This is Democracy – Episode 328: Imperialist Realism

2026-09-08_This-Is-Democracy-final
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[00:00:00] Intro: This is Democracy

A podcast about the people of the United States A podcast about citizenship

About engaging with politics and the world around you

A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues And how to have a voice in what happens next.

[00:00:20] Zachary Suri: Hello and welcome to our latest episode of This is Democracy.

Uh, this week we’re back to our usual routine with, uh, yet another distinguished guest. Um, of course, though, as always, we’re joined by Professor Jeremi Suri. Good morning, or I guess good afternoon now.

[00:00:35] Jeremi Suri: Good afternoon, Zachary.

[00:00:37] Zachary Suri: Um, and joining us, uh, as well is our friend, uh, Professor Daniel Bessner. Um, Professor Bessner, hello.

[00:00:45] Daniel Bessner: Hi. Thank you very much for having me.

[00:00:47] Zachary Suri: Thanks for, uh, joining us. Um, Professor Bessner is currently the Ann, uh, and Kenneth Pyle Associate Professor in American Foreign Policy at the Jackson School of International Studies, uh, at the University of Washington. He’s also a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an associate of the Alameda Institute, and a contributing editor at Jacobin.

Uh, in 2019 and 2020, he served as a foreign policy advisor to Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, and most importantly and most relevant for our discussion today, um, Professor Bessner is the author of the essay collection, Imperialist Realism, uh, that came out this July, um, from Zero Books, uh, and which we’ll be discussing, um, today.

Uh, so thank you to both of you for joining us. I’m excited for the conversation.

[00:01:35] Jeremi Suri: We are too.

[00:01:36] Zachary Suri: Wonderful. Um, I wanna start by asking a- about one of the first, um, assertions you make at the beginning of the book, uh, in the introduction, um, which I think for a lot of scholars and, um, particular s- s- in particular scholars of your, um, you know, political inclinations or, uh, discipline, um, w- is not controversial, but I think for many of our listeners and many Americans, it’s something they might bristle at, which is you say, quote, “The United States is an empire and has been since its inception.”

Obviously, this argument is, is critical to your, to your book, um, and to the collection of essays, and undergirds a lot of what you argue. So I’m curious, you know, as we start discussing it here, what would you say to those who might argue that, you know, while the US may have engaged in the past or quite frequently even in the present in imperial expansion, um, it’s something different.

It, you know, invented anti-imperialism, one could even argue, in the form of the Declaration of Independence or the creation of the UN, et cetera. Um, would, would you agree at, at least maybe that the US is a different kind of empire or, or, or represents a different kind of imperialism than what we normally think of when we, when we use the term?

[00:02:50] Daniel Bessner: Sure. I mean, it’s, it’s a good question, and, uh, to some degree, as you suggested, this is a, a disciplinary thing. I think, uh, Jeremi would agree that in the historical profession, this, this is kind of a common sense assumption. And in other disciplines, my, my guess would be mostly political science and particularly the subfield of international relations.

It’s a bit more controversial, and there’s been a- around two decades of discussion about the difference between hegemony and empire in the field of IR- Right … which really hasn’t been, um, a, a major focus for, uh, poli- diplomatic historians. Uh, and so I, I think that, um, one of the ironies of US history and one of the interesting things about it is that I do think that it was the first modern anti-colonial revolution.

Uh, the Revolution of 1776 was a genuinely anti-colonial revolution, even if it did have its oppressive aspects. You know, when the Constitution was signed in 1787, it had the Three-Fifths Compromise. Obviously, chattel slavery was something that was going on in what became the United States before it became the United States, but it was also a genuinely anti-colonial revolution.

Um, however, I do think that from a certain perspective, and people are of course free to disagree, that the, uh, history of the United States has been defined, uh, uh, by, by its expansion, uh, first from the 13 colonies, then from the various land purchases it made over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, then to the, the brief moment where it acquired, uh, territories in the, in the fin de siècle, um, in, in the Philippines and Puerto Rico especially, but also in, in places like Guam.

