Summary of My Master's Thesis
On the Theory of Empire in International Relations and an Analysis of Pax Americana
After the signing of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, sovereign states were established in Europe and became the main actors of the international order. However, the legacy of the empire still profoundly affects world politics. The empire as a political system has gone away, and no country still calls itself an “empire.” However, an empire’s ruling thinking still affects major powers’ diplomatic strategies. When people analyze the foreign policy of the United States, considering the United States as an empire has become an important method of thinking. This paper explores the meaning of empire within the discipline of international relations and how various schools of thought interpret the logic of imperial rule. Additionally, this paper uses Pax Americana as a case study to analyze the development of imperial thought in the history of American diplomacy, as well as the influence of imperial thought on today‘s US foreign policy and the challenges it faces in the contemporary world.
Modern empires have four essential features. First, modern empires, like nation-states, have a clear national core, which is very different from ancient empires with cultural and ethnic diversity. In today’s international society, the core of power in the empire is the sovereign state. Second, empire represents an ideology, that is, a systematic identity, way of life, and design of world order. Ideology reflects how the empire views its own strength and status in the international community, as well as how the empire handles its relations with other nations and countries. For empires, ideology is not just about ideas; it takes will and decisive action to defend them. Third, the empire has a hierarchical ruling structure. The members of the imperial system are not equal in strength and influence. The country at the core of the ruling has the ability to extend resources and values to other countries to exercise control. It should be noted that the distribution of responsibilities within the system is also unequal. The core of the empire bears the greatest responsibilities along with the greatest influence, including maintaining political stability, economic prosperity, and security. Finally, empire is an order based on imperial elements and interests, and its core and periphery interact in two directions and influence each other.
Realism holds that due to divergent interests, political orders in small spaces often engage in wars, and only political orders in large spaces ruled by the center can escape this fate. Therefore, imperial order is the natural choice for maintaining peace. Especially in the theory of offensive realism, due to the lack of mutual trust between countries and the lack of transparency in each other’s strategic intentions, becoming an empire is the most effective means to safeguard national security and interests. Although liberals are natural opponents of the imperial order, most of them have a double standard with regard to freedom in their own country and in other countries. Liberals from Europe tended to regard the culture and way of life of their own nation as civilized and those of other nations as barbaric, and they justified the expansion of empires under the guise of promoting civilization and morality. Moreover, in liberal theory, a homogeneous free world is always more likely to provide security, prosperity, and freedom. The expansion of liberal democracies will bring about shared value judgments. An open world economic system will lead to mutual understanding and linkage of interests, which will largely ease misgivings among countries, alleviate security dilemmas, and ultimately achieve a safe, prosperous, and free international order. Constructivists emphasize the ideological nature of empire, arguing that international relations are based on the relationship between the identities and interests of actors and social structures. Therefore, maintaining the rule of an empire requires not only material power based on military power, but also non-material power such as culture, way of life, values and identity.
Despite being born out of a revolution against the British Empire, the idea of empire has been incorporated into the construction of American identity since the founding of the country. This firstly comes from the Puritans’ self-cognition as God’s chosen people and the subsequent political desire to build a “city upon a hill” mixed with religious consciousness. The founding fathers of the United States believed that the greatness of the United States lies in its sacred mission of promoting universal values to the world. The vast and wild North American continent provided geographical convenience for the construction of the American empire. As the United States has become a giant country that spans the North American continent and connects two oceans, its national ambitions are also expanding. The Monroe Doctrine announced to the world that the entire Americas have become the sphere of influence of the United States, and the United States seeks exclusive power here. Once the door of expansion was opened, it could never be closed again. The United States continued to expand its influence to the Pacific region and the Far East until the outbreak of the Spanish-American War completely exposed the United States’ world ambitions. In the 20th century, the United States became the natural leader of world order by leading the free world twice to save the world from tyranny. During the Cold War, the United States perfected its military, economic, and ideological control over the Western Hemisphere, and quickly spread this control to the world after defeating the Soviet Union. The United States became a global empire in the true sense. Pax Americana has three sources of legitimacy. First, the ideology of freedom and democracy and the values of universal human rights have brought sanctity to the American Empire. governance. Secondly, the United States uses the creation of international organizations, participates in the revision of international law, and formulates rules for the exchanges of countries around the world. These rules allow the United States to dominate the international order in the form of the rule of law. Finally, the United States provides the international community with various necessary public goods, such as security and markets, through services in exchange for power. The governance of the United States has demonstrated its effectiveness both politically and economically, and the vast majority of countries and people in the world have benefited from it, thus acknowledging the dominant position of the United States. Of course, Pax Americana is also in the midst of both internal and external challenges. External challenges include that U.S. allies are actively seeking strategic autonomy, while U.S. competitors, such as China, are increasingly revealing their ambitions to overthrow the U.S.-led international order and replace the U.S. Within the United States, first of all, whether it is economic strength or military strength, the United States has experienced relative decline. Second, the uneven development of globalization and the unequal transfer of the costs of maintaining imperial governance within the United States have changed the political culture of the United States. Trump and his supporters have questioned the United States’ responsibility for international governance under the slogan “America First”. They hope that the United States, which is closed and open, will reduce its alliance obligations through unilateralism. Such an approach has greatly damaged the confidence of other countries in the world in Pax Americana. Despite the challenges, the status of the American empire remains unshakable. China and Russia, while diplomatically aggressive, already have trouble governing domestically, so they don’t have the power and ideological pull to become world empires. The weakness of the United States is only a comparison with the United States in the late Cold War. If the United States is compared with other countries, the national strength of the United States is still far ahead. And Trump’s strategic contraction is conducive to refocusing US resources on higher priority areas and safeguarding the US’s advantages in the competition among major powers.
The idea of empire runs through the diplomatic history of the United States. After 247 years of continuous expansion and adjustment, the United States in the 21st century has become the world’s policeman and a power that dominates the imperial system. In the future, as long as the American nation still adheres to the identity of the chosen people of God and regards the establishment of a city upon a hill under the guidance of God as the mission of the United States; as long as the United States continues to pursue global interests by maintaining the existing international order, the idea of empire will be It will continue to guide the diplomatic strategy of the United States, and the concept of power and values centered on empire will continue to exist in human political practice.