New Imperialists : Ideologies of Empire

138 The New Imperialists
Republican and Democratic presidents come and go, and this seems
to have remarkably little to do with the conduct of America, as a
Nicaraguan, whose country has been meddled in or invaded by the U.S.
upwards of a dozen times in the last century, might incline to remind us.
In the last half of the twentieth century Democratic regimes were as keen
to ramp up wars – witness Vietnam before 1968 – as their Republican
counterparts. Even the Carter presidency coincided with extensive
political interference and military manipulation by the U.S.A. in many
of the world’s hotspots, especially southern Africa and in the southeast
Asian region. While the rationalizing principles come and go – the
“containment doctrine” at the height of the Cold War, the Reagan
doctrine of “roll-back” in the 1980s, or Bush’s “doctrine of pre-emption”
in the aftermath of 9/11 – the intrusions of empire have varied little
across most of the world. Nevertheless, we recently witnessed a revival of
the sentiment that administrations do matter, as the American “left”
rallied behind Democratic hopefuls in the summer of 2004 with a view
to reversing American fortunes in Iraq.
There is good reason to be wary of both the rallying Democratic forces
in the 2004 presidential election, and of the popular concern with the
Straussian presence in the senior echelons of the Bush administration,
for they are similarly framed by a rather benign, voluntary view of U.S.
imperial practices. The cultivation of a firm, critical standpoint with
respect to the politics of American empire must aim for more than
gentrified imperialism – a kinder, gentler brand of empire vaguely
premised upon the notion of “good” and “bad” wars, “real” and “fabricated”
enemies, or “vulgar” and “refined” court philosophers. With this
in mind, it is here stressed that Straussian thought is worthy of critical
scrutiny because it contributes to the ideological subtext of empire, helps
to establish the shared visions of interlocutors who embrace overtly
different policies, and assists in the formation of a disarming consensus
that lies at the heart of much Western intellectual life. 3 To begin to
unpack Straussian claims about war and empire it is helpful to note the
basic conclusion reached by Kenneth Waltz in his provocative Theory of
International Relations, that is, his claim that a bipolar system is the most
stable system of international alliances. 4 The book formed an important
part of the Realist revival in international relations thought in the 1980s,
and critiques of the work also helped spawn the so-called “third debate”
which broadened the intellectual foundations of the field. 5 Waltz’s