And of course, I’m sure people listening are aware that the United States currently controls five, uh, occupied territories that have populations: American Samoa, the North Mariana, Northern Mariana Quilan, uh, Islands, the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Uh, today, the Philippines got independence in 1946.

Um, but I, I do just kind of take a common sense, uh, uh, understanding of empire, where it’s wh- where one polity is exerting dominance over another, uh, polity over time. Uh, and so I think that if you understand the indigenous peoples as, as foreign nations, and I th- they were legally understood as such, you could read the expansion from sea to shining sea as an imperial one.

Then you have the more classic form of empire with the seizure of colonies in the, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Uh, and then you have what many historians have called this sort of pointillist empire, borrowing, uh, Daniel Imrar’s term, but Chalmers Johnson, a political scientist, I believe, actually made a similar point several years before Imrar, calling it an empire of bases, where the United States seeks to affirm, uh, political and military and economic control through this system of bases that it, um, planted abroad.

One of the interesting things about today is a bit orthogonal to what we’re gonna talk about, is I do think that the, um, Iran war, and particularly this age of drone warfare that is dawning, uh, might suggest that the way the United States pr- uh, traditionally attempted to project power, which is through these archipelago of bases or putting an aircraft carrier in the region, might not be as effective as it was in the 20th and early 21st centuries, and we might be witnessing something like the introduction of the machine gun, which totally transformed Napoleonic warfare, though that remains to be seen.

Um, but yeah, I think the, the desire to a- assert and affirm dominance over foreign peoples Is a common sense definition of empire that I, uh, abide by, and then we could even talk about dollar dominance and economic empire and things like that. But, um, that’s how I would try to define and explain the use of the term empire to define, uh, US history.

[00:06:27] Jeremi Suri: A- and Danny, I think that’s a really good e- explanation for I, I think what many historians would, would argue, especially historians of foreign relations and comparative empire. Um, those who argue for imperialism as part of empire often see imperialism in the most classic formulation from William Appleman Williams, who you cite extensively in your new book.

They see this as something ideologically driven, right? For Williams, it’s the ideology of the open door. Others see this as economically driven. Y- y- you’re not de- denying that, but what’s interesting to me about your new book, about… and, and the phrase imperialist realism that you use, is it seems to me you’re, you’re going beyond ideology and economics, and you’re making, as I see it, you know, as you say early on, an argument about cynicism, what you call missionism and guilt.

Uh, how, how do you see those coming together in, in this concept of imperialist realism, which is the title of your book, of course?

[00:07:22] Daniel Bessner: Yeah, no, of course, and it’s a, it’s a great question. It’s funny that, that Williams that I cite is not the one that people usually cite. People usually cite The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, his originally published in ’59, but people usually cite the one that was, uh, republished, I believe, in ’62 after the Cuban Revolution.

Um, I actually cite his 1980, I believe, Empire as a Way of Life, which was based on this long essay that he wrote for The Nation. Maybe a, a reference to tragedies in there, but it’s not the thing that I, I really build on him there. Uh, what, what I’m trying to do in this book is really define building on, uh, Raymond Williams, this notion of a structure of feeling.

Um, so I think my two most important intellectual influences d- uh, here when developing the concept of imperialist realism are Raymond Williams on the one hand, and then a, a left-wing theorist named Mark Fisher on the other, who was a, a British theorist who wrote a book in 2008, really an essay that became a book or really was published and sold as a book called Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

Um, and, and, and Fisher is probably most i- important- for developing that notion which builds on o- two other Marxist theorists, Fredric Jameson, the great literary theorist from Duke, and also Slavoj, uh, Žižek, who argued, people point to different people at different times, it’s something along the lines of it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.

And Fisher built on this idea to argue in favor of an idea that he called the slow cancellation of the future, which is that i- in a world where, in a post Cold War world, uh, Fisher didn’t frame it this way ’cause he’s not an historian, but the way that I think about it is, is that in a post Cold War world where ideological challenges to American style capitalism really don’t exist, that everything has just become, uh, capitalist.

And sort of the great ideological battles of the 19th and 20th centuries between liberal democratic capitalism, uh, authoritarian, uh, communism, uh, fascism, o- on one hand have essentially been decided in, in favor of a capitalist form of political economic organization. And so I think that’s what Fisher was really getting at, even if he didn’t really use that term.

