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Title: Incoherent Empire by Michael Mann ISBN: 1-85984-582-7 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Incoherent Empire
Comment: Building on his expertise in the comparative study of power politics, Mann (sociology, UCLA) has written a devastating critique of the confused, dangerous, self-interested, and antidemocratic imperialist policies of the current Bush administration. He contends that since the collapse of the Soviet Union the US has found itself without significant military challengers. However, instead of the New Global Order proclaimed by Bush the Elder, the US has entered an era of disorder. Bush the Younger has made that world far more foreboding by embracing a unilateralist foreign policy that has left the nation confronting long occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, while all of the good will that the world extended to the US after September 11 has been squandered. Mann does a good job of connecting neoliberalism to the current politics of empire. Likewise, he gets to the heart of the role that US foreign policy has played in fostering the conditions that breed terrorism, and vividly illustrates varied types of blowback that the US is experiencing. Finally, he discusses how imperialist policies have undermined the rule of law, human rights, and democratic practice. Between now and November 2004, this is definitely required reading.
Rating: 3
Summary: Rome wasn't burnt in a day
Comment: Michael Mann's "Incoherent Empire" is a good addition to the recent raft of books shining a much-needed light on America's descent from republic to empire. However, I found it flawed in its tone, and in its easy acceptance of Leftist dogma. More seriously, its historical perspective is too short.
To his credit, Mann does a fine job proving his thesis (articulated on page 13), that the employment of military unilateralism by the Bush Administration is not the policy of "realism" it's made out to be. With his thorough focus on ongoing and potential military threats and ample documentation of global, especially Middle Eastern, opinions of American actions, Mann proves that we're not winning any friends worldwide. Indeed, burdened as we are with a particularly parochial viewpoint, "Americans, insulated within their self-censorship, do not even know how isolated they are" (p. 261). Worse, many Americans who do recognize this don't seem to care.
This is where I think Mann's tone comes into play. His casual deployment of Leftist smear-words (describing the 2000 election, for example, as "a neo-conservative chicken-hawk coup" [p. 252], as just one example), or constant mis-identification of America's mercantilist trade policy as "capitalism" or "free trade," no doubt endear him to a certain segment of his readership. But it undermines what I think is a far more important mission: helping potentially sympathetic audiences (even conservative ones) see the strengths of his arguments. In this area, Chalmers Johnson's recent "The Sorrows of Empire" is a much better work.
The other area where Johnson's book is far stronger than Mann's is in his long-term historical perspective. Mann is too quick to paint the new militarism as a product of a neo-conservative cabal. Unquestionably, the neo-cons play a major role in the growth of the Empire, especially the current emphasis on military unilateralism. But Mann writes as though the "Incoherent Empire" was conceived in Defense Department memoranda during Bush the Elder's term, and midwifed by Bush the Younger following 9/11. In fact, Johnson makes an almost ironclad (in my opinion) case that the roots of Empire sink far back into America's past. The old cliché about Rome not being built in a day has a literal, and precise, application here.
And if Rome wasn't built in a day, it won't be burnt in one either. Mann writes on his last page that the "political solution" to the situation he describes is to "throw the new militarists out of office" in November 2004. But to turn out the neo-cons and replace Bush the Younger with someone different (and the differences between Bush and Kerry are much smaller than either man would have us believe), would simply mean changing the Emperor. The apparatus of imperial power would remain in place.
Mann's book is a good start, but I believe he needs to widen his field of vision somewhat. This is about far more than a few "chicken hawks."
Rating: 5
Summary: Read this book before November 2004
Comment: When Vice President Cheney staffed the Bush Administration, he gave jobs to many of his neoconservative friends. The neoconservatives want to establish an American Empire, using American military might. Now that they have given us a war in Iraq, they would like to invade Syria and Iran as well.
So Michael Mann took time out from his scholarly work to give us a clear and concise analysis of American Imperialism. Since his specialty is the history of empires of the past, he is well equipped to tell us about the American empire of the present.
His conclusion: The US government has military power, but does not meet any of the other requirements for establishing and keeping a successful empire. If you want to know the details, buy and read his book.
If it were put to a vote, I would vote against American imperialism. So would Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, if we could bring them back from the grave.
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Title: The Sorrows of Empire : Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic [The American Empire Project ] by Chalmers Johnson ISBN: 0805070044 Publisher: Metropolitan Books Pub. Date: 13 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The New Imperialism (Clarendon Lectures in Geography and Environmental Studies) by David Harvey ISBN: 0199264317 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World by Immanuel Wallerstein ISBN: 1565847997 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: July, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Debating Empire (New Left Review Debates) by Gopal Balakrishnan, Stanley Aronowitz, Giovanni Arrighi ISBN: 1859844529 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: 04 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: After the New Economy by Doug Henwood ISBN: 1565847709 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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