21C Empires
Empires—at least the formal, flag-planting variety—pretty much came apart at the seams in the course of the vast changes of the 20C. There has been an ongoing debate as to whether the age of empire is over. Or, has it merely morphed? If we start from the premise that empire is all about the projection of power by one people over another, how does this fit our contemporary world?
Well, first, the nature of power has changed. It’s a far different mix of physical coercion, economic pressures, and cultural cajolery than we started with or even than how we might well describe the pinnacle of American power in the later 20C. Second, the list of national players has shifted. Third, the relationship of states, societies, and their components is different, too; which raises the question of whether, when we refer to a “people” projecting their power, we might not have to rethink that aspect as well.
If we look at the list of the principal empires of the modern (post 15C) era: Portugal and Spain, Britain and France, China, Japan and Germany, and Soviet Union and the US, the list starts from the premise of territoriality, both in terms of the group of people upon which imperial power might be exercised and in terms of how the power is exercised. The idea of informal empires exercising economic and cultural power that can work without regard to territory is hardly new. And, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from living with telecommunications, as we have for almost two hundred years, now compounded by the internet and other aspects of the digital era, it’s that distance and geography don’t matter nearly so much as they used to. At a geopolitical level, we can see this when we consider the cheap drones which Ukraine uses to disrupt Moscow. We can see it in the complex—and almost entirely electronically implemented system of financial sanctions which the US and other countries use as a non-violent means of warfare.
Of course, the “atomic age” changed the nature of coercive power, but the development of rocket/missile/drone technologies have extended the range of coercion far beyond the nominal battlefield. Other technologies of destruction, EMP, chemical and biological agents, cyberwarfare now enable not only the leading military countries to harm their opponents in a variety of ways, but, more importantly, the reduced cost of developing and deploying these technologies has dramatically expanded the number of countries that can wreak havoc with enemy societies. We need look no further than North Korea and Ukraine for current examples.
However, the power to destroy is different than the power to conquer. So, those with such tools in their arsenals can threaten and coerce their opponents with destruction (which might be quite effective from a defensive perspective), but those tools can do very little to enable their wielders to control, much less incorporate, other societies. So, again, there’s a significant difference between raw power and that which is useful for imperial purposes.
We can see this in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, now in its fourth year. Leaving Putin’s ego to the side, along with his aspirations to revive the Imperial Russian and Soviet empires, we can look at this episode in terms of the potential expansion of a 21C Russian empire. What would have been the result of a successful invasion in 2022? Putin thought that his troops would be welcomed and that ethic Russians and even some ethnic Ukrainians would have pitched in to help construct this new empire.
Indeed, both in terms of social control and the accumulation of economic power, one of the hallmarks of our age is the shift towards ephemeral configurations of electrons—i.e., data—as an asset type. Data-mining isn’t like bauxite mining; it can happen anywhere, not merely a function of geological happenstance. And, whether in terms of warfare, finance, or social behavior, it is a powerful factor, but one that is not easily susceptible to anyone’s imperial control.
More broadly, companies, multi-national corporations are a larger part of the global map of power than ever. The VOC of the 17C, the British banks of the 19C, IBM and Coca-Cola in the 20C were relative rarities. Further, they each acknowledged—more-or-less—a territorial sovereign. There are more such enterprises now and their willingness to submit to a single imperium is considerably less.
That is not to say that companies are becoming their own empires. If the concept means anything, it has to be more than just person A exercising power over person B. In other words, just because companies may be more powerful doesn’t make them “empires.”
All this leads to one possible answer; which is that the age of empires is over. It’s a concept that was a useful way of thinking about power and geopolitics for thousands of years, but, as with dynasties and nationalism, is best used only historically. However, since we can’t predict the future, we have to allow for the possibility that we are in an interregnum and a new imperial format and age will be along soon enough. After all, in 1918, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed: “The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by;” an idealistic hope which the last 100 years has certainly not borne out. In the meantime, we have the US as an ailing imperial/global hegemon and the rising power of East Asia embodied in China.
Are the new isolationists of the MAGA/America First bent really anti-imperialist, or is the wolf merely changing out of his sheep’s clothing into something new? Regardless of who is steering the ship from Washington, it seems like the post-WWII Pax Americana is no longer with us. Whether China is ready and able to fully resume its global rank and how it might project that power beyond its region and fully across the world will have to be the topic of a later posting.
