For much of the twentieth century, the term "imperialism" was excluded from polite discourse among the ruling circles of dominant capitalist countries and their intellectual devotees in mainstream academia and press. The September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. provided an historic opportunity for the Bush II administration to embrace once again a more naked form of the American empire that had first come to the fore in a mature way in the period following the Second World War.

With the bloody assault and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, "imperialism" and "empire" emerged once again, albeit in sanitized forms, as acceptable terms in the discourse of influential media such as the New York Times, Foreign Affairs and The Economist, among many others. Our own servile newspapers such as the The Globe & Mail and The National Post reproduce these ideas, albeit with a Canadian spin; that is, fights ensue between Canadian editorialists over how best to serve the American Empire.

As John Belllamy Foster has pointed out, there are strict rules to the acceptable usage of imperialism and empire in the new mainstream thinking (Monthly Review, November 2002). First, the benign nature of American imperialism, usually in contrast to other forms historically, is invariably emphasized. Second, while there is typically some brief and empty rhetoric regarding the virtuous circle of promoting free markets and democracy, the economic sphere, if it appears at all, runs a distant third to the military and political concepts of imperialism. Consequently, the radical Marxist heritage of linking capitalism and imperialism, and economic imperialism with increasing inequality and exploitation across the globe, is effectively sidelined from polite discussion.

Understanding the liberal Defence of Pax Americana

Among the most prominent, prolific, and respected intellectuals on the liberal side of the equation is the Canadian Michael Ignatieff. Currently, Ignatieff is the Carr Professor of Human Rights Policy and director of the Carr Centre at the Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard University.

In a piece before the onset of the Iraq War, a war he subsequently supported, Ignatieff makes one of the most assertive cases for the descriptive accuracy of the term "imperialism" in depicting American activities in Afghanistan, while at the same time constructing an argument for the enhancement of the American Empire (New York Times Magazine, July 28, 2002). That American power ought to be used for good, and that it can be, is made more probable, according to Ignatieff, now that we are operating in a period of "human rights":

"Imperialism used to be the white man's burden. This gave it a bad reputation. But imperialism doesn't stop being necessary just because it becomes politically incorrect. Nations sometimes fail, and when they do, only outside help - imperial power - can get them back on their feet. Nation-building is the kind of imperialism you get in a human rights era, a time when great powers believe simultaneously in the right of small nations to govern themselves and in their own right to rule the world."

Ignatieff adds, without irony, "[t]hese principles of imperial power and self-determination are not easy to reconcile." Other prominent liberal imperialists in the popular American media include Bill Keller of the New York Times, and the now infamous lefty-turned-flaming-warmonger Christopher Hitchens, formerly of The Nation and currently a columnist with Vanity Fair.

G. John Ikenberry, professor of Geopolitics and Global Justice at Georgetown University, offers a more academic liberal critique of the Bush II administration, while at the same time seeing nothing wrong with a world dominated by the US. Ikenberry, writing in the immensely influential Foreign Affairs, sees the emergence of "sweeping new ideas" concerning "US grand strategy," in the unipolar world of present:

"At the extreme, these notions form a neoimperial vision in which the United States arrogates to itself the global role of setting standards, determining threats, using force, and meting out justice. It is a vision in which sovereignty becomes more absolute for America even as it becomes more conditional for countries that challenge Washington's standards of internal and external behaviour. It is a vision made necessary - at least in the eyes of its advocates - by the new and apocalyptic character of contemporary terrorist threats and by America's unprecedented global dominance."

In essence, however, Ikenberry's critique of the new vision is pragmatic rather than principled. In other words, the primary argument is that the Bush scheme will not work, and it could jeopardize a world system created in the 1940s, that rightfully saw the US in the leadership position. Again, any thought that the US does not hold divine right to rule the world is off the radar screen of mainstream liberals and conservatives. The debate centres on how much the imperial state can get away with, to what extent it requires allies and what their roles might be, and the related question of how much consent is needed to bolster the shared recognition for the need to use force internationally.

