Day of Empire

by Amy Chua

  Multinationals and Outsourcing. When U.S. companies “go international,” establishing headquarters, plants, telemarketing operations, or research and development facilities abroad, Americans are often filled with unease. The patriotism of these “multinationals” is sometimes questioned, and they are accused of “outsourcing” American jobs in their callous pursuit of profit.

  Undoubtedly, U.S. corporations globalize for reasons of profit, not patriotism. Ironically, however, the emergence of the multinational U.S. corporation and even the growth of outsourcing may do more good for America than is commonly recognized.

  The usual defense of “outsourcing” is purely economic. Taking advantage of cheaper foreign labor, it is said, will allow our corporations to save American consumers money and increase American shareholders’ returns. (Against this, opponents object that corporations are not paying the costs suffered by Americans who lose their livelihoods.) But the multinational operations of U.S. corporations can produce important noneconomic benefits for America as well.

  The most successful hyperpowers of the past invariably found ways to co-opt and enlist the services of local elites, providing these elites with a stake in the hyperpower's success and a sense of identification with its institutions. This “glue” was essential to their strength and longevity. America, as we have seen, does not have a foreign legion or civil service that it can staff with native-born populations. It does, however, have Google India and Microsoft Ukraine, which can serve as twenty-first-century analogs. If America cannot give foreigners prestigious governmental or military positions—as Rome and, to some extent, Great Britain did—it can give them prestigious and lucrative positions in its corporations.

  Not every outsourced job will produce the “glue” that America needs; it is much debated whether low-wage garment workers at American-owned factories in Guatemala feel on the whole stronger or weaker ties to the United States as a result of their employment. But for those foreigners who obtain well-paid jobs in American-owned enterprises, and especially for those who become managers and executives, U.S. multinationals can unquestionably provide people outside the country's borders with a sense of gain from America's prosperity, a real stake in America's continued growth, and an affiliation with America's institutions. It is no coincidence (although other factors of course contribute as well) that India, one of the chief beneficiaries of U.S. outsourcing, is also one of the few countries in which popular attitudes toward America have remained strongly positive.

  Unilateralism and Multilateralism. The Iraq war has left Americans profoundly uncertain about their role in world affairs. On one hand, the “go it alone” attitude of the early Bush administration has been deeply discredited, based as it seems to have been on painfully overconfident premises about America's ability to achieve geopolitical objectives through sheer military might. On the other hand, the war has caused some Americans to feel that the United States would be best served by hardening its borders, erecting fences, and in general getting out of the geopolitical business.

  Like it or not, as a world-dominant power, America no longer has the luxury of isolationism. Nor can America rely on commerce as its sole source of global solidarity; multinationals like General Electric and Google, however enlightened, cannot be the only institutions representing America on the world stage. As this book has argued, the United States should avoid the self-destructive perils of empire building, but America can and should take an aggressive leadership role in those genuinely global problems that can be solved, if at all, only by collaboration among nations.

  Environmental degradation is a prominent example of just such a problem. No matter what pollution regulations are enacted in the United States, if other countries destroy the ozone layer, America will suffer the effects along with everyone else. In other words, protecting the environment presents a classic collective-action problem. Every country needs the cooperation of others in order to achieve results. Many hazards have a similarly international face today. With the mobility of goods and persons at unprecedented levels, infectious diseases like avian flu cannot be dealt with by any one country acting alone. Famine and genocide in faraway countries can have spill-over effects, with tens or hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing across borders. And terrorism, of course, has taken on worldwide dimensions, too.

  In all these areas, the United States must look for ways to foster multilateral, coordinated campaigns with other nations. This does not necessarily mean working within the confines of the existing international legal and political framework, which is centered on the United Nations. The UN may be useful, but the United States might also pursue bilateral or multilateral agreements with like-minded countries outside the UN framework, or even create brand new international institutions.

  Americans should regard this new multilateralism not as a surrender, but as an opportunity. By acknowledging how it contributes to the existence of these global problems, by recognizing how much it stands to gain from their solution, and by assuming a leadership role in international efforts to deal with them, the United States can advance its own interests while also creating the solidarity it needs with other nations—the sense of affiliation and common purpose that a democratic hyperpower cannot do without.

  In 1997, at the age of ninety-three, my mother's father became a U.S. citizen. There was no need for him to do so. He was already a permanent resident, having lived in the United States for forty years. Nevertheless, although feeble and practically deaf, my grandfather had insisted on taking the U.S. citizenship test. At the celebration dinner, I asked him why getting citizenship was so important to him. He replied, in his heavily accented English, “Because America has given me so much.” This amazed me. His time in the United States had been spent working incredibly hard at a struggling Asian grocery store and then delivering newspapers until he was ninety (he was a great favorite in the neighborhood because he never missed a day). My grandfather then added, “This is the greatest country! Everyone wants to be American!”

