GLOBAL DIALOGUE Volume 7 ● Number 1–2 ● Winter/Spring 2005—Humanitarian Intervention

American Dominion: How Global Interventionism Jeopardises US Security

CHARLES V. PEñA

Charles V. Peña is the director of defence policy studies at the Cato Institute, and an analyst for MSNBC television. The author would like to thank and acknowledge Justin Logan, a research assistant at the Cato Institute, and Anna Krassinskaya, an intern at the Cato Institute, for their assistance with research for this article.

n the past, the primary threats to the United States and US interests were posed by nation-states. But since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been in a unique geostrategic position. The military threat posed by the Soviet Union is gone. Two great oceans act as vast moats to protect America’s western and eastern flanks. And America is blessed with two friendly and stable neighbours to the north and south. Thus, the American homeland is relatively safe from a conventional military invasion. Meanwhile, the US strategic nuclear arsenal acts as an effective and credible deterrent against possible nuclear attack by state actors—even so-called rogue states that might eventually acquire nuclear weapons. As Jeffrey Record points out:

[T]here is no evidence to suggest that Saddam Hussein was anything other than successfully deterred and contained during the 12 years separating the end of the Gulf War and the launching of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Unlike fanatical, shadowy terrorist organizations, which are relatively undeterrable if not undefeatable, Saddam Hussein—who always loved himself more than he hated the United States (even to the point, in contrast to his two sons, of meekly submitting to his own capture by U.S. forces)—ruled a state, and states contain such assets as territory, population, armed forces, and governmental and economic infrastructure that can be held hostage to unacceptable U.S. retaliation.¹

One would think that this favourable strategic situation could have allowed the United States to scale back its global military presence and cash in the peace dividend yielded by the end of the Cold War. Yet the last two presidents have done just the opposite.

Beyond Containment

In September 1993, acknowledging the fact that the United States was no longer threatened by the Soviet Union, President Clinton’s national security adviser Anthony Lake outlined a post–Cold War strategy of “enlargement” in which the United States moved beyond mere “containment” of communism and autocracy and sought instead to enlarge the community of free and democratic nations. Lake based this new strategy on four components:

First, we should strengthen the community of major market democracies—including our own—which constitutes the core from which enlargement is proceeding.

Second, we should help foster and consolidate new democracies and market economies, where possible, especially in states of special significance and opportunity.

Third, we must counter the aggression—and support the liberalisation—of states hostile to democracy and markets.

Fourth, we need to pursue our humanitarian agenda not only by providing aid, but also by working to help democracy and market economies take root in regions of greatest humanitarian concern.²

And in a speech at the United Nations that same month, President Clinton declared: “Our overriding purpose must be to expand and strengthen the world’s community of market-based democracies. During the Cold War, we fought to contain a threat to the survival of free institutions. Now we seek to enlarge the circle of nations that live under those free institutions.”³

The administration of George W. Bush came to the White House intending to change radically the focus of US foreign policy, promising “humility” in the conduct of foreign affairs. In practice, however, Bush’s foreign policy has proved to be rather Clintonesque. For example, some of the goals outlined in the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy, released in September 2002, include to:

● champion aspirations for human dignity …

● ignite a new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade; [and]

● expand the circle of development by opening societies and building the infrastructure of democracy.⁴

In September 1993, Anthony Lake had stated that “the idea of freedom has universal appeal”. The National Security Strategy of 2002 promises that the United States will “defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere” (p. 3). According to Lake, “to the extent democracy and market economics hold sway in other nations, our own nation will be more secure.” Likewise, President Bush spoke of spreading democracy as a rationale for invading Iraq: “The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life.”⁵ Indeed, the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy seeks “to help make the world not just safer but better” (p. 1).

The Clinton administration generally conducted its foreign policy under the auspices of the United Nations and/or NATO, whereas the Bush administration is comfortable acting outside those institutions. But when it comes to the issue of spreading democracy worldwide, the strategies of both administrations considerably overlap. Both presuppose the false belief that the best and only way to achieve US security is by forcibly creating a better world. This argument underpinned both the Clinton administration’s intervention in Serbia and the Bush administration’s intervention in Iraq. Both were military actions against sovereign states conducted without the formal approval of the UN Security Council. Neither country represented an imminent threat to US national security. And both actions ultimately were rationalised on humanitarian grounds—punishment respectively for Slobodan Milosevic’s atrocities in Serbia and Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule in Iraq.

