Interventionism in the name of expanding one’s own power as a goal in itself has taken the form of imperialism. Imperialism has always created bad associations, with time it has become a morally condemned concept, an invective in propaganda wars, an accusation against the West, especially on the part of states that have broken the fetters of colonialism, and on the part of national liberation movements.
It means a State policy of extending its own might in the outside world, especially through territorial acquisitions or taking political or economic control of foreign territory.
Imperial policy was pursued by ancient China (although it preferred voluntary vassalisation of foreign territory in its sphere of influence, rather than conquest with a sword), Persia (known for its largely liberal treatment of its vassals and conquered tribes, which ensured the stability of its empire), Greece (with the vast empire of Alexander the Great), Rome, Byzantium, Charlemagne’s Europe, the Islamic Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire.
The foundations of modern imperialism were colonial conquests. England, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain, while acquiring and fighting for the division of colonised areas, gave their politics imperial features in the years 1500-1750.
But modern imperialism came with capitalism in full swing and the industrial revolution.
John Hobson, a classic analyst of imperialism, saw the sources of imperialism in the search by financial and industrial circles for opportunities to get rich by expansion, creating new opportunities for investments, obtaining cheap raw materials, opening markets and accessing cheap labour. The key to expansion was territorial control. The obsession with territorial control has made geopolitics the ideology of imperialism. As described by Friedrich Ratzel (the oracle of the imperialists), space was the key to power. The space inspired and explained everything. The expansive State grew in strength, and the role of the stronger was to absorb the weaker and civilise them. Power accumulated, and a world controlled by a limited number of super empires was inevitable. Kjellen, Haushofer and Mackinder tried to add geopolitical depth to imperial expansions and rivalries.
The golden era of empires in international politics is considered to be the period from 1880 to 1980. The world at that time passed through a century of empires, when the formation of empires, the expansion of their influence, and mutual conflicts between them were at the heart of global politics.
On the eve of World War I, the imperial powers: Great Britain, France, Germany, but also (already in declining phase) Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, constituting less than one percent of the global land mass and eight percent of the world’s population, controlled 35 percent of the territory and 25 percent of the population of the world. Nearly the entire Australian and Pacific region, 90 percent of Africa and 56 percent of Asia came under imperial control of European powers.
In the years 1850-1914, Russia embarked on the imperial road (although its imperial expansion began in the 17th century) followed by Italy, Germany, Japan and the United States. And China (despite its internal implosion) still remained an empire then.
For Russia, imperial expansionism was a formula for ensuring its security. Imperialism has become the essence of Russia’s security policy. It was assumed very early there that the lack of the ability to control the immediate environment could only bring disaster to Russia. In the middle of the 17th century, the core of Russian foreign policy was accurately conveyed by Minister Atanazy Ordin-Nashchokin (he was negotiating, among others, the Andruszow truce with Poland), saying that the task of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the expansion of the state in all directions.
And Russia went east first, throwing off the Tartar yoke, then conquering the areas of Tatar settlement (on and behind the Volga), and then moving across the cavernous territories of Siberia and Central Asia. It even crossed the Bering Strait and only stopped in Alaska. It also went north, clearing a window to the world and reaching the northern end of Europe. It went south, pushing Turkey aside, conquering the Caucasus and even cutting off Persia’s possessions. And it moved west, swallowing Lithuania, Poland, reaching the Vistula River and the Dniester. The Russian boot rumbled on the pavements of Paris, and the Soviet one in Berlin. It was even said that crushing everything that stands in Russia’s way and absorbing the energy of the conquered nations is an inherent feature of Russian state philosophy. Between 1552 and 1917, its territory increased by an average of 100,000 square kilometers per year. When external resistance held its march down, it hid its weaknesses and gathered strength, for example after the Crimean War or the Japanese War. And it tried again.
And Russia always argued that the only way to govern such a large area is through autocracy, a self- modelled dictatorship. Catherine the Great believed that any other form of government would plunge Russia into ruin. It was this aspect that made Russian imperialism differ from British or French colonial imperialism, not to mention American imperialism. In Russia, expansion coalesced with autocratism, and together it fuelled itself on the basis of a feedback loop, and Russia became the prison of nations, as the Bolsheviks admitted. The emperor, although he was not believed to be sent from Heaven, nor considered a demigod, was by definition endowed with an infinite causative power by virtue of his authority. Russian imperialism made the authority of the ruler a hostage to expansion.
Spanish or Portuguese imperialism was disguised as a religious mission. It grew out of geographic exploration. It had a strong religious foundation. But a weak economic basis (typically pre-industrial, expropriating). So it faded out before it had time to unfold. British imperialism (and French to some extent) was most strongly marked by the philosophy of civilising the others. The myth of the “burden of a white man” grew with it (although Kipling’s poem was written in the context of the American conquest of the Philippines). Imperial colonialism was to serve the purpose of lifting the conquered tribes into civilisation, freeing them from poverty and disease, spreading education and instilling the principles of good administration. It was an economic imperialism, serving to seize new markets, control raw material sources, and trade routes.