  My parents remember the same admiration of Americans when they were living in the Philippines in the 1950s and 1960s—it was part of what made them so eager to immigrate—and I remember it while traveling in China and Europe with my parents in the 1970s and 1980s. Today while traveling in other countries with my own family, I wish that my two daughters could hear the same views of America that always made me so proud. Sadly, they don't.

  What will the twenty-first century bring? America's chief rivals face many obstacles of their own, but, simply by virtue of their growing strength (whether individually or through alliances), the United States may well cease to be world dominant in the near future. A return to superpower status is not necessarily a bad result for the United States. Being a hyperpower, after all, is a historical anomaly and brings costs as well as benefits.

  On the other hand, the United States remains today in many ways a paragon of strategic tolerance. If America can rediscover the path that has been the secret to its success since its founding and avoid the temptations of empire building, it could remain the world's hyperpower in the decades to come—not a hyperpower of coercion and military force, but a hyperpower of opportunity, dynamism, and moral force.

  My parents, Leon and Diana Chua, were the inspiration for this book; I would like to thank them as well as my sisters, Michelle, Katrin, and Cynthia, for their unflagging support over the years. Nor could this book have been written without the help and guidance of my husband, Jed Ruben-feld, who for the last fifteen years has read every word I've written; I am the fortunate beneficiary of his generosity and genius. I am also deeply grateful to my editor, Adam Bellow, and my colleagues Jack Balkin, Daniel Markovits, James Whitman, and especially Bruce Ackerman, all of whom provided brilliant criticisms and suggestions at crucial stages. Their contributions have made this a far better work; any remaining errors are of course mine alone. YiLing Chen-Josephson and Russell Pittman both read the manuscript in its entirety and offered incisive comments; they hav
e my sincere gratitude. I would also like to thank Walter Austerer, Ian Ayres, R. J. Contant, Henry Hansmann, Tony Kronman, Susan Rose-Ackerman, Marina Santilli, Jordan Smoller, and Sylvia Smoller for their encouragement and critical interventions.

  This book reflects the invaluable help of numerous research assistants. In particular, I would like to thank Jonathan Baum, Max Helveston, Eleni Martsoukou, Hari O'Connell, Patrick Toomey, Julie Wilensky, and Julie Xu, each of whom devoted dozens, in some cases hundreds, of hours to this book. Aditi Banerjee, Wei-Tseng Chen, Nusrat Choudhury, Stephen Clowney, Neha Gohil, Seth Green, Jean Han, Vijay Jayaraman, Eunice Lee, Stephen Lil-ley, Brian Netter, Marc Silverman, Elizabeth Stauderman, Ting Wang, and Marcia Yablon were remarkable students in a seminar I taught in Spring of 2004; I am very grateful for the insights they provided during this book's formative stages. The following former students also provided critical assistance on particular chapters: Patricia Adura-Miranda, Werner Ahlers, Zack Alcyone, Chris Bebenek, Michael Bretholtz, Nishka Chandrasoma, Jinhua Cheng, Dennis Clare, Elbridge Colby, Jose Coleman, Rohit De, Hugh Eastwood, Kenneth Ebie, Yunlong Gao, James Grimmelman, Josh Hafetz, Ethel Higonnet, Mimi Hunter, Eisha Jain, Shruti Raviku-mar Jayaraman, Svilen Karaivanov, Lara Kayayan, Abha Khanna, Aaron Klink, Nancy Liao, Katherine Lin, Sarah Lipton-Lubet, Anna Manasco, Elliott Mogul, Alex Parsons, Intisar Rabb, Jeremy Robbins, Nick Robinson, Brian Rodkey, Erin Roeder, Saleela Salahuddin, Jeff Sandberg, Martin Schmidt, Tim Schnabel, Vance Serchuk, Shahrzad Shafaghiha, Jingxia Shi, Fredo Silva, Bart Szewczyk, Krishanti Vignarajah, Clarence Webster, Carine Williams, Shenyi Wu, and Justin Zaremby.

  In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to Dean Harold Koh of the Yale Law School for his support and friendship; Gene Coakley and Theresa Cullen for their amazing library assistance going far above and beyond the call of duty; my assistant, Patricia Spiegelhalter, for her unsurpassed efficiency; and my exceptional agents, Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu.

  The preface to this book is adapted from an essay entitled “Asian Immigration,” which originally appeared in David Halber-stam, ed., Defining a Nation: Our America and the Sources of Its Strength (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2003).

  Last, apologies, love, and thanks to my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, genuinely the pride and joy of my life.

  INTRODUCTION

  1. “To Paris, U.S. Looks Like a ‘Hyperpower,’ “ International Herald Tribune, Feb. 5, 1999; “France Presses for a Power Independent of the U.S.,” New York Times, Nov. 7, 1999.

  2. Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America's Empire (New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. 301-2.

  3. See, for example, Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2003); Patrice Higonnet, Attendant Cruelties: Nation and Nationalism in American History (New York: Other Press, 2007).

