From the evil empire to the empire for liberty

Paul Johnson is fast becoming one of my favorite historians. This article appears in the June edition of the New Criterion, and it begins with a short analysis on the development of the term ’empire’ as a repudiation of Papal arbitration under Christendom. Johnson then goes over how the British empire’s refusal to accept the division of the New World gave rise to a rather imperialistic America, whose rise to power was marked not by martial imperialism but by economic imperialism. With this, Johnson sets the backdrop for the post 9/11 world:

For America, September 11 was a new Great Awakening. It realized, for the first time, that it was a globalized entity itself. It no longer had frontiers. Its boundaries were the world, for from whatever part of the world harbored its enemies, it could be attacked, and if such enemies possessed weapons of mass destruction, mortally attacked. For this reason America was obliged to construct a new strategic doctrine, replacing totally that of National Security Council paper 68 of 1950, which laid down the doctrine of containment. In a globalized world the United States now has to anticipate its enemies, search out and destroy their bases, and disarm states likely to aid them. I call this defensive imperialism. It is a novel kind, but embraces elements of all the old. Significantly, NSC 68 of 1950 specifically repudiates imperialism. Its replacement will necessarily embrace it in its new form. There are compelling reasons why the United States is uniquely endowed to exercise this kind of global authority.