Our previous note described some of the differences between continental and maritime empires. Empires also differ by stages: early, middle, and late. Conquering empires differ from status-quo empires, and so on. Late-stage empires are interesting at the moment they become post-imperial. They tend towards caricature as their people – particularly their leaders – re-enact imperial habits whilst the empire crumbles beneath their feet, or, in some cases, after it has already collapsed. Charles de Gaulle is probably the best-known practitioner of post-imperial play-acting. There is a nice story of the time the American Secretary of State paid him a visit. De Gaulle kept him waiting in an anteroom for a very long time, then sat in silence, for another long time, before finally looking at the man and saying, simply, ‘je vous écoute’. Today there have been complaints about imperial pretensions costing lives, once again in the middle of Europe. We are told that a Russian post-imperialist state seeks to re-create an empire, and must therefore be resisted. We are also told that an American late-imperialist state seeks to prevent anyone else from misbehaving on its turf, so is prolonging a bloodletting by proxy. It’s hard to say all that isn’t true, even if it makes little sense in the 21st century. We’ll need to wait some time to see. For now, though, imperialists are running to form. For example, even as recently as this year (in the Horn of Africa), one could count on the American (imperial) bureaucracy to jump in to the middle of a conflict and do all it could to master and mediate and manage in the name of ‘peace and stability’, which is what all good imperialists (in their status-quo stage) are meant to do. But not in Ukraine. The US government is playing cheerleader, spectator, and cynic by turn, leaving the hard work to others. When asked to describe the diplomatic strategy of his government, the American national security adviser said that negotiating an end to the conflict is up to the Russians and Ukrainians to sort, and that the Americans will ‘stay in touch’. In other words, ‘je vous écoute’. Why? Is it that a faded empire has not yet got the message that arrogant detachment wins few prizes? Or that the Americans instead want to be seen to have renounced imperialism as they continue to perform it? Maybe it’s a bit of both. Or maybe it’s neither – insofar as they and most of their NATO friends are still not fully persuaded that this really is their war, too; and that they have little of anything to gain by it. |