  4. The literature on empires is truly massive. For a tiny sample from just the last several years, see J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006); Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2003); John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power (New York: Harper Perennial, 2004); Valerie Hansen, The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000); Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001); Dominic Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals (New Haven: Yale Nota Bene, 2002); Anthony Pagden, Peoples and Empires (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001); and Colin Wells, The Roman Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).

  5. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, E. V. Riev, ed., Rex Warner, trans. (New York: Penguin Classics, 1954); see also Victor Davis Hanson, A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War (New York: Random House, 2005); Bernard Grofman, “Lessons of Athenian Democracy: Editor's Introduction,” PS: Political Science and Politics, vol. 26 (Sept. 1993), pp. 471-74.

  6. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 3 (1776; edited and abridged by Hans-Friedrich Mueller, New York: Modem Library, 2003), pp. 982-83; see also David P. Jordan, Gibbon and His Roman Empire (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), pp. 221-23.

  7. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Vintage Books, 1989); Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Penguin, 2005).

  8. Post-9/11 writings on the possibility of an American empire include Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (New York: Penguin, 2004); Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America's Empire, pp. 3, 301-2; Deepak Lai, In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 215; and Michael Walzer, “Is There an American Empire?” Dissent (Fall 2003).

  9. Population and territory estimates for both the Aztec and Roman empires vary significantly. For support for the figures I cite, see Richard E. W. Adams, Prehistoric Mesoamerica (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1977), p. 36; Michael E. Smith, The Aztecs, 2nd ed. (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), pp. 57-59; Dirk R. Van Tuerenhout, The Aztecs: New Perspectives (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2005), pp. 14618; and Keith Hopkins, “Conquerors and Slaves: The Impact of Conquering an Empire on the Political Economy of Italy,” in Craige B. Champion, ed., Roman Imperialism: Readings and Sources (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p. 108.

  10. There is a large, multidisciplinary academic literature on the history of tolerance. For a sampling of different perspectives, see Peter Garnsey, “Religious Toleration in Classical Antiquity,” in W. J. Shells, ed., Persecution and Toleration (Great Britain: Blackwell, 1984); John Christian Laursen and Cary J. Nederman, eds., Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998); W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, vol. 1 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1932); Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); and Henry Kamen, The Rise of Toleration (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967). For two excellent collections of essays, on which I relied heavily, see Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter, eds., Toleration in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Ruth Whelan and Carol Baxter, eds., Toleration and Religious Identity: The Edict of Nantes and Its Implications in France, Britain and Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003).

  11. See J.P.V.D. Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 1979), pp. 2, 59-60, 214-15; A. N. Sherwin-White, Racial Prejudice in Imperial Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 57-58.

  12. See generally Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Colin Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England c. 1714-80: A Political and Social Study (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993).

  13. Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), pp. ix, xvi, 12; see also Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books, Inc., 1992).

  14. See Office of the President, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America” (Sept. 2002), available at www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf.; Ferguson, Colossus, pp. 3, 301-2; Max Boot, “The Case for American Empire,” Weekly Standard, Oct. 15, 2001, pp. 28-29; Michael Ignatieff, “The Burden,” New York Times Magazine, Jan. 5,2003, p. 22; Paul Johnson, “The Answer to Terrorism? Colonialism,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 9, 2001.

  15. Ignatieff, “The Burden,” p. 22.

  16. Thomas Friedman, “Liberal Hawks Reconsider the Iraq War: Four Reasons to Invade Iraq,” Slate.com, Jan. 12, 2004; Ignatieff, “The Burden,” p. 22.

  17. Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), pp. 19-
20, 69, 338.

  18. Pagden, Peoples and Empires, p. 40 (quoting Machiavelli).

  19. Immanuel Wallerstein, Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600-1750, vol. 2 of The Modern World-System (San Diego: Academic Press, 1980), pp. 38-39.

  20. Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, p. 242 (quoting a Victorian-era postage stamp).

  PART ONE: THE TOLERANCE OF BARBARIANS

  ONE: THE FIRST HEGEMON: THE GREAT PERSIAN EMPIRE FROM CYRUS TO ALEXANDER

  Epigraphs: The quote from A. T. Olmstead is from his classic book History of the Persian Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 1. My source for Alexander the Great's quote is Peter Green, Alexander of Mace-don, 356-323 BC: A Historical Biography (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991).

  1. Beverly Moon, An Encyclopedia of Archetypal Symbolism (Boston: Sham-bhala, 1991), p. 32; Mehdi Khansari et al., The Persian Garden: Echoes of Paradise (Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers, 1998), pp. 29-32.

  2. Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, Peter T. Daniels, trans. (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2002), pp. 175, 201-2, 297-98, 346, 404. Territorial estimates for the Achaemenid Empire vary greatly, ranging from one million to three million square miles. My estimate is from Peter Turchin, Jonathan M. Adams, and Thomas D. Hall, “East-West Orientation of Historical Empires and Modern States,” Journal of World-Systems Research, vol. 12 (Dec. 2006), pp. 216-29 (2.1 million square miles).