Comments on The Rule of Empires

 

Comments on The Rule of Empires

Peter Schultz

 

                  Timothy H. Parsons has written an excellent book entitled The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fail.

 

                  In his concluding chapter, Parsons comments on George Bush’s invasion of Iraq as part of his project to liberate Iraq by deposing Saddam Hussein and making Iraq democratic. Referring to critics of Bush, Parson’s wrote:

 

                  “The critics of Operation Iraqi Freedom often overlook [certain] realities. To be sure, scholars of empire such as Nicholas Dirks did their part by linking theorists, politicians, and military contractors that profited from the invasion of Iraq with the conquistadors, nabobs, and other specialist groups behind earlier imperial projects…. [Moreover], most opponents of President Bush’s preemptive war made the mistake of equating empire and imperialism solely with the unjust use of hard power…. Empires are indeed immoral, but it would have been more convincing to argue against the Iraq invasion by using historical precedents to show why it was doomed to fail. Instead, the Bush administration’s leftist critics assumed that empire was still practical; they just differed from the neoconservatives and imperial apologists in branding it a sin.” [426-27]

 

                  Parson’s view is that “it is simply no longer feasible to reorder another society through military force alone…. The central mistake running through much of the debate over the Iraqi occupation was the assumption that imperial methods were still effective and could be put to legitimate uses. The Bush administration … planners made the fundamental mistake of believing their own legitimizing rhetoric.” [427]

 

                  But it should be emphasized that the failure of empires or of imperialism is not merely a historical phenomenon. It is also a political phenomenon.  Empires and other imperialistic projects destroy themselves. They are, for various reasons, unmaintainable, even futile. And one of the reasons even the leftist critics of Bush’s imperial project assume that empire is practical is because they are still “believers;” that is, they don’t realize that ultimately, like empires, politics is futile. Failure is intrinsic to the political. Or as Socrates put it: Only when philosophers rule of rulers become philosophers will humankind be cured of its ills. And those, like George Bush, who think that they have a moral obligation to right the world’s wrongs will repeatedly subject the world to savagery, death, and destruction.