German imperialism in the era of Wilhelm II is often described as impatient and hasty. Weltpolitik of Wilhelm II resembled an impatient, chaotic policy focused on quick results. Energetic but clumsy. It was a policy of demands. Its essence was to demand redistribution of colonial gains. Because when Germany became a superpower, the territorial cake of the colonial possessions was already divided. And the effect of the policy of the era of empires was the conviction that one cannot aspire to the role of a world power without sufficiently extensive colonial possessions (today in Russia it is claimed that one cannot aspire to the role of a pole of world politics without having one’s own sphere of influence).
Marxism treated imperialism as the last, declining phase of capitalism: the conquest of foreign markets due to overproduction and surplus capital. Even earlier capitalist analysts such as Adam Smith and Ricardo criticised the socio-economic dimension of imperial expansion. They described imperialism as profitable for narrow sections of society, but not for the country as a whole. Lenin coined the phrase about imperialism as the highest form of capitalism, extremely aggressive and ruthless. He diagnosed that competition for control of markets and resources leads to inevitable conflict. In Marxist-Leninist historiography, World War I was portrayed as the inevitable war of imperialisms. For decades, adepts of diplomacy in the West have been taught that World War I was the result of the collapse of the concept of balance of power in Europe. In textbooks published in the USSR, World War I was a deterministic clash of imperialisms. And whatever the diagnosis of the war, it became a cemetery of empires. It buried the German, Turkish and Austro-Hungarian empires. And World War II exhausted British and French imperialism from the last remnants of vitality.
At the end of the 19th century, the US expansion began to extend beyond the American continent. American imperialism was a kind of imperialism in disguise. The US practiced imperialism by proclaiming to fight it. First, they excluded Latin America (Monroe doctrine) from European imperial rivalry, making it the object of their own imperial policy. They have intervened there when the need arose to the present day.
The US entered Asia and then Africa through trade and investment. It is this indirect, financial and economic way of expansion that has become a new form of imperialism over time.
Roosevelt treated World War II as a war for the end of empires. The American public opinion was very negative about all imperial slogans. American imperialism remained imperialism in denial.
After the Second World War, American imperialism took on a missionary character. The goal of American expansion was to stop the march of ideological “barbarians”, fight communism, and repel the USSR. Only by appealing to higher moral considerations could US leaders convince their public opinion to interventionist policies. The United States took over the security protectorate of Europe and East Asia, exercised military protection over many countries of the “Third World”, and controlled strategic sea routes. The US filled the gap left by the collapsing British and French empires. And, as the Suez crisis of 1956 showed, hastening the imperial decline of France and Britain was more important to the United States than allied loyalty.
Somebody observed that if the British had built their imperialism in a moment of absent-mindedness or loss of mind, the Americans must have replaced absent-mindedness with total short-sightedness. But did they have any other option? They continued to practice imperialism in a very disguised form, under anti-imperialist slogans, but to great effect.
Imperialism is perhaps most successful if it is dressed in anti-imperialist garments (then anti-British, anti-Soviet). It was at the same time imperialism driven more by fear (of communism) than by the need for expansion.
The United States has taken on the burden of “leadership of the free world.” And it clashed with Soviet neo-imperialism. Many researchers saw in the expansion of communism in the world, an extension of the policy of Russian imperialism under a new, this time red banner. Richard Pipes even stated that one could learn more about the politics of the USSR by studying the history of Russia than by the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. Behind the ideological staffage there was the same compulsion of expansion, reliance on strong power, secrecy, contempt for the weak, the appropriation of the state by the elite, hypocrisy and moral collapse.
The defeat in Vietnam shook the foundations of the US global engagement. The risk of withdrawal from the role of “guarantor of the security of the free world” appeared. Luckily, Reagan rejected isolationism. And the “red empire” crumbled like a house of cards.
Critics of hidden, “repressed” imperialism pointed to its immanent weaknesses. First, this type of imperialism focuses on the military aspects of the endavour. Too little political attention and, above all, resources are devoted to the non-military dimensions of imperial management. In the American case, it was understandable as imperialism of the “Cold War” era made the USA, above all, a protector of the security of the controlled regions. Second, it is argued that hidden American imperialism was an impatient policy. The transformation undertaken in the controlled countries (economic, systemic, etc.) was calculated to produce quick results, which, as the experience of operations in Afghanistan or Iraq has shown, was unrealistic.