Ultimately, both the Clinton and Bush national security strategies are based on the belief that preventive US military intervention overseas is necessary to safeguard American security. But however benevolent, US humanitarian intervention is seen by many abroad as an expression of American empire.

Rather than pursue interventionism, US policymakers—guided by America’s relatively secure position in the world—should shift the focus of US security strategy and concentrate on those individuals and groups which present the gravest threat to the United States. Anti-American terrorist groups cannot be deterred by our nuclear arsenal or military contingents deployed around the globe. They use unconventional means of attack and cannot be stopped in a traditional military way because they do not occupy a specific geographic area and they hide among civilian populations in numerous countries.

Terrorism feeds on anti-American resentment worldwide. Americans can simply no longer afford to ignore the linkage between an interventionist foreign policy and terrorism against the United States. As a 1998 study for the US Department of Defense reported, much of the anti-American resentment around the world stems from an interventionist US foreign policy.⁶ Therefore, rather than trying to do more everywhere in the world—including creating democracies at gunpoint—the United States needs to stop meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, except when they directly threaten US national security interests, i.e., when the territorial integrity, national sovereignty, or liberty of the United States is at risk. By this standard, military action in Afghanistan was legitimate, insofar as it was retaliation against the Taliban regime that was sheltering the al-Qaeda terrorist network. On the other hand, the invasion of Iraq cannot be justified in terms of protecting the homeland because Saddam Hussein’s regime, however despotic and disrespectful of human life, did not constitute an imminent threat to US security.

Empire Reduces Security

A reorientation of America’s global military posture, combined with a new national security strategy that avoids unnecessary military interventions, is essential in reversing the virulent anti-Americanism that enables al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and others to recruit would-be suicide terrorists. This change in direction can occur only if policymakers reject calls for the embrace of an American empire, such as those from:

● Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby, who finds “the logic of neoimperialism too compelling … to resist”. Mallaby advocates an “imperialist revival” led by the United States, in which orderly societies “impose their own institutions on disorderly ones”.⁷

● Atlantic Monthly’s Robert Kaplan, who urges policymakers to look to the Greek, Roman, and British empires for guidance in the conduct of foreign affairs. “Our future leaders could do worse than be praised for their … ability to bring prosperity to distant parts of the world under America’s soft imperial influence.”⁸

● The author of the best-selling book Empire, Niall Ferguson, who asserts that “the United States is an empire … in fact, one of the most powerful empires in all history, and the only remarkable thing about it is that so many Americans are unaware of the fact”.⁹

Although many reject the term “empire”, the conduct of US foreign policy is clearly guided by a presumption that the United States is, and shall remain, the world’s only superpower. The Bush administration’s National Security Strategy declared that the United States shall maintain its predominant position in the world at all costs, acting even before would-be rivals emerge; the document embraces a sweeping doctrine of preventive war should potential rivals “appear likely to emerge”. This language echoed earlier claims, for example, when Clinton administration officials spoke of “conditional sovereignty”¹⁰ and asserted for the United States—the so-called indispensable nation—the right to overthrow odious regimes, even if such regimes posed no threat to the people of the United States.¹¹

It is the professed selflessness of our foreign policies that is said to distinguish the United States from empires of the past. Americans are not imperialists, and the sprawling US military presence abroad is not a manifestation of empire, defenders of the new strategy assert, because the United States has good intentions. But the defenders of the French, Spanish, and British empires all made precisely the same arguments. And those whom they colonised inevitably sought to overthrow foreign rule. One by one, nationalist movements expelled their imperial occupiers from foreign lands, at grievous cost to their former colonial masters, and typically at even greater cost to those whose lands were being liberated.

Such nationalist sentiments are a constant threat to empires, and no less so in the twenty-first century. Drawing on the lessons of history, the objections to an imperial foreign policy can be summed up in a single sentence: empire is counterproductive abroad and threatens liberty and security at home. In a modern context, empire is a flawed model for protecting Americans from foreign threats because it is far more costly, and far less effective, than alternative strategies.

The high costs of empire derive, in part, from the fact that the practice of building and maintaining an empire is likely to encourage, rather than discourage, the very attacks against Americans that we wish to prevent. The mere presence of US military forces abroad incites others to commit acts of violence. A better approach to national security policy would be for the United States to adopt a less interventionist policy and to pull back from its Cold War–era extended security perimeter (with its attendant military commitments overseas). Such an approach recognises that local foreign conflicts do not automatically jeopardise US national security. It also recognises that many of the problems plaguing the world—such as civil wars and ethnic strife—are largely impervious to external solutions (even from a country as powerful as the United States), as seen in central Africa and the Balkans.