So what I was trying to do in this book, Imperialist Realism, was, was build on this idea of capitalist realism to e- e- examine the notion, at least to me, is that why it feels so impossible to transform the structure of the American empire. And what actually, uh, got me thinking about this is I was invited to review a video game for this magazine called The Drift.

Uh, the video game is called Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Call of Duty is a series of military first-person shooters. It’s one of the most successful of all time. And when I went into reviewing it, I’m like, “Oh, you know, this is m- might be a bit critical of the United States, but ultimately it’s gonna come down on the notion that the United States is a force for good in the world.”

And it absolutely did not. And what surprised me most about the game is that it was extraordinarily cynical about the United States, um, the people in intelligence agencies, and what the United States did in the world. The, the game portrays basically the early Reagan administration. It’s just like, for lack of a better phrase, um, these people are a bunch of psychopaths.

They’re venal. Uh, they like killing people. That’s what they do what they do, and if something good comes out in the wash, that’s really n- not what motivated them. And that got me thinking about why would a game like this be one of the top sellers of all time, and not only that, be embraced by the US military, who started playing esports teams with this game, with this Black Ops Cold War game.

And so I started to think about w- what does, um, an American’s relationship to, even if you don’t wanna use empire, the American polity or the American state look like in, in the failure of the global war on terror? Um, after decades of failed policies, particularly given the, the big promises that the global war on terror began with, uh, what does it, what does it mean to still have this globe-spanning form, uh, this globe-spanning polity, uh, after you have basically just not only failed to achieve your objectives, but obviously made the world, uh, at least many Americans believe, and I would agree with them to, to the most part, uh, uh, the worst place.

And so I, I started to develop this notion of imperialist realism, and I started to see it in various, uh, articulations in pop culture, but also, and this is what also surprised me, in how policymakers talked about American foreign policy. And we could talk about Trump. This book was finished before really the height of Trump 2.0, but, uh, when I was reading what the Biden administration said about his justifications to fight in Ukraine, I was surprised about how almost a ideological or non-ideological their framing of why the United States was supporting Ukraine was.

If, if you look at what Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State said, or Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense said, they were essentially making total realist arguments in favor of why the United States was supporting Ukraine. It wasn’t to defend democracy. It wasn’t to be anti-authoritarian. But it was essentially to punish Russia, and this was to me surprising because if you remember, the Biden administration came into office with this framework of democracy versus authoritarianism type building off of Trump 1.0.

But Ukraine, which happened in early 2022 Really, they, they didn’t use that framework or language whatsoever. So I started to think through, what does this mean? And so just to, to wrap up what Jeremi was saying, I, I think that this imperialist realism, at least it was, uh, as it’s been articulated, uh, in the last 10 or so years, has three key features.

First, it, it’s cynical about the United States’ genuine ability to make the world a better place, about things like spreading democracy, which was very much a key feature of the George W. Bush administration in particular. Um, it nevertheless believes p- that the United States must act in the world. This is what I term in the book a missionism.

Uh, and I, I wish I had gone into this a bit more. I think that is also linked to the Protestant heritage of the United States, which scholars like Andrew Preston have explored this notion that, that the United States is a city upon a hill. The city upon a hill started more as an example, but over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, it kind of became, we’re gonna go construct that city abroad.

And Jeremi, you wrote a book about nation building. Um, that didn’t seem to be a, a key feature of this missionism. The United States is that, uh, the notion was that the United States needed to act because it was so powerful. And then building off the scholarship of, in particular, the political theorist, Jan Morfill, th- I argued that the tension between the cynicism, this notion that the United States can’t make the world a better place, and this missionism, this notion that the United States must nevertheless act, resulted in a feeling of tragic guilt.

And you see this in statements by Blinken along the lines of, “If we don’t act, someone else will.” Now, what’s interesting about Trump, and then I’ll stop, is I don’t think he has that guilt whatsoever. Uh, I think he is just fine with the cynicism, uh, cynicism of it. And so you could see almost imperialist realism transforming before our eyes, but maybe I, to more, uh, sort of coherently frame it, this is a, a more liberal form of imperialist realism as oppo- opposed to the more reactionary form that I think we’re seeing with Trump

[00:14:24] Zachary Suri: Interesting.

