Imperialism

Michael Totten agrees with Joe Katzman about what needs to be done in places like the Congo, but doesn't like calling it colonialism or imperialism. OK, fair enough. I can see the need for a different word.

Imperialism is the notion of taking adjacent possessions in order to protect the Imperial core (since the outer possessions would be attacked first). Not really appropriate here. Colonialism is the notion of taking possessions generally distant in order to exploit their resources to the economic, political and military benefit of the core. The tactics for establishing and maintaining order are very similar.

What Joe is discussing is a little different: taking possessions in order to stabilize and rationalize them for the benefit of those already there, and in order to prevent the rot from spreading. The tactics would be similar to imperialism and colonialism at first, as the territories are stabilized. The rationalization - bringing freedom, liberal democracy, economic freedom and individual rights to the occupied territory - would have very different tactics. In particular, the occupying power would leave in the end. Effectively, this would mean establishing a temporary empire, and then giving it up. How about "Interventionism"?

UPDATE (6/11): Joe Katzman article by Paul Johnson, who calls this process "moral imperialism". Michael Totten prefers "democratic imperialism", which actually strikes me as fairly wrong - we don't want to create democracies, per se, but federal republics; and given that the territories wouldn't have a vote in the start of the process, that makes the term "democratic" rather misleading. However, I've thought of an even better term, I think: how about "internationalism"? We are, after all, trying to bring these territories into the international system of trade and representative government, and it co-opts the very people within our society who would otherwise argue against the idea by taking a term they already lionize and using it in a new way. Hmmm....

UPDATE: I forgot to mention Michael Totten's other suggestion: "nation building". While this certainly describes the process, it has a historical problem in that most of the places where this needs to be done aren't nations, per se. They are generally collections of tribes whose only common identity is a map drawn by the colonialists of the 19th century. Actually, now that I think about it, that works, too, since we'd be trying to build a common identity. OK, I'll go with "nation building".

Posted by Jeff at June 10, 2003 06:02 PM | Link Cosmos