In Defense of Empire

A new political party of the center and right, Ciudadanos, has arisen in Catalonia -- and delivered an impressive performance at the polls in Spain's regional elections back in September. It's as if a Unionist party had arisen in Mississippi back in 1860 to declare its support for this country's unity and integrity. Would it had! Think of how welcome, indeed saving, its influence might have been. In that respect, Catalans are proving more farsighted than Southerners did as the Union broke apart.

Today's secessionist fever in Europe represents a clear and more and more present danger not just to countries like Spain but to the best interests of Catalonia itself. In short, Viva Espana! Viva Catalonia!

Some folks will just never learn to leave more than well enough alone. Specifically, those nationalists in Scotland, along with their counterparts in Catalonia, who would like to break away and set up their own independent country. Never mind that the Scottish National Party has already lost one referendum, and the Catalans are deeply divided about the wisdom of turning their regional elections into a vote for independence.

Both regions now enjoy the best of both worlds: the security of belonging to a larger country and unhampered access to the market it provides. But there's no reasoning with nationalism once it gets carried away -- even if independence would invite ruinous results.

Imperialism has become a dirty word in our politically correct lexicon, yet throughout history it has offered minorities like the Scots and Catalans a degree of protection, and the world a degree of stability, that no other system could. That's been true at least since the Romans ruled the known world, and then were followed by a succession of other great empires.

The Ottomans once held sway from Algiers to Baghdad, and it was said the sun never set on the British Empire. Now that it's been broken apart, its former possessions in Africa have been reduced to ruin, anarchy and misrule by murderous tyrants like Idi Amin and his like.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire in the heart of Europe preserved the peace -- and protected the rights of an array of disparate peoples for half a century under good Franz Josef.

Yes, there are empires and there are empires. No one would confuse the Mongols with humanitarians, and the Russian empire has long been a prison-house of peoples. But those are scarcely the only models for imperialism, which can benefit both rulers and the ruled.

However unwillingly, this country, too, has amassed an empire, beginning with the Spanish-American War and its conquests. And when this country withdraws from the world, it leaves a vacuum that is soon filled by terrorists claiming to be a government. See the Middle East today. Having neglected the spreading civil war in Syria for some four years, with its ripples of refugees now spreading out all over Europe and beyond, this administration has invited suffering far and wide.

It's time -- past time -- that we stopped being paralyzed by a word -- imperialism -- and recognized not just the uses of imperialism but that, in these chaotic times, it can be a moral imperative.

No, Empires have not been good for most people under them, his example of Scots and Catalans aside. He may not have noticed, but the rest of those empires experienced Scots and Catalans as PART of the empires that smothered them.

Loved that about how the Ottoman caliphate did not bring peace, it brought oppression. The Belgians conducted a genocide in the Congo at the beginning of the 1900s that was a template for many that followed.
The Brits in India did not bring freedom to India, they lorded over in the aloof way that only rigid British queers can. And howzabaout that Japanese Co-prosperity sphere. What a clambake that was!

His entire article telling how wonderful empires are was asset of for his money shot, America needs to run a worldwide empire. His next article will be explaining how its only sensible that America should choose the governments in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Ukraine, etc.

Thinly disguised neocon crap.

And its a bit disingenuous to point at the former colonies around the world and say they all sucked after the Empires left.
Suck the life and wealth out of a place for a few decades or centuries, deliberately snuff out even the slightest hint of self determination, and then walk away abruptly emptying all structures of control overnight, and you have a precise template for how to create an Idi Amin.

The failed post colonial states are almost all African, and are simply reverting to African ways. I notice nobody ever seems to point out Hong Kong or China or Singapore or India or the Gulf states, or Kuwait as an example of failure after colonial powers departed. In those cases we are told that the Brits and French and whoevers taught them how to be successful. It couldn’t possibly have been them on their own.
A lot of Euro back slapping going on at the precise moment the EU/Nato and we have decided to intervene everywhere on the planet.

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