Rather than maintaining a major military presence in disparate parts of the globe, the United States should allow countries to establish regional balances of power. As the world’s dominant military power, the United States could always step in as a balancer of last resort if a serious imbalance jeopardising vital US national security interests were to develop. And instead of viewing all foreign crises and conflicts as vitally important, the United States would be able to distinguish between those demanding its attention and those best left to regional actors.

Attempts to maintain American global dominance—even if such efforts are couched in benign terms—could “alarm other nations and peoples and thus provoke” new coalitions to counterbalance the United States. US assertiveness abroad also creates “incentives for other nations to acquire weapons of mass destruction as an insurance policy against American military might”.¹² Indeed, in order to protect themselves from an American intervention, dictatorial regimes look to nuclear weapons as the guarantor of last resort and, accordingly, have stepped up their nuclear research.

Interventionism and Terrorism

The essential problem of empire is that a sprawling US global military presence (no longer needed to check the advances of a superpower enemy) exacerbates—rather than reduces—the terrorist threat to America. The Bush administration holds that other countries and people hate the United States simply for “who we are”. This ignores the facts, such as public statements and public opinion polls in foreign countries. Throughout the world—including the Islamic world—there is admiration and appreciation for American accomplishments, culture, and values (including democracy and capitalism). But many of those same people hate US policies. That is, anti-Americanism is fuelled more by our actions than by our cultural values.

A Zogby International poll conducted in the spring of 2002 among the residents of five Arab nations (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon), three non-Arab Islamic countries (Iran, Pakistan, and Indonesia), and two others (France and Venezuela), revealed that Muslims are favourably inclined towards America’s democracy and freedom, with the numbers especially high in Kuwait (58 per cent).¹³ Residents of Muslim countries also think highly of US technology, science, and even films and television programmes. However, when asked whether they approve of US foreign policy in the Middle East, only a small fraction (9 per cent of Pakistanis and just 1 per cent of Kuwaitis) said yes. “In essence, they don’t hate us; they don’t hate what we are about,” pollster John Zogby remarked. “When the president said they hate our way of life, they hate our democratic values, at least in this first poll in the region, we did not find that was the case.”¹⁴

Another poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project has found widespread acceptance in Muslim countries of the basic ideas and principles of democracy and free markets, but that negative views of the US have spread beyond the Middle East to Muslim populations in countries such as Indonesia and Nigeria.¹⁵

Even the Bush administration admits to the relationship between an interventionist US policy and retaliatory acts of terrorism. According to Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz (whom many consider to be the strongest proponent and architect of the Iraq War), US forces stationed in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War were “part of the containment [of Iraq] policy that has been Osama bin Laden’s principal recruiting device, even more than the other grievances he cites”.¹⁶

Yet US policymakers continue to ignore the obvious conclusion: interventionist policies abroad—however noble and well-intentioned—breed anti-Americanism and, subsequently, terrorism. The United States must do everything in its power to dismantle the al-Qaeda international terrorist network, but it cannot afford needlessly to make new terrorist enemies or fuel the flames of virulent anti-American hatred in the Islamic world.

Imperial Burdens

America’s imperial foreign policy and the military infrastructure necessary to sustain an imperial presence also pose a financial burden that threatens America’s economic security for generations. The United States boasts the world’s largest military budget. In 2002, US military spending constituted almost 40 per cent of all such expenditures worldwide. If US and global defence spending follow their current trends, the United States will probably outspend the rest of the world combined before the end of this decade.

Instead of admitting that the costs of empire are indeed great and growing, many advocates of American empire dismiss them with a shrug. The most common refrain—that the cost of whatever we are doing is far less than the costs of another terrorist attack—is deceptively simple because one cannot prove a negative. In the highly unlikely event that there is never another attack, we will never know how much such an attack might have cost. In the more likely event that another terrorist attack does occur, the defenders of the strategy of empire will undoubtedly declare that the attack would certainly have had far graver effects, or that there would have been far more attacks, if the money hadn’t been spent. And we can then expect them to turn around and call for yet more money to solve the problem.