Um, I’m curious if you could maybe speak to the, uh, probably key examples that would be on the top of people’s minds today. I know your, your book doesn’t necessarily, um, address all of them, but I, I’m curious if you could, um, speak to how Americans, and particularly the American public, um, ha- uh, responded at first to American ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now in Iran, and have now sort of soured on them, or in the case of Iran, never really, uh, were anything but sour on the, those ventures.

Um, and I’m curious, like, what you think that says about the state of, um, the American empire, uh, as you put it, um, today.

[00:15:09] Daniel Bessner: Yeah, it’s a wonderful question. Um, and I think there’s two things. I think there’s a profound cynicism, like I said, about American empire, but I think, and, and this is what’s quite new, I think it’s edging almost toward a, a nihilism about American empire.

So if you recall, uh, Zachary, you were probably either one or not born, uh, but in the, in the run-up to the Iraq War, uh, there were, there were massive protests. Uh, if I’m remembering correctly, the largest protest in history-

[00:15:36] Jeremi Suri: Yes …

[00:15:36] Daniel Bessner: against the United States going to war in Iraq.

[00:15:38] Jeremi Suri: Yes.

[00:15:38] Daniel Bessner: Uh, nevertheless, despite those protests, there was also widespread support for the war, at least in its initial stages, because the government had made the case in favor of going to war for, uh, essentially WMD and the notion that Saddam Hussein was evil.

He was regularly compared to Hitler, what have you. Uh, but now, uh, a couple things about Iran. Uh, some people have, have argued with these numbers, but somewhere around 41%, only 41% of Americans, I believe, were in favor of the war, uh, at, at the beginning of… Uh, forget, forgive me, I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but basically most Americans were against the war from the beginning, but also at the same time, there were almost no protests against the war.

So what you have is this, this notion that the United States Shouldn’t be doing what it’s going to do, but then this almost nihilism about the fact that it doesn’t ev- protests don’t matter, so you, th- w- why, why even bother? And this leads to more of the long-term cause of imperialist realism, um, that I talk about in the book, which is what, what I take to be at least this cordoning off of a public opinion and even to a significant degree, if not total degree, Congress from American foreign policy making in the late 1940s.

I think if you look at the National Security Act, one of the… Of ’47, uh, one of the things that it was trying to do as it created a modern American state apparatus was to essentially limit, uh, the public’s, but also Congress’s ability on foreign policy making. Uh, it created groups like the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, uh, the precursor to the Department of Defense.

Later you have the National Security Agency in the early 1950s. Uh, and one of the key things that unites all these organizations is that a, a lot of what they do isn’t subject to the will of the public, that is the will of the demos or even the will of Congress. Most famously, and Jeremi, you know this better than I, someone like Henry Kissinger becomes National Security Advisor because it’s not a Senate-approved position.

The, the, the, the, the executive as, as it states in the National Security Act, is able to appoint whomever he wants without the Senate approving of it. So I think there was this structure of policymaking that was designed, not totally, it was also designed to rationalize the state, but a part of it was, I believe, to limit the public and Congress’s influence on policy.

So that I also think over time began to migrate or colonize, if you want to use a spicy term, other areas of the American state to the point where in the mid-2020s most Americans feel, I think roughly correctly, uh, that they’re not able to have a significant influence on policy. Um, probably the most famous political science paper about this is this pa- a paper written I believe in 2014 by Page and Gilens, which essentially argues that organized business is able to affect things, but organized people, even if they are organized, are not.

There’s been some criticism of that paper, but I was looking into it a few weeks ago. It still seems like even if there were crit- sort of methodological criticisms of the paper, it still seems like the impulse is, is, is taken to be correct. And so I- it’s, I think this feeling, this accurate feeling that policymakers are able to make policy without reference to the public or Congress is another reason that there’s this cynicism, which is I think today edging toward nihilism.

