The Distant Horizon (Excerpt)

Paul Kennedy

THE TOLERANT HEGEMON

The biggest of these Big Histories is Chua's Day of Empire. Indeed, it has an almost Toynbeean sweep, although without Toynbee's numbing detail (or his religiose conclusions). Persia, Rome, the Tang dynasty, the Mongols, medieval Spain, the Dutch republic, the Ottomans and the Moguls, the British, the Axis powers, and, finally, the Americans -- they are all here. Moreover, they are all here in equal measure, that is, with virtually the same amount of detail and care and space given to each historical case, so that the book is neither front-heavy (like Bernstein's) nor back-heavy (like Talbott's). And although it does not use many non-English-language sources, the endnotes are a wonderful guide and encouragement to further reading.

The other great strength of Chua's book is that it has a distinctive thesis, a clear argument of the sort that Landes so liked. The thesis is about "the toleration of empires": the most powerful nation at any given moment in history has been more tolerant of other peoples and ethnic and religious minorities than its competitors. The idea, as Chua admits, seems absurd at first reading: Do not great empires (or hyperpowers, her preferred category) achieve their greatness by conquest and ransacking, by eliminating local elites, by the intimidating presence of armies of occupation? Yes, to be sure -- omelettes are made by breaking eggs, and empires are initially established by sheer military force. But Chua's focus is more interesting. How, once established, do empires maintain themselves, generation after generation and, in many cases, for centuries?

The answer is by co-optation, or, to use a nicer word, toleration. Useful subjects (and one has to stress in equal measure "useful" and "subjects") were given a place within the imperial system, and not simply a demeaning, slavish place but one that offered advantage and advancement. The great historians of the late Victorian empire Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher had already identified this phenomenon some four decades ago when they wrote of the role of "collaborators" in that amazing worldwide system. In his later years, Robinson turned his attention to the collaboration between the ruling system and those socioeconomic groups that flourished below, but he never converted it into a fully rounded work or produced a recognizable thesis.

Chua has done just that, with verve and aplomb. And as soon as one gets into the text, the chief argument is convincing: for an empire, co-optation is better than slaughter. The Romans were masters of this stratagem of recognizing native talent and turning it to their advantage. So were the Ottomans -- how long would that hyperpower have lasted, one wonders, without the Jewish and Armenian traders and the Hungarian gun makers? The more inclusive the empire, the stronger it was. It is no coincidence, for example, that the British Empire was at its zenith when a brilliant, eccentric Jew called Benjamin Disraeli was its prime minister and an Indian radical nationalist named Dadabhai Naoroji was elected member of Parliament for Central Finsbury (ironically, Margaret Thatcher's later constituency). By contrast, it was when racial and ethnic intolerance prevailed -- Chua has a chapter titled "The Rise and Fall of the Axis Powers" -- that the hyperpower doomed itself. In 1984, George Orwell projected the horrific vision of a jackbooted conqueror stomping on a victim's face forever. What Chua is saying is that vicious intolerance can never last. A kinder, gentler imperialism, however, can endure for centuries.

The most difficult and most tortuous chapter of this fine book is, inevitably, the last: it is on the present and future of the American hyperpower and its truly weird combination of a global reach and global physical footprint (today the U.S. military has a presence, large or small, in about 100 countries worldwide) and a firm refusal to take formal juridical control of distant lands, as seemed so natural to the Romans, the Ottomans, the Spanish, and the British. This combination is not an unmitigated blessing. If anything, it makes the United States' geopolitical juggling act much more difficult. Since the United States will not execute a policy of "conquer and then tolerate," it has to pursue one consisting solely of diplomatic co-optation, of gentle or rough persuasion, and of building "coalitions of the willing."

Readers will not be surprised that Chua finds the White House's policies over the past seven years to have been depressingly lacking. Whether a new leadership can change course she leaves to the future. What is clear, to her, is that political and religious tolerance and cultural understanding matter a lot. This has interesting implications for the nature of international power and the future of U.S. power. The political scientist Joseph Nye has persuasively argued that the United States' efforts to secure its interests abroad are played out on three different, if interconnected, chessboards: those of military power, economic power, and ideological or cultural "soft power."

It is reasonable to argue that the United States' military power, being so massive, will face few direct challenges in the years ahead, even if it will always find it tricky to handle asymmetric threats from terrorists and other nonstate actors. It is also reasonable to suggest that on the international economic chessboard, the United States has now reentered a multipolar world after an unusual half century of its own preeminence; the European Union, Japan, China, India, and perhaps Russia and Brazil can and will all claim a seat at the high table.

But what of the realm of soft power? In the early to mid-1990s, it was generally assumed that the United States possessed lots of it. Now the conventional belief is that Washington has frittered away that advantage due to its flawed foreign policies of the past seven years. The periodic global opinion polls taken by the Pew Research Center, not to mention the White House's low standing among the American people, would support that contention.

Still, if it is any consolation, the thrust of Chua's book is that the United States' current unpopularity worldwide is reversible -- and that the best way to reverse it might be by taking a page out of the playbook of previous hyperpowers. Those empires learned an important lesson: the need for accommodation, cutting deals, and cultivating allies -- and keeping the steel behind the curtain, for use only in emergencies.