Some are already arguing that our military expenditures are not nearly large enough. The mission statement of the “Project for a New American Century”, a Washington-based institution that has been promoting a pax Americana since 1997, calls for significant additional increases in US military spending. According to the Council for a Livable World, “many military experts, including former Reagan Defense Department official Frank Gaffney, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Jones and former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon Sullivan, have suggested military spending should be between 4 and 4.5 percent of GDP.”¹⁷

But the United States cannot sustain an empire indefinitely. Even casual observers can do the arithmetic in their heads: the United States has military facilities in over one hundred countries, already spends more on its military than the next fifteen wealthiest countries combined, and aims to “rescue” the fully one-half of the world that currently does not live within free political systems under democratically elected governments. The true costs of empire may never be known with precision, but if creating a decent, democratic regime in Iraq, for example, is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, then the cost of doing this in dozens of countries is certainly very large.

Although the United States already spends more than any other country on defence, its armed forces—in terms of the number of men and women in uniform—are relatively small, and they are already being stretched to breaking point policing the far corners of the sprawling American empire: from Tuzla to Tikrit and from Kabul to Kosovo. The active-duty force has been augmented by thousands of reservists since 11 September 2001, and the effect on the US economy from the loss of workers in the civilian sector is felt all over America, in large cities and small towns.

Further, although the purpose of reserves is to supplement active-duty forces in conflicts—which should be engaged in only to protect and defend America in the face of serious threats to US security—many reservists today are serving in places that have nothing to do with the war on terrorism. At one point in 2004, approximately 40 per cent of the troops serving in Iraq were drawn from the ranks of the National Guard and Reserve. In fact, the practice of using reservists for routine military missions was established long before the war on Iraq or even before the 9/11 attacks.

Faced with the prospect of extended deployments in the pursuit of dubious missions that have little to do with defending American security, young men and women may choose not to join. Those already in the service may choose not to re-enlist—when they are allowed to quit.

The key question for modern-day imperialists, therefore, is whether Americans have the stomach for empire. If the ranks of the all-volunteer force can no longer be filled, if enough young men and women cannot be induced to volunteer for military service, will the United States have to return to conscription? Some in Congress have already called for a return to the draft. The pressure for draconian new measures to staff the military will certainly increase if recruitment and retention falter.

A far better solution would be to reduce the number of missions the US military is asked to perform, and then to follow this sensible change with reductions in the size and structure of the military itself. This would save American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade, while at the same time reducing US vulnerabilities abroad and enhancing our ability to combat anti-American terrorism.

Empire Threatens Liberty

If one can envision the government being given the power to subvert an individual’s most basic liberty—the right to control one’s own life—in the service of some higher collective end, then the subversion of other rights and liberties could follow. And, in practice, empires traditionally have stifled dissent and trampled individual liberties.

There are already ominous signs that the strategy of empire has begun to erode our fundamental rights and liberties in the United States. Beginning immediately after 9/11, the Bush administration asserted sweeping theories of executive authority, including the exclusive right to declare individuals, even US citizens, “enemy combatants”, and to deny these same individuals the ancient writ of habeas corpus and the related right to legal counsel. There were secret arrests, secret subpoenas, secret deportations, and even talk of secret trials. Although some of these assertions of executive authority were struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2004 in the Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld case, and the related case of the Guantanamo Bay detainees, the very fact that the White House claimed the right to loosen long-standing constitutional protections is extremely worrisome. These incidents, combined with the relaxation of posse comitatus restrictions, and the erosion of privacy inherent within the Pentagon’s abortive “Total Information Awareness” project,¹⁸ constitute a series of challenges to well-established civil liberties, and they collectively point to the many ways in which imperial power is and can be used to threaten individual rights.

Many Americans say they are willing to forego some measure of freedom in exchange for security, and so far the costs for most US citizens have been fairly modest. Removing one’s shoes at airport metal detectors, or showing picture identification before boarding an aeroplane, hardly constitute great intrusions on personal privacy. It is true that people are less likely to pay attention to small infringements of their civil liberties, but the impetus of such a policy and the increasing bias in favour of the government are indeed troubling.

Ignoring the Founders

Americans have traditionally resisted the imperial impulse. They were guided by the Founders’ oft-stated warnings that a republican form of government was incompatible with an imperial foreign policy. The Founders feared empire because it subverts the freedoms and liberties of citizens at home while simultaneously imposing its will on sovereign peoples abroad.

