“Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire,” speaks about the three deficits faced by America in expanding its reach to the rest of the world. These are: the economic-deficit; the man-power deficit; and the attention-deficit.
The first refers to the inability of America to expand its economic imprint globally, as its national debt has continued to balloon to more than half the size of the entire American GDP.
The second suggests that America has no means to increase the number of its soldiers and other personnel throughout the world. The third refers to America’s inability to sustain its interest on a foreign country in any meaningful amount of time; which in turn makes its awesome war-making abilities impressive but lacking in the stamina to stay in the perpetual great game. America is also subject to a game of tempt and tease, where it is drawn into a conflict, only to be trapped indefinitely.
The problem with this analysis is how global should America further be? It has formed numerous alliances since World War II, and from the end of 1945 onwards, bestrode on the top of the Bretton Woods institutions too, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. America has a veto in the United Nations Security Council as well. Are these not global powers/influence in whatever form?
Indeed, while it is true that the wealth of America has increased vastly from its global expansion,this is also only valid from the standpoint of per capita. Otherwise, there are millions of Americans who have not gained from any such foreign investments and interventions abroad. In “America Come Home,” the creed of presidential candidate George McGovern in 1970, it was apparent then as now America was over-stretched.
Thus, arising from the lack of popular support for further global expansion, politicians would find themselves constantly faced with the three deficits anyway; which are both natural and reflective of the cause-and-effect interaction of America with the rest of the world. There is a circular logic to Niall Ferguson’s book. How far and deep America can venture abroad, even if it already did, will always be subject to the tugs and pulls of local American politics; as befitting the characteristic of America as a raucous, though imperfect, democratic regime.
At any rate, “Colossus,” is an excellent work of scholarship by Niall Ferguson, a former historian at Harvard University now a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford University. After all, America already has close to 750 military installations in two third of the world abroad. It is literally a “hyper-power,” as Niall Ferguson put it; not just a “super-power.”
Of course, there are many scholars who affirmed to the contrary; that America simply does not have the appetite to be an imperial behemoth. Indeed, the Robinson-Gallagher thesis, pioneered by historians at University of Oxford, averred just as much in a lot of our reading of history, that empires are not created but built when the early trading posts and commercial companies charted under the royal families, were first drawn into the local conflicts, after which they felt the necessity to expand.
An empire is often informal at first before it is a formal construct proper; once it goes deep into the country. The discovery of America by Columbus in 1495 took that route. First, Columbus kept himself at the mouth of the ports and rivers, and subsequently, when he grew impatient with the natives, who occasionally were embroiled in their own conflicts, the Spanish forces under Queen Isabella, started pushing inward.
Niall Ferguson was careful to underline this characteristic as well after the founding of the American republic in 1776. But he explained the naked ambition of the early American founders from the start. George Washington, Alex Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams all spoke of America as an “infant” or “nascent” empire. Some were inspired by the concept of promoting a republic of common liberty, some just camouflaged this language of universal brotherhood as an aim to grab more land.
Besides, by 1820, the native American population measured at only less than 3 per cent of the whole population of America; as opposed to 16 million migrants who had already made their homes in America. The process of colonization had begun, but within the American continent first. Niall Ferguson, argued, quite forcefully, that America had been an “empire” from the start. Thus, there is no point denying it.
Yet, truth be told, many Americans shy away from longterm commitments needed to transform rogue regimes and failed states in the 21st century. By admitting that America is an empire, it should start acting like one, as advocated by Niall Ferguson, the “strategic ambiguity” is lost. Thus, this is the drawback of Niall Ferguson’s argument.
Furthermore, America also failed to understand its own strengths. Its permissive immigration policy, at one stage, helped to increase its pool of talents, as the late Samuel Huntington once noted.
Thus, America is unique in its ability to absorb the best talents from the world, with each cohort strengthening certain economic pillars of America, invariably, better than the generation before. 40 per cent of the CEOs in Silicon Valley, for example, are of South Asian or Asian extraction. All are contributing to the empowerment and betterment of America like no other in the sector of information technology, finance and banking.
America also has a democracy that is robust and resilient, even if it has the unfortunate tendency to lurch right by electing (neo) conservative presidents like George Bush and now Donald Trump. But, truth be told, one should not overstate, the weakness of this feature.
With each policy misstep, the error will soon enough be corrected in the next electoral cycle, giving America the remarkable opportunity to reinvent itself at every interval. Thus, in spite of the imbroglio in Vietnam War, political scientist Richard Betts at Columbia University, writing in the 1970s after the US began pulling out from Indo-China, that “the system worked.” He meant a democratic system that was able to respond to the popular whiplash and unrest.
That, at least, is how America continues to evolve. The strength of the book, despite its circular logic, is to unpack America as it is; though Niall Ferguson, in urging America to acknowledge itself as an “empire,” also delves into what America should be. By this double sleight of hand, the book showed two sides to America’s unique, almost schizophrenic relationship, with the rest of the world. It is a bipolar disorder more than an attention deficit problem.