After the end of the Cold War, the United States remained the only global superpower with imperial influence. The world was embraced by Pax Americana. The collapsing Soviet empire, while sparing the world more perturbations, became the source of familiar challenges from the past. The ruling elite of Russia (and the public masses as well) could not come to terms with the loss of the former superpower status on a par with the United States. Russia swallowed the loss of the so-called external empire (Central and Eastern European countries as well as the Baltic states). But when the periphery of the so-called the internal empire (Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova) began to gravitate towards the West, Russia tried desperately to control the previously possessed areas.
American imperial policy has changed under the conditions of the Pax Americana. Classic “deterrence” has been set aside, the focus has been on current, near-term goals: pacify minor outliers (Milosevic’s Serbia, Saddam’s Iraq, Taliban Afghanistan, Ayatollahs’ Iran, Kim’s Korea, etc.), and fight terrorism. Meanwhile, America has overlooked challenges that are much more strategic: China and Russia who are contesting American leadership in the world. China has built an economic potential comparable to that of the United States, and Russia has a military potential that continues to pose an existential threat to the United States.
Is imperialism an out-of-date phenomenon? Many visions of the future of the world do not see a place for it. And these are both dystopian visions (an uncontrolled world, anarchic, ruled by entropy) and utopian ones (world state, world government, networking world).
From time to time, attempts are made to rehabilitate imperialisms. Geostrategists and geopoliticians point to imperialism as a natural stage in ensuring the security and even survival of states. Mutual expansion of empires was a means of preventing the domination of others, it gave a sense of balance. It is easier to provide it between a few, even large conglomerates, than in the conditions of an uncontrolled shift of power.
For the so-called missionary school, imperialism was the fastest method of ensuring the world’s civilisational progress. It mobilised the West to progress, liberated nations from barbarism and civilised them. Apologists of imperialism have maintained that decolonisation was too hasty and had frustrating results from the point of view of the development of local societies. Well-functioning institutions were torn down, new caste-tribal structures were allowed to be introduced, power was given to the cleptocrats, and the economy was allowed to be taken over by ruling castes or pseudo-oligarchs. They claim that in Africa, only Botswana and Mauritius do better economically than before decolonisation.
I spent some years at a diplomatic mission in sub-Saharan Africa. I examined with my own eyes the degeneration of the state management system. An ordinary citizen had to take care of the safety of his home by himself (paying for private security companies), because the state police cared only about the safety of the rulers. There was a deep gap between public and private health services, and between state schools and private ones. Millions of people were deprived of elementary forms of social security (unemployment benefits, pensions), and the state was totally passive in the fight against poverty. And my greatest depression (then, at the beginning of our millennium), was generated by my travels to Zimbabwe. In the 1960s, it was a wealthy country, with prosperity levels exceeding many countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America. I watched the economy in a state of total chaos, shops without goods (as in Poland in 1981), gas stations without gasoline. The most important task of our ambassador every morning was to find out how much cash was needed for the embassy operations on a given day and to find out which of the exchange offices offered the best exchange rate. The ambassador would pack a bundle of US dollars in a small envelope and return with a bag of local currency.
Defenders of imperialism, however, forget that decolonisation was not about prosperity. It was an inevitable process resulting from the thymotic emancipation of nations. The local people wanted to feel themselves masters of their own home, to throw off themselves the stigma of citizens of inferior quality, of people of an inferior race. Of course, most believed that the imperialists exploited their countries ruthlessly, stealing their wealth. They did not notice the huge investments carried out by the colonial powers (railways, roads, ports, airports). They hoped that it was enough to cut the bond of dependency for them to do better right away. And the power elite certainly did better. But not the ordinary citizens. But all in all, decolonisation was about dignity, not prosperity.
The spread of the fallen, weak, inefficient and orphan states provoked analysts to revive the idea of imperial order, this time in a mild, liberal version (Niall Ferguson). Liberal imperialism would be a recipe for the paralysis of national political and economic institutions, corruption and nepotism, and the appropriation of the state. Moreover, fallen states spoil the international order, spread chaos, and become a breeding ground for international terrorism. Economic imperialism in this new liberal edition came to be ascribed to the International Monetary Fund, international institutions. But an international dictate on a limited scale could only produce limited (in scale and time) results. And incur big costs.
But there are not too many candidates for the role of a liberal emperor. The only obvious candidate remains the United States. China eagerly entered Africa and Asia with its economic influence, but not only did it not attempt to repair the state’s capacities, but by the lack of any conditionality in its aid activities, it contributed to further deterioration of the state. The European Union is not yet able to take on a more assertive role, and its individual members are still revoking painful colonial memories. The United States is the only candidate for the role of a liberal empire, not least because it has the potential to do so. It also has an extensive sense of the impact of world events on its own security, and in the material dimension, the US preserves a military presence at every latitude and longitude. It wants to be seen as an altruistic power. It must undoubtedly reconstruct its instruments. Nevertheless, the US is too often seen as too overwhelming and even evokes (as in Latin America) bad imperial memories.
Liberal imperialism is another retropian illusion.
