New Imperialists : Ideologies of Empire

MIRRLEES: American Soft Power 203
cultural imperialism, neoconservative intellectuals were recommending
cultural imperialism as American foreign policy.
THE RIGHT FOR AMERICAN CULTURAL IMPERIALISM
In 1991 the neoconservative Ben Wattenberg’s The First Universal Nation
was published. Wattenberg argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union
gave the American empire a golden opportunity to aggressively universalize
the American way of life: “Only Americans have the sense of
mission and gall to engage in benign, but energetic, global cultural
advocacy. We are the most potent cultural imperialists in history.” 6 In
“The Emerging American Imperium,” published six years later, Irving
Kristol stated: “Without clearly intending it or fully realizing it, the
United States has come to dominate the world militarily and culturally.
One of these days the American people are going to awaken to the fact
that we have become an imperial nation.” 7 For Kristol, the world wanted
and needed the American empire to happen. There would be challenges,
as the American empire’s lack of an authentic Christian missionary spirit
made its global moral leadership vulnerable to attack. Nevertheless,
Kristol was cognizant of the global cultural influence of America’s
postmodern society of the spectacle. He perceptively remarked: “Our
missionaries live in Hollywood.” 8
In an article published in 1997 audaciously titled “In Praise of
Cultural Imperialism?,” David Rothkop declared that the American
empire was indispensable to the management of global affairs. As such, it
was necessary for the American empire actively to globalize U.S.-style
liberal capitalist democracy. To achieve this goal, the U.S. state and U.S.
media corporations needed to “win the battle of the world’s information
flows, dominating the airwaves as Great Britain once ruled the seas.” 9
Rothkop continued:
It is in the interests of the United States to ensure that if the world
is moving toward a common language, it be English. If the world is
moving toward common telecommunications, safety, and quality
standards, they be American; that if the world is becoming linked
by television, radio, and music, the programming be American;
and that if common values are being developed, they be values
with which Americans are comfortable. These are not simple idle
aspirations. English is linking the world. American information