Empires—at least the formal, flag-planting variety—pretty much came apart at the seams in the course of the vast changes of the 20C. There has been an ongoing debate as to whether the age of empire is over. Or, has it merely morphed? If we start from the premise that empire is all about the projection of power by one people over another, how does this fit our contemporary world?
Well, first, the nature of power has changed. It’s a far different mix of physical coercion, economic pressures, and cultural cajolery than we started with or even than how we might well describe the pinnacle of American power in the later 20C. Second, the list of national players has shifted. Third, the relationship of states, societies, and their components is different, too; which raises the question of whether, when we refer to a “people” projecting their power, we might not have to rethink that aspect as well.
If we look at the list of the principal empires of the modern (post 15C) era: Portugal and Spain, Britain and France, China, Japan and Germany, and Soviet Union and the US, the list starts from the premise of territoriality, both in terms of the group of people upon which imperial power might be exercised and in terms of how the power is exercised. The idea of informal empires exercising economic and cultural power that can work without regard to territory is hardly new. And, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from living with telecommunications, as we have for almost two hundred years, now compounded by the internet and other aspects of the digital era, it’s that distance and geography don’t matter nearly so much as they used to. At a geopolitical level, we can see this when we consider the cheap drones which Ukraine uses to disrupt Moscow. We can see it in the complex—and almost entirely electronically implemented system of financial sanctions which the US and other countries use as a non-violent means of warfare.
Of course, the “atomic age” changed the nature of coercive power, but the development of rocket/missile/drone technologies have extended the range of coercion far beyond the nominal battlefield. Other technologies of destruction, EMP, chemical and biological agents, cyberwarfare now enable not only the leading military countries to harm their opponents in a variety of ways, but, more importantly, the reduced cost of developing and deploying these technologies has dramatically expanded the number of countries that can wreak havoc with enemy societies. We need look no further than North Korea and Ukraine for current examples.
However, the power to destroy is different than the power to conquer. So, those with such tools in their arsenals can threaten and coerce their opponents with destruction (which might be quite effective from a defensive perspective), but those tools can do very little to enable their wielders to control, much less incorporate, other societies. So, again, there’s a significant difference between raw power and that which is useful for imperial purposes.
We can see this in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, now in its fourth year. Leaving Putin’s ego to the side, along with his aspirations to revive the Imperial Russian and Soviet empires, we can look at this episode in terms of the potential expansion of a 21C Russian empire. What would have been the result of a successful invasion in 2022? Putin thought that his troops would be welcomed and that ethic Russians and even some ethnic Ukrainians would have pitched in to help construct this new empire.
Indeed, both in terms of social control and the accumulation of economic power, one of the hallmarks of our age is the shift towards ephemeral configurations of electrons—i.e., data—as an asset type. Data-mining isn’t like bauxite mining; it can happen anywhere, not merely a function of geological happenstance. And, whether in terms of warfare, finance, or social behavior, it is a powerful factor, but one that is not easily susceptible to anyone’s imperial control.
More broadly, companies, multi-national corporations are a larger part of the global map of power than ever. The VOC of the 17C, the British banks of the 19C, IBM and Coca-Cola in the 20C were relative rarities. Further, they each acknowledged—more-or-less—a territorial sovereign. There are more such enterprises now and their willingness to submit to a single imperium is considerably less.
That is not to say that companies are becoming their own empires. If the concept means anything, it has to be more than just person A exercising power over person B. In other words, just because companies may be more powerful doesn’t make them “empires.”
All this leads to one possible answer; which is that the age of empires is over. It’s a concept that was a useful way of thinking about power and geopolitics for thousands of years, but, as with dynasties and nationalism, is best used only historically. However, since we can’t predict the future, we have to allow for the possibility that we are in an interregnum and a new imperial format and age will be along soon enough. After all, in 1918, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed: “The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by;” an idealistic hope which the last 100 years has certainly not borne out. In the meantime, we have the US as an ailing imperial/global hegemon and the rising power of East Asia embodied in China.
Are the new isolationists of the MAGA/America First bent really anti-imperialist, or is the wolf merely changing out of his sheep’s clothing into something new? Regardless of who is steering the ship from Washington, it seems like the post-WWII Pax Americana is no longer with us. Whether China is ready and able to fully resume its global rank and how it might project that power beyond its region and fully across the world will have to be the topic of a later posting.
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