US military presence is non-coercive and a force for good---allies welcome our troops because of the security and economic benefits. Large-N studies prove that hegemony ensures peace and prosperity.

The global scope of American military power has been described in many ways: hegemony, primacy, and unipolarity. Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth (2012)1 cover the nuances of the terminology well, and I agree with their preference for the term “Deep Engagement” that Joseph Nye coined in a 1995 article.2 The complex patterns and nuances of engagement remain poorly understood, with a focus on conflict that ignores the preponderance of cases, where U.S. forces have been peacefully based for decades. In short, foreign policy has focused on the heat instead of the light – countless studies, essays, and books on Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq stand in contrast to the negligible attention given to countries where the U.S. maintained large-scale and long-term troop basing such as Belgium, Korea, Turkey, and Kuwait.

Is the United States an empire? We may just as well debate whether an elephant most closely resembles a Tyrannosaurus Rex or Triceratops. Some will point to the imperial characteristics that are reflected in the United States force posture. But characteristics of dinosaurs or empires (size, martial strength, breadth) really have no meaning in a world where that entire order is extinct. The 21st century is filled with a new order of nation-states, markedly different from eras prior to 1945.

American power is best understood not by its type: hard, soft, or smart, but its motivation. This is not to say the “imperial” motivation has disappeared from human affairs; self-preservation and domination are instinctive human qualities. But there is a new aspect to international relations that has been in place for more than a century, a form of altruism, illustrated by the widespread support that exists in the U.S. and other countries for universal human rights. For many decades now, nations have routinely sought to advance something beyond their narrow national interests. I call this a Promethean motivation, and America a Promethean power.

The phrase is rooted in the myth of Prometheus, the rebellious god of ancient Greek mythology who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to the human race, sparking the beginning of technology, growth, civilization, and prosperity. Zeus was the ruler of the Gods of Olympus, archetype of the emperor/king. The Gods were rulers, and humans were mere subjects. Prometheus represents rebellion, the trickster God, undercutting the authority of the imperial order. Legend has it that Prometheus tricked Zeus – repeatedly – in order to help uplift the human race.

Critics of American intervention reflexively use the term “imperial” when discussing foreign affairs. By far the dominant theme of imperialism in American foreign policy has been voiced by Leftist thinkers such as Howard Zinn, Gabriel and Joyce Kolko, and Gore Vidal. But since 1990, the end of the Cold War, neo-isolationists on the right have adopted the term as well, notably Pat Buchanan and Congressman Ron Paul. Thus the tendency is for thinkers on the political extremes – globalists on the left, nationalists on the right – to find common cause, whereas centrists tend to view American power more favorably, as do many foreign scholars.

Following the 9/11 attacks and concerns about state failure abroad, proponents of American intervention began suggesting American empire in explicit and favorable ways. Such voices included Richard Haas, Sebastian Mallaby, and Max Boot. The fullest expression of this new theme is found in Colossus, a 2004 book by Niall Ferguson3 (now a colleague at the Hoover Institution), who argued “not merely that the United States is an empire, but that it always has been an empire” and that the ultimate threat to the nation is its own “absence of a will to power.” The book is an unappreciated gem, but one wonders if Ferguson and his intellectual opponents share the same framework, which refuses to draw a line between imperial states of the 15th-19th centuries and the modern states of the 21st.

Ferguson wonderfully skewers the slipperiness of the term hegemon, which remains “the most popular term among writers on international relations.” Hegemony refers to a coercive state, like an empire, but one that aims to create mutually beneficial relationships. Trying to define the nature of state power by the distribution of benefits (exploitative or shared) misses the point. The point is: what are first principles that motivate foreign action?

America on the world stage should be understood in the context of its revolutionary founding. The republic’s anti-imperial birth and its sense of manifest destiny have colored foreign affairs from early on. Consider again Thomas Jefferson’s “Empire of Liberty,” which was more than a poetic phrase. In 1809 Jefferson wrote to his successor James Madison, “I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire & self-government.” In one of his final letters, written in 1824, Jefferson wrote, “where this progress will stop no-one can say. Barbarism has, in the meantime, been receding before the steady step of amelioration; and will in time, I trust, disappear from the earth.”

To simplify matters, let’s accept the framework of definitions on the Left (and also popularly understood by Americans throughout history). Define an empire as a nation that exploits foreign peoples, aiming to colonize them and/or extract their resources for the advantage of the empire and at the cost of the foreigners. And for the sake of clarity, recognize a bright line that distinguishes imperial relationships as those where subjugated peoples do not want but are forced to abide by foreign intervention. To be specific, the U.S. role in South Korea fails the imperial test, as does the post-1955 role of the U.S. in Germany and Japan. Those three countries accounted for nearly three-quarters of U.S. troop deployments since 1950. Not to mention Spain, Turkey, Taiwan, and Kuwait. All of these are voluntary alliances, and qualitatively distinct from forces based in Iraq.

For the Leftist criticism of American empire to hold, evidence of domination should be easy to see. One would expect to see the countries of the world that are occupied by American troops suffering economic decline as a result, or at a minimum a relative decline. Here the critique falls apart. The countries of the world that have hosted the greatest number of American troops since 1950 have grown the fastest economically. Furthermore, host countries have experienced faster declines in child mortality, faster increase in overall longevity, faster growth in infrastructure, and even greater improvements in the broadly measured human development index (HDI). Consider as evidence the average economic growth rates presented in table 2, reproduced from Jones and Kane (2012).4

The record shows that America’s engagement with allied nations is unequivocally beneficial for those countries. But the context is what matters for future policy choices. Public perceptions of world affairs are dominated by negatives: bombings in Iraqi cities, AIDS rampant in Africa, genocides, earthquakes. Foreign policy experts focus on negatives of a subtler nature: the dilemma over Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, the poppy trade and corruption in Afghanistan, the strategic mystery that is China. Yet despite real and looming crises, the underlying theme of the American century is a patient march of human prosperity, deepening and broadening as economic growth unfolds in the free world.

The American strategy of patient, forward deployment of U.S. troops, even and especially when it is not self-interested, has benefitted our allies and the world. America’s engagement in Asia and Europe since 1945 created a security umbrella fostering peace and unprecedented prosperity. If this model were applied to the Middle East – supporting allies rather than hunting monsters – it would reshape the region’s future for the better. On this point, Fallows might agree.

The question that haunts contemporary foreign policy is not whether the U.S. military is a force for good around the globe. It is. The question is: Can Promethean power be sustained? Does the United States have the willpower to maintain a forward force posture?