[00:18:57] Zachary Suri: You– I, I find it interesting that you describe this, um, sort of oppos- public opposition to American intervention as a kind of cynicism. Is it not possible, though, to interpret, to interpret the widespread opposition among the American public to, a- at least now in our moment, to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past and to American intervention in Iran today?

Is it not possible to interpret that actually as proof that the American public has become allergic to imperialism, um, or that the kind of interventionism and attempt at world hegemony that, um, you know, American– that, that you described as dominating American policy for so long has– is no longer popular, or is no longer the consensus in the country?

Is this not– Is it not possible to read that as a sign that, like, the, not that necessarily the age of American hegemony is over, but that the popularity at home of imperialism is over?

[00:19:51] Daniel Bessner: Uh, it’s a really important question, and I think what the, the polling suggests is that it differs according to age cohort.

Uh, essentially, the younger you get, uh, the more skeptical Americans become of what is usually asked as American leadership or participating in global affairs. Over 65 is quite supportive. Gen X is more s- is, is more but less supportive. Millennials are inching into less supportive, and Gen Z is much less supportive of American intervention abroad, which is kind of what you would expect in the wake of the war on terror.

One thing that I hope someone does, and this has never been done, is that no polling group has actually asked Americans about whether their country is an empire. This is just a question that has never been asked. Uh, so you have to get at it type of orthogonally about, you know, US leadership or participating in global affairs, um, or what have you.

Um, so, uh, I think that, again, just as you go down age cohorts, people are more skeptical of the United States’ ability to do good abroad. And, and it also makes sense because basically the lifespan of the ma- uh, of the American Empire traces the literal baby boomer lifespan. So I wouldn’t be surprised if things begin to change once, um, baby boomers, uh, fade from who are, you know, somewhere in their, between their late 60s and early 80s, uh, begin to have less influence on politics.

I imagine that foreign policy will change in turn.

[00:21:18] Jeremi Suri: One of the things I find fascinating in your book, uh, Danny, which I, which I read very carefully and enjoyed from chapter to chapter, I mean, and, and I want our listeners to know the range that’s in this book. I mean, you have characters you profile from Barack Obama to Noam Chomsky, and, uh, you cover events, you know, from the, the war in Ukraine to, uh, questions about the origins of the Cold War.

Um, there’s, there’s really a lot you cover here. But there’s a way in which reading this, I sort of felt like I was reading, um, an- another version of Louis Hartz with a different, with a different framing though, right? The sense that there’s a consensus in American society, a consensus that’s very hard to work one’s way out of.

Um, and you’re, I think, more critical than Hartz is writing in, you know, over 50 years earlier. Um, but, but you see it structurally built into the system, and so even when we have debates, even when you have a Barack Obama versus a Bob Gates, two characters you, you A profile or an H.R. McMaster and a Samantha Power, people who seem to be on the opposite sides of politics.

You argue in a sense it’s within the same, in, within the same framing. Um, i-is that, is that an accurate reading of what you’re saying? And if that’s true, where does that come from?

[00:22:32] Daniel Bessner: I, I, I think it is an accurate reading. I, I guess the, the assumption that all of the people that I examine have is that the United States, and you could use whatever term you wanna dis- use, sh-should lead the world or be the most powerful nation on Earth.

And then the question then is what do you do with that power? If you’re Samantha Power, you use it to end humanitarian disasters. Uh, if you’re John Mearsheimer, maybe you use it to combat China in, uh, East Asia and don’t do any humanitarian interventions. Um, I think, I think that’s right, and I think it emerges from, uh, essentially the experience of the 1940s through the 1960s, uh, which is essentially the, the moment of modern American state-making.

I think first the encounter with fascism and Nazism and this notion that there was this global power that was going to threaten potentially the United States or, or, or at least the United States’ claim on capital H history and capital P progress, um, really shaped how Americans understood their role in the world.

That was underlined, and I think, think Stephen Wartime is correct here. Once France fell in the summer of 1940, uh, American elites began to assume that they needed to become globally hegemonic in a way that, you know, some people certainly had argued in favor of ear- for earlier, but that became a consensus in a way.

