The concept of American empire has gained increasing popularity as a means of describing contemporary international relations. To the extent that an American imperial endeavor exists, this creates strain on the military, which, like the Roman legions of past millennia, is the ultimate means of enforcing an imperial will. There are several arguments that suggest the “empire of liberty” is a compelling description of America in the third millennium. This concept suggests a very active American military that may need to make adjustments due to the strain being placed upon it. Empire may not harm civilmilitary relations, but only if the United States can militarily resource its ambitions.
Peter Bender, “America: The New Roman Empire?”Orbis47, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 145-159.
2.
Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power(New York: Basic Books, 2003).
3.
Susan Strange, “The Future of the American Empire,”Journal of International Affairs42, no. 1 (Fall 1988): 1-17.
4.
Ronald Steel, Pax Americana(New York: Viking, 1970).
5.
Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004).
6.
Matthew J. Morgan, “The Garrison State Revisited: Civil-Military Relations in an Age of Terror,”Contemporary Politics10, no. 1 (March 2004): 5-19.
7.
Patrick J. Buchanan, A Republic, Not an Empire(New York: Regnery Publishing, 1999).
8.
Peter D. Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of Civilian Control,”Armed Forces & Society23, no. 2 (Winter 1996): 149-178.
9.
Deborah Avant, “Conflicting Indicators of ‘Crisis' in American Civil-Military Relations,”Armed Forces & Society24, no. 3 (Spring 1998): 375-388.
10.
Robert Hunter Wade, “The Invisible Hand of American Empire,”Ethics and International Affairs17, no. 2 (2003): 77-88.
11.
Rob Kroes, “American Empire and Cultural Imperialism: A View from the Receiving End,”Diplomatic History23, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 463-477.
12.
Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); and Andrew J. Bacevich, “Steppes to Empire,” The National Interest 68 (Summer 2002): 39-53.
13.
P. Edward Haley, “A Defensive Grand Strategy for the United States,”Armed Forces & Society30, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 461-481.
14.
Richard A. Falk, The Declining World Order: America's Imperial Geopolitics(New York: Routledge, 2004).
Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World(New York: Routledge, 2002).
17.
Eliot A. Cohen, “History and the Hyperpower,”Foreign Affairs83, no. 4 (July/August 2004): 54-54, 55-55.
18.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), xi-xi.
19.
Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World(New York: Ballantine, 1996). McWorld is meant to denote the globalized culture that has evolved from the shaping of international free-market forces.
20.
Hardt and Negri, Empire, 17-17.
21.
Andrew J. Bacevich and Sebastian Mallaby, “New Rome, New Jerusalem,”Wilson Quarterly26, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 50-58.
22.
Ellen Ruppel Shell, “New World Syndrome,”Atlantic Monthly287, no. 6 (June 2001): 50-53.
23.
See Hardt and Negri, Empire, 41-41.
24.
Publius [James Madison], The Federalist No. 43: The Powers Conferred by the Constitution Further Considered (continued)(January 23, 1788), http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa39.htm (accessed March 1, 2005).
25.
Publius [James Madison], The Federalist No. 39: Conformity of the Plan to Republican Principles(January 16, 1788), http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa39.htm (accessed March 1, 2005).
26.
Joseph L. Galloway, “Commission Rightly Urges U.S. Not to Rush on Overseas Base Closings”, Detroit Free Press, May 13, 2005.
27.
Frances M. Doyle and Karen J. Lewis, “Named Military Operations: U.S. Military Operations from January 1989 to December 1993,”Armed Forces & Society23, no. 2 (Winter 1996): 285-298.
28.
Carl A. Castro and Amy B. Adler, “OPTEMPO: Effects on Soldier and Unit Readiness,”Parameters29, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 86-95. U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) had 213,000 Army personnel in 1990 and 62,000 by 1999. From 1945 to 1989, USAREUR participated in twenty-nine peacekeeping or humanitarian missions; from 1991 (after the Gulf War) to 1999, it took part in over a hundred such missions.
29.
U.S. General Accounting Office, Military Personnel: Perspectives of Surveyed Service Members in Retention Critical Specialties, GAO/NSAID-99-197BR(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, August 1999).
30.
James Hosek and Mark Totten, Serving away from Home: How Deployments Influence Reenlistment, MR-1594-OSD(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2002); Ronald D. Fricker Jr., The Effects of Perstempo on Officer Retention in the U.S. Military, MR-1556-OSD(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2002).
31.
J. Michael Polich and Ron Sortor, Deployments and Army Personnel Tempo, MR-1417-A(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001).
32.
J. Michael Polich, Bruce R. Orvis, and W. Michael Hix, Small Deployments, Big Problems, IR-197(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000).
33.
See the Army Stabilization Task Forcework at https://www.stabilization.army.mil/ (accessed March 1, 2005).
34.
James T. Quinlivan, “Force Requirements in Stability Operations,”Parameters25, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 59-69; and James T. Quinlivan, “Burden of Victory: The Painful Arithmetic of Stability Operations,” Rand Review 27, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 28-29.
35.
Quinlivan, “Force Requirements”, 62-62.
36.
Peter D. Feaver, “Civil-Military Relations,”Annual Review of Political Science2 (June 1999): 211-241; and Michael C. Desch, Soldiers, States, and Structure: Civilian Control of the Military in a Changing Security Environment(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).
37.
Charles J. Dunlap, “The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012,”Parameters25, no. 4 (Winter-1992/1993): 1-20. The classic film Seven Days in May also flirts with the possibility, although the more recent motion picture The Siege presents a more compelling picture of military abuses of power in context of domestic responses to a terrorist threat and, thus, seems somewhat prescient in light of the 9/11 attacks.
38.
Feaver, “Civil-Military Relations”, 218-218.
39.
Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1957), 20-20.
40.
Richard H. Kohn, “Out of Control,”The National Interest35 (Spring 1994): 3-17; Lyle J. Goldstein, “General John Shalikashvili and the Civil-Military Relations of Peacekeeping,” Armed Forces & Society 26, no. 3 (Spring 2000): 387-411; and Russell F. Weigley, “The American Military and the Principle of Civilian Control from McClellan to Powell,” Journal of Military History 57, no. 5 (October 1993): 27-58.
41.
Colin L. Powell, “Why Generals Get Nervous”, The New York Times, October 8, 1992, A35-A35.
42.
Eliot Cohen, “Playing Powell Politics: The General's Zest for Power,”Foreign Affairs74 (November/December 1995): 102-110.
43.
Matthew J. Morgan, “The Reconstruction of Culture, Citizenship, and Military Service,”Armed Forces & Society29, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 373-392.
44.
Feaver, “Civil-Military Relations”, 221-221.
45.
ibid., 221.
46.
Jeffrey Record, Bounding the Global War on Terrorism(Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Strategic-Studies Institute, December 2003).
47.
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9-11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States(New York: Norton, July 2004); also available online at http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.htm.
