Co-sponsored by GPPi and the Harvard Center for European Studies Berlin

On May 8th, GPPi co-sponsored a discussion at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin on "Making the World Safe for Empire" as part of the Harvard Center for European Studies Berlin Dialogue Series. The two panellists were Charles Maier (Harvard University) and Georg Nolte (University of Munich); GPPi fellow Sergey Lagodinsky was moderator and chair of the event.

Charles Maier discussed his recent book Among Empires: American Ascendancy and its Predecessors, which analyzes both internal and external features of empire in a comparative historical framework. Maier stressed that the very focus on empire was a telling sign of the times: whereas in the 1980s and 1990s the concept of civil society ("the power of the powerless" in Václav Havel’s words) was predominant, empire signals a return to a preoccupation with the "power of the powerful". He raised the question of whether the United States currently fulfils the role of an empire. In both the book and the discussion Maier avoids answering that question, because (as he put it in the discussion) "in the United States I would be attacked for calling America an Empire, and in Germany I am called naive for not doing so." Maier described five general features of what he called the "imperial syndrome": a belief in exceptionalism ("special rights for great powers"); the use of force; a preoccupation with the frontier; the rise of "Caesarism" and acclamatory politics leading to a demise of representative institutions; and plutocracy and rising inequality. Maier ended his remarks by stressing the need to avoid both "irresponsible abdication" of responsibilities and "irresponsible arrogance".

Georg Nolte added a new dimension to the discussion by focusing on how different dimensions of international law relate to empire and hegemony. Nolte’s main concern was with how on the one hand US preponderance is influencing the development of international law and how on the other international law can help to embed empire in a framework of self-constraint. Nolte described a "stalemate" in the current development of international law. The challenges to the post-1945 legal order presented by the "Bush doctrine" and the Iraq war provoked widespread resistance and a swing back to the "old wisdom" on the use of force and sovereign equality. At the same time, increasing Security Council "legislation" and actions by "coalitions of the willing" in other areas (such as the Financial Action Task Force in which key OECD countries set standards for the fight against money laundering and then pressure other countries to adopt them) present new challenges to international law. Nolte closed by raising the question to what extent the EU and Europe can be conceived as an empire – one that believes in the virtues of the self-binding character of (international) law.

Questions from the audience among other things raised the issues of how empires conceive of and try to influence the world beyond their frontiers and whether the rise of China means the emergence of a rival empire.

"Making the World Safe for Empire" was the first in a series of events co-sponsored by GPPi and the Harvard Center for European Studies. The next discussion on July 10 focused on "International Terrorism and International Justice".