The eighteenth century still holds important lessons for the twenty-first. In an era when much of the globe was dominated by a few imperial powers—especially Great Britain, Spain and France—both Washington and Jefferson admonished their countrymen to avoid entangling themselves in the affairs of foreign powers. James Monroe declared in the famous doctrine that bears his name that the United States would concern itself only with events in the western hemisphere. In his Independence Day speech to the House of Representatives in 1821, John Quincy Adams summarised the core beliefs of the Founding Fathers in conducting foreign policy when he declared, “[America] goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

Since the nation’s founding, Americans have generally heeded these warnings. In the few instances where policymakers strayed—such as in the Philippines and in Vietnam—the costs proved too onerous to bear, and the public forced political leaders either to recant their imperial ambitions or pay a political price.

Today, the costs are potentially far greater, and they will be paid by politicians and citizens alike. Americans living in Teddy Roosevelt’s time never feared Filipino insurrectionists conducting suicide attacks in New York. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Viet Cong posed little threat to Americans in San Francisco or St Louis. But Osama bin Laden and others like him have demonstrated their capacity, and their willingness, to communicate their rage at US policies in ways that threaten the safety and security of all Americans, even those who had nothing to do with the implementation of these policies.

Therefore, elected officials must refocus their attention on addressing the real and tangible threat to their constituents and eradicating those responsible for the horrific events of 11 September. They must also recognise that interventionist foreign policies, and the attendant military presence abroad, do nothing to enhance American security, but instead serve as the vehicle for recruiting a whole new class of terrorists for years to come.

Killing to Save Lives

The use of military force to advance humanitarian goals is ultimately counterproductive because it ignores one unalterable fact: wars kill people. This is true even when the military achieves its mission with remarkable skill. For example, despite America’s use of precision-guided munitions intended to minimise collateral damage, many thousands of civilians have been killed in Iraq (both by US military action and by insurgent and terrorist violence). Beyond the casualties of war is a host of unforeseen consequences, many of them dangerous as well as tragic. Although direct damage to civilian infrastructure by US munitions was limited, the American invaders found virtually all aspects of the Iraqi state to be near total collapse. The frustration of Iraqis never enamoured with Hussein’s brutal rule is now directed at the men and women of the US military pressed into service as armed social workers.

And even if the US military had been truly perfect—if not a single innocent civilian had been hit by a stray bomb, a ricocheting bullet, or a misplaced artillery round—the achievement of military victory would still have been dependent upon the killing and wounding of soldiers in the Iraqi military.

This is a point that the proponents of humanitarian military intervention seem to ignore completely. The schools can be rebuilt. Electrical power can be restored. The water can flow. All of the physical reminders of war’s brutal reality can be erased. But even in a “perfect” war against a tyrannical regime, a war in which all military firepower is focused exclusively on the sources of that regime’s authority, people will die. Those killed may all be soldiers, and under traditional norms of armed conflict “legitimate” military targets, but these men are fathers, brothers, and sons. The supposedly clear picture of the legitimacy of targeting them in the pursuit of humanitarian ends is further clouded by the realisation that many of these individuals served against their will, drafted into the military under penalty of prison or death.

Some believe that the United States performs a great and moral mission when it uses its military might to overthrow undemocratic regimes. We should not be surprised, however, if those who lose fathers, brothers, and sons don’t see it that way.

Changing the Global Default

Whenever there is a humanitarian crisis somewhere in the world, advocates of humanitarian intervention claim that the United States has an obligation and responsibility to respond because it is the world’s most powerful country, both militarily and economically. It’s time to change this global mindset.

To begin with, the limited powers granted to the federal government in a constitutional republic call for providing for the common defence of the citizens of that republic. In other words, the US military does not exist to play “globocop” or armed social worker, but rather to confront direct threats to US security. On the campaign trail in 2000, then–presidential candidate George W. Bush endorsed this principle. Unfortunately, the Bush administration did not stick to it and instead turned its fight against anti-American terrorist groups into a global crusade against other misbehavers in the international arena.

Because the United States has an enormous military capacity, many mistakenly assume it has unlimited ability to intervene anywhere in the world. Indeed, this was the sentiment expressed in 1993 by then-US ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright when she complained to then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”¹⁹ Yet the strain that the occupation of Iraq is placing on the US military certainly calls into question the ability of the United States to intervene anywhere and everywhere. It is precisely because the military is over-committed around the world that the Pentagon has resorted to the use of so-called stop-loss orders to prevent individuals from leaving active duty when their terms of enlistment expire, a tactic that some have called a back-door draft. Others have been summoned back to active duty from civilian life.

