The modern descendants of the British, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese empires are trying to figure out how to remain relevant and strong without the burdens of the empire. France and Germany never became empires, but they face the same dilemma. The last great empire of the West, the United States of America, is squandering the riches of what is probably the last empire of human history as we know it.You may object: How about China? India? Russia? Will not they one day become an empire of sorts? I think not. The reason is not because they do not know about empire and imperialism. As Edward Said said of the British Empire in the 19th century, the “idea of the empire” is always more alluring than the empire itself because it empowers imperial masters, gives them a sense of identity, a sense of history. Some Americans call it “manifest destiny,” a global mission given by a combination of the forces of God, land and history. Any modern nation with a relative success of political power and finance can be lured into imperial adventures.
The reason why we will not see new empires in the foreseeable future is because the zeitgeist of global politics dictates that power, greatness, wealth, supremacy, authority and legitimacy be measured not by the “hard instruments” of old empires such as the size of the land or the army one has but by a mixture of hard and soft elements of the newly emerging global order. Power is still built on and around amassing land, building big armies, using cheap labor, colonizing political and economic centers and adopting a sort of cultural imperialism. But for power to be sustainable and affordable, it needs other measures such as legitimacy, efficiency and public opinion at a global scale. Furthermore, the cost of being an empire is getting bigger and bigger. Ironically, it is the empire that is putting an end to itself.
Max Weber’s question as to why of all the nations on earth a handful of Western European nations began to dominate the world in 1500 remains captivating to this day. The scientific and industrial revolutions could have happened in other parts of the world such as the Muslim world, which had a more advanced science than Europe up until the 15th century. It also had a well-functioning global economic system where money and commodities flew in all directions. But modern capitalism and the world system emerged in Western Europe, giving it a decisive advantage over the rest of the world.
Ferguson identifies six elements that have led to the emergence of the modern Western world system: “The capitalist enterprise, the scientific method, a legal and political system based on private property rights and individual freedom, traditional imperialism, the consumer society and what Weber probably misnamed the ‘Protestant’ ethic of work and capital accumulation as ends in themselves.” Some of these existed in some other parts of the world. But it was only in Western Europe that they came together to form a paradigm, a framework of power and a system of ideology.
What is changing now? Why do we all have the impression that Western dominance is coming to an end? Is it because the West is losing the foundational elements of world dominance which Ferguson cites above? We will have to wait a little longer to answer these questions with a reasonable degree of accuracy. While the notion that the West is in crisis has some truth to it, it is not proof that the West cannot get out of this crisis.
Great powers may find a way to reclaim their past glory. But what will come back will not be old Europe or old America. All empires reach their peak when they have creative energy, movement of ideas and commodities and a well-functioning pluralism whereby they attract the cream of the crop to their political, scientific and intellectual centers. Europe no longer effuses the kind of energy it had in the 18th and 19th centuries. America is becoming a big question mark in the mind of many. All possible contenders to “greatness” take note of it.
But will they be wise enough not to fall into the folly of other empires? That is the question that will decide the future of great power play in the 21st century.
