Empire VS Cosmopolitanism
Smm’s intriguing post on Empire (http://www.rockridgenation.org/[…]/empire-of-the-united-states) has inspired me to consider the frame of empire in relation to the frame of cosmopolitanism. I agree that Americans need to face up to and accept the fact that we are an empire and that the process of empire building, a’la Pax Americana building, is not a new thing for us. But people often think of “empire” in terms of simple accumulation of power and it is important to realize that the US business of empire building concerns economic interests and the process of financial globalization. However, I do not think that progressives should embrace the concept of empire no matter how “benevolent” our empire claims or frames itself to be. It is also important to realize, it think, that the renewed venture of empire building is not new, but just more in the open yet, importantly, hidden behind other deep frames such as “democracy,” “liberty,” and “freedom.”
It is interesting to note that as far as transparency goes, the Project for a New American Century (for example) is fairly transparent in their aims and goals regarding empire building and imperial ambitions (compare their open embrace of empire building to John Perkins book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” where he details the hidden work of US empire building). If you go to PNAC’s website, http://www.newamericancentury.org, you can obtain for free writings by members of this organization that detail quite specifically their aims and goals--all there for the public to consume and enjoy. But on a rhetorical level, the ultimate goals of imperial ambitions and empire building is constantly surrounded by concepts of democracy, liberty and freedom that clouds their true ambitions in some ways—for example in their defining document, “Rebuilding American Defenses” they suggest: “The American peace has proven itself peaceful, stable and durable. It has, over the past decade, provided the geopolitical framework for widespread economic growth and the spread of American principles of liberty and democracy” (1a). And later they say: “The challenge for the coming century is to preserve and enhance this “American peace” (11b).
I bring this up because rhetorically placing ideas of empire building around ideas of democracy and liberty and, often, freedom clouds the reality of empire building. Is it ok to build and sustain a “benevolent” American hegemony (using a phrase from many of these folks), and can a benevolent hegemony really promote democracy and liberty around the world? I don’t personally think so, and I think this way of framing and embracing the concept of empire blurs the actual process of economic globalization involved within empire building today. Empire, simply, is not a frame that progressives should promote in my opinion. However, I do believe that the concept of “cosmopolitanism,” if framed correctly, could be both beneficial and vital to progressives.
Cosmopolitanism has a long history, going back to the Ancient Greeks and can, I believe, offer progressives a better deep frame for relating to the world at large. I am defining cosmopolitanism here as 1), a citizen of the world (the Cynic philosopher Diogenes) and 2) as a rooted cosmopolitan, someone rooted in their local place with local concerns but are able to translate those local issues internationally (see Tarrow’s “The New Transnational Activism”). With concern to foreign policy and the push for global “free-market” economics, the frame of cosmopolitanism is decidedly different than the deep frame of globalization which tends toward the economic. But to activate the cosmopolitanism frame, it is vital that we make the distinction between concepts of empires, globalization and how ideas of democracy, liberty and freedom are used to promote these different agendas.
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New! Empire of Mind vs. Empire of World
While I agree that we do not want to frame the United States as an empire when expressing the Progressive vision of our nation, there is still a need to understand and articulate accurately the empirial aspects of U.S. Foreign Policy (as John Perkins pointed out soberingly in his book). I may prefer to envision myself and my values in language similar to your suggested word
cosmopolitanand still point out that the conservative perspective is essentially empire building.I found the discussion in Thinking Points about security and freedom to be enlightening on this subject. Both are contested terms that have core definitions that are accepted by conservatives and progressives, while auxiliary aspects of their meanings are supplied by the moral context of their framing. Thus, security is understood by progressives to be protection against the use of force (like a wall surrounding a city that is being bombarded) while it is understood by conservatives to be protection by the exertion of force (like the troops who go out to hunt down enemies of the city). Similarly, the discussion of freedom elucidated how contested aspects if the term's meaning lead to conflicting understandings of how the word should be used in political discourse. I see our discussion of empire to be based on many of these contested terms, including security and freedom.
Our framing efforts may be more successful (and will be more honest) if we do not call our country something that it currently is not, but rather focus our efforts toward expressing progressive framings of contested terms associated with U.S. interactions with foreign countries. For example, we can talk about the invasion and occupation of Iraq as weakening National Security by focusing on the many ways it hinders our abilities to protect our homeland. Examples include the lack of National Guard members available to assist in emergency situations like Hurricane Katrina, how putting our troops in unstable geopolitical environments like the Middle East creates more enemies capable of infiltrating our borders and simultaneousely spreads our protection thin across the world, etc.
By taking this approach, we can call the Neoconservative agenda what it is, empire building, while shaping the contested terms linked to the Conservative deep frames underlying the language of U.S. Foreign Policy so that they are severed from those frames and directed toward the building of Progressive deep frames that support a more cosmopolitan relationship with the world. This way we can still "own" (as in take responsibility for) the fact the we are citizens of an empire while taking constructive steps towards redefining our nation's relationship with the world based on Progressive values.
--- By the way, for those of you who are not familiar with the notion of contested concepts, they are concepts that have two or more conflicting definitions that have not stabilized across society into one of the competing frames. An example is the word "patriot", which has an agreed upon core definition of being a supporter of one's country while also having a contested component that is understood in contradictory ways. Conservatives consider a patriot to be a person who does not question the moral authority of our nation's leaders. Progressives consider a patriot to be a person who does not sit quietly on the sidelines when they see our country being taken in the wrong direction - a disenter. So in one moral worldview it is immoral to criticize and in the other it is immoral not to. ---