But even if the Iraq War had not compelled the US government to resort to such draconian measures for maintaining the strength of its military, there is no good reason why other countries cannot assume the mantle of defending their own interests in their own regions, independent of the United States. For example, in 2003 the combined economic output of the European Union countries was $11.6 trillion, compared to $10.9 trillion for the United States. Yet US taxpayers spend more than twice as much on defence than their European counterparts. The Europeans have the economic wherewithal to maintain a military capability that is nominally comparable to that of the United States. If they were to do so, they would enhance their ability both to defend themselves and to intervene elsewhere—if they were willing to make that choice.

Indeed, because the European nations are often the first to demand international action in response to a humanitarian crisis, they should be the first to develop such a capability. Yet their default response is to expect that the United States will act for them. American power, the theory goes, carries with it global responsibilities.

The only way to alter the global default setting is for the United States just to say “no”. Instead of being the first responder to crises that do not threaten US security, it must encourage states in the crisis region to take action. If these states require additional assistance, the European Union should be encouraged to play a role, assuming the situation is of concern to the Europeans. Such an approach would re-establish a prudent model for dealing with humanitarian crises. By encouraging countries to safeguard their own security and attend to crises in their own neighbourhoods, the United States can change the default settings for solving regional problems and simultaneously start to devolve its imperial status.

Endnotes

1. Jeffrey Record, “Nuclear Deterrence, Preventive War, and Counterproliferation”, Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 519, Cato Institute, Washington, D.C., 8 July 2004, p. 20.

2. Anthony Lake, “From Containment to Enlargement” (remarks at School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C., 21 September 1993).

3. William J. Clinton, “Confronting the Challenges of a Broader World” (address to the UN General Assembly, New York, 27 September 1993).

4. White House, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America”, Washington, D.C., September 2002, pp. 1–2.

5. “President Discusses the Future of Iraq”, White House press release, 26 February 2003.

6. Defense Science Board, The Defense Science Board 1997 Summer Study Task Force on DoD Responses to Transnational Threats, vol. 1, Final Report (Washington, D.C.: US Department of Defense, October 1997), p. 15.

7. Sebastian Mallaby, “The Reluctant Imperialist: Terrorism, Failed States, and the Case for American Empire”, Foreign Affairs 81, no. 2 (March/April 2002), p. 6.

8. Robert D. Kaplan, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos (New York: Random House, 2002), p. 153.

9. Niall Ferguson, quoted in “The United States Is, and Should Be, an Empire: A New Atlantic Initiative Debate” (transcript of discussion at the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C., 17 July 2003).

10. Richard N. Haass, “Sovereignty: Existing Rights, Evolving Responsibilities” (remarks to the School of Foreign Service and the Mortara Center for International Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., 14 January 2003).

11. Madeleine Albright, quoted in Michael Dobbs and John M. Goshko, “Albright’s Personal Odyssey Shaped Foreign Policy Beliefs”, Washington Post, 6 December 1996.

12. Ivan Eland, “The Empire Strikes Out: The ‘New Imperialism’ and Its Fatal Flaws”, Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 459, Cato Institute, Washington, D.C., 26 November 2002, p. 1.

13. See James Zogby, “It’s the Policy, Stupid!”, Media Monitors Network, 15 April 2002 [http://www.mediamonitors.net/zogby49.html].

14. Quoted in David T. Cook, “Monitor Breakfast: John and James Zogby”, Christian Science Monitor, 12 April 2002.

15. Pew Global Attitudes Project, “Views of a Changing World: War with Iraq Further Divides Global Publics”, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Washington, D.C., 3 June 2003.

16. Quoted in Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus, “Despite Obstacles to War, White House Forges Ahead”, Washington Post, 2 March 2003.

17. Dan Koslofsky and Jeremy Bratt, “Indefensible Spending: The Rhetoric behind a Rising Military Budget”, Council for a Livable World Education Fund, Washington, D.C., September 2001, p. 11.

18. “Total Information Awareness”, first publicly reported in 2002, was a proposal by Admiral John Poindexter to create a “grand database” to discern terrorist activity by tracking American citizens via credit card purchases, phone records, medical prescriptions, educational history, Internet use, e-mail correspondence, foreign and domestic travel, and other transactions and communications. No search warrant would have been required for the collection of these records. To date, Congress has denied the project any funding.

19. Quoted in Colin Powell, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 576.