ABD'nin 250. Yılı: Kurucu Anti-Emperyalist Miras ve Küresel Askerî Varlık

America at 250: Its birthright is anti-imperialist, not empire

This is the first in a RS series of articles reflecting on the 250th anniversary of American Independence and its impact and meaning for modern U.S. foreign policy, war, and peace. On the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, this nation, founded as a republic, continues to shoulder numerous overseas entanglements and seemingly never-ending military commitments—the burdens of empire. Those who defend the foreign policy status quo have in recent months taken to branding critics as un-American, the avatars of an alien ideology. But on this semi-quincentennial, it is worth remembering that the original opponents of American intervention abroad — the anti-imperialist movement that arose in response to an imperial turn in the late 19th century — were in fact the true inheritors of the republic and its first principles. These American men and women were first roused into action by the prospect of Hawaiian annexation and later by war with Spain, viewing the seizure of the Philippines and Puerto Rico and the enlargement of the nation’s military establishment as threats to the nation’s republican character, economic health, and domestic tranquility. As this nation remains disconnected from its republican path, their presence in American political life and their critiques are worth remembering if we are to find our way back to our birthright. America’s anti-imperialist tradition was as diverse as the nation itself. Among the nation’s committed anti-imperialists was the then-world’s richest man, Andrew Carnegie. The movement also included the nation’s populist-in-chief and a perennial Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan, who viewed the empire as an elite project that cost the nation’s farmers and laborers. Reflecting upon the occupation of the Philippines, Bryan warned that the large standing army needed for it and other overseas adventures would prove “a pecuniary burden to the people” and “a menace to a Republican form of government.” Bryan’s ideological opposite within the Democratic Party, former President Grover Cleveland, was also among the nation’s committed anti-imperialists. While in office, Cleveland governed as an anti-imperialist, forestalled the annexation of Hawaii, and beat back the plans of his Republican opponents for naval enlargement. Even though American imperialism at the turn of the last century was largely a Republican adventure, the GOP produced a bevy of vocal and active anti-imperialists. These dissenting Republicans viewed the nation’s turn toward imperialism as a corruption of the nation’s character and, in particular, as an affront to their party’s history of emancipation. Despite their differences, one thing united this otherwise disparate group: a belief that Americanism demanded an embrace of anti-imperialism. The anti-imperialists argued that, by taking on ambitions beyond its borders — particularly outside the Western Hemisphere — the nation was losing its republican character and becoming like the empires of Europe. They worried that America’s imperial turn would upset the nation’s republicanism by eroding the balance of power within the federal government, bloating the executive branch, and eroding First Amendment rights of individual Americans. They also warned that the militarism that accompanied expansionism would distort the domestic economy, entrench cronyism, and foster a political culture that would further undermine the nation’s moral and political character. Summing up the concerns of the anti-imperialists, Carnegie asked rhetorically in 1899, “Shall we remain as we are, solid, compact, impregnable, republican, American" rather than give in to “the phantom of imperialism?” If such critiques sound familiar, it is because, in taking a stand against adventurism in their own time, they foresaw the costs of American global power borne throughout the 20th century. The original anti-imperialist movement, however, was not solely motivated by high-minded ideals and an inclusive liberal vision of Americanism. Among those who opposed an American plunge into empire were those who were motivated, in part, by racist assumptions that foreign peoples could not assimilate into an Anglo-American tradition of self-government and would therefore corrupt the nation. Similar concerns emanated from American labor groups that believed the annexation of foreign lands, much like the influx of immigrant labor, would drive down the wages of native-born Americans and thereby undermine labor’s collective bargaining power. Such attitudes were hardly unique to the anti-imperialists. Racial anxieties and economic protectionism ran through much of American society at the time — and coexisted with the high-minded republican principles that animated the anti-imperialist movement. This imperfect mix of high ideals and base fears makes the anti-imperialist tradition more human than heroic, yet no less worth recovering as we continue to face the issues of militarism and interventionism abroad. This movement did not disappear overnight. It survived the Spanish-American War and remained a significant force during the interwar period, shaping debates over American foreign policy and later informing the arguments of the America First Committee. Despite this continuity, American involvement in the world wars began the political and cultural processes that steered the nation’s political culture away from its anti-imperialist tradition. Due to the geopolitics and the scale of the world wars, supporters of a more muscular American foreign policy reframed intervention abroad from imperial meddling into a duty of global leadership. They argued that American disengagement from world affairs had helped create the conditions that made another global war possible. The Cold War solidified these earlier trends and pushed American political culture further from its anti-imperialist roots. The ideological incentives of the early Cold War gave rise to the so-called “vital center,” a consolidation of elite opinion that jettisoned from mainstream discourse any criticisms of the nation’s new role in world affairs. This elite consensus was robust enough to survive the turmoil of the late Cold War and growing domestic opposition to the Vietnam War. What the American public lost in the 20th Century was a broadly palatable and politically actionable critique of empire and militarism. Ideas that had once been voiced by former presidents, major-party presidential nominees, industrial titans, and prominent intellectuals gradually came to be dismissed as isolationist, naïve, or un-American. As the United States continues to spend more on its military than any other nation in history and maintains a global footprint of security agreements and other entanglements, there is still a lack of substantive debate on the fiscal and moral costs of American militarism. Our muscles of republican self-government also atrophied as the adventurism and all of its accompanying costs — once viewed as intolerable — became sacrosanct. As the material and ideological elements of interventionism became the norm, critiquing them became a radical perspective, whereas for earlier generations of Americans, such criticisms were self-evident. The rise of an American empire constrained not just our policy debates but the boundaries of politics itself by turning the traditions of the past into the heresies of today. The United States is still groaning under the burdens of empire. For those opposed to maintaining the status quo, these ongoing trends appear daunting. On the 250th anniversary of America’s birth, a new generation of Americans must answer a variation of Carnegie’s 127-year-old question: Shall we remain an empire, or shall we again become solid, compact, impregnable, republican, American? To do so, Americans must first remember that there was once another way of thinking about their nation's role in the world.