The issue for Ikenberry is one of maintaining a more legitimate, effective, consensual, and ultimately clothed American imperialism, rather than the unbridled naked aggression of the current one, embodied in a war without limits of geography, time, or multilateral institutions.

The Conservative Imperial Assault

The conservative perspective, in its extreme form, is currently at the helm of the US state. The ideological roots of the Bush regime, and even much of the same personnel, date back to the Reagan years and, more recently, the 1997 Project for the New American Century. This conservative imperial strategy was updated most recently in the lead-up to the Iraq War, with the September 2002 release of The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. While much in the document had precedents in earlier US doctrine and practice, Noam Chomsky argues that it "did break new ground: for the first time in the post-war world a powerful state announced, loud and clear, that it intended to rule the world forever, crushing by force any potential challenge it might perceive." With the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, the initial Bush interpretation of the doctrine laid out in the security document shifted to one with even broader scope. No longer does a country need to already have in its possession, or to be in the process of developing weapons, it now only has to have the "potential" to develop WMD. As Chomsky notes, "By these criteria, virtually every country is a legitimate target of attack, now and in the indefinite future."

Conservative Critics outside the White House

A recent piece in Foreign Affairs by the current president of The Nixon Center in the US, Dimitri K. Simes, is representative of some concerns and discontent regarding the Bush II administration from a conservative perspective. When one reduces it to its basic elements, the substantial overlap with the liberal critique by Ikenberry is quite obvious. The overlap is especially clear in the worry they share of imperial overreach and the declining legitimacy of an American state ever more obvious in its quest for power, exploitation, and domination.

Differences between liberal and conservative critics of Bush foreign policy are largely tactical and, in many fundamental goals of imperial maintenance, the values and aims are shared. Anti-imperialists can learn a lot about the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the American empire from studying these elite liberal and conservative discussions.

Taking Advantage of the Naked Emperor

The conservatives and liberals are right to worry about a legitimacy crisis of the US state and its imperial project. The month of April saw more American soldiers killed by the Iraqi resistance than in any months since the war began 13 months ago. May 1, 2004 marks the first anniversary of Bush's triumphant address to marines on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, with the banner "Mission Accomplished" behind him.

Reality has caught up with Bush. An April 2004 New York Times/CBS News Poll asked whether the United States had done the right thing in taking military action against Iraq. In December 2003, just after the capture of Saddam Hussein, 63 percent of respondents said it had. In the April poll, only 47 percent shared this view. This is true despite the veritable vacuum of principled criticism of the Empire in the mainstream American media. This poll was conducted, furthermore, prior to the revelations concerning the torture of Iraqi prisoners by the American military at the Abu Ghraib prison.

As the American Empire requires more and more aggression abroad and repression at home, anti-imperialist struggles from within Iraq and other Third World countries, through to semi-peripheral US allies like Canada, and to the heart of the Empire itself, are capable of growth and maturity if organizing persists and strengthens its focus.

Canadian Anti-Imperialism

To my mind, Canadian anti-imperialists have at least two responsibilities. First, and most immediately, we need to prevent the maturation of Paul Martin's deeply integrationist stance toward the American state, evident most recently in the Liberal government's agreement to sign on to an aerospace early warning system for North America, which paves the way for participation in the US missile "defence shield," and from there, the militarization of space. The racist attacks on immigrants and refugees within our borders are also, in part, a consequence of this integrationist stance. Resistance in this regard has to continue apace. Canadian profiteers seeking reward from US military-industrial contracts and participation in the lucrative "reconstruction" of Iraq must also be exposed and combated. We must continue to expose and fight our ongoing participation in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Haiti. Part and parcel of this first responsibility of Canadian anti-imperialists, then, is combating the mythologists behind the persistent image of Canada as a nation of do-good "peace-keepers."