And then you have after the war, I think the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the emergence of Harry S. Truman, uh, in that he was a person who was going to not adopt the type of realist power political position that I do think Roosevelt would have adopted. And so he was not going to give Stalin an inch in a way that I think Roosevelt was going to…

I, I think Roosevelt basically, just to lay my cards on the table, I think he would’ve quote unquote allowed Stalin to control Eastern Europe and wouldn’t have made a thing about it. I think, I think that was in the cards, and I actually think Sergei Radchenko’s recent book , even though Sergei doesn’t argue that explicitly Um, I think it demonstrates that Stalin thought he was gonna make a deal.

Like, Stalin thought that the United States was going to do what he usually did, which was go home, which is what it did after World War I. And I think Roosevelt was much more likely to do that. He, in fact, did promise Stalin that American troops would not remain in Europe, but Truman wasn’t going to do that.

So I think there’s a whole counterfactual world had Roosevelt existed. But anyway, I think the rise of the Nazis, then to be soon followed by the Soviet Union, who could be legitimately framed as an existential threat, particularly in the s- aug- uh, sorry, in the autumn of 1949 when two things happened.

First, the Soviet Union and the United States learns that the Soviet Union had acquired its own nuclear bomb, and second, Mao wins in China, which made it seem like there was a global communist threat. Uh, I think those things institutionalized this notion that the United States needed to lead the world, otherwise you’re going to get another World War II, otherwise you’re going to get other existential threats.

Um, and I think that th- this consensus is actually, Jeremi, I think it’s actually coming apart now. Okay. I think one of the things that we are witnessing is that the liberal hegemony that basically had begun with the New Deal in the 1930s, transmogrified under neoliberalism in the 1970s, but which I think remained appreciably liberal, and when it came to foreign affairs really became consensus in the late 1940s, and really once Taft lost the primary to Eisenhower in the early ’50s, became a, a sort of consensus across political parties.

I think that consensus is going away, which is why I think we’re seeing, uh, ideologies that really haven’t been in, in, uh, politically effective since the ’40s, like socialism on one hand on the left, and sort of a, a z- xenophobic racism on the far right on the other hand come back into being because liberalism is losing– I, I would actually argue has lost its hegemony.

[00:26:29] Jeremi Suri: Right. And just, just to clarify, because I had a sense that’s where you were going, right? I mean, i- in, in some ways, this story of imperialist realism, which as you just recounted very well, reaches its apex in the Cold War. Um, you see that now as, as beginning to come apart i- i- in part because it’s not practical anymore, right?

Not because there’s been a change in consciousness, but because the material conditions that enabled it are now becoming undone. Is that, is that accurate?

[00:26:57] Daniel Bessner: That’s 100% accurate, but I, I just wanna spe- I think it depends on where in the world you’re looking at. Um, so I think it’s, for, for me, the whole East Asia thing, uh, the, the, the die was cast on that one a long time ago.

China is a major power. There’s just no world, in my opinion, where the United States is going to be able to have Forward positions in the first island chain or even in the, you know, the third island chain. So in, in m- to my mind, a wise policy on Taiwan would be how do you, or, or Japan or South Korea for that matter, how do you get these US partners and allies prepared for a world in which the United States is just much less powerful in East Asia?

What, what has surprised me recently is I assumed that the Middle East would also be firmly within America’s hands for a long time, but I think this age of drone warfare might actually, uh, transform that. The fact that such a weak power like Iran, uh, is able to harm the United States so, so strongly really calls into question, I think, the whole structure of the American empire.

However, I do not think the American empire is going anywhere in, for example, the Western Hemisphere. Um, I think the United States is still gonna be the predominant power in Latin America, in the Caribbean, to say nothing of its relationship with Canada and Mexico. Um, and so I, I, I, I, uh, still, you know, the Western Hemisphere is still a pretty large place.

Sure.

[00:28:15] Jeremi Suri: Sure.

[00:28:16] Daniel Bessner: Um, but, uh, but East Asia to me is an issue of, of, of not if but when, uh, and I don’t think it’s that, it’s how that’s being talked about in, in DC is my sense, at least. I think people are clinging to atavistic understandings of global, uh, power. And one more thing I wanna add, which is an idea I’m thinking about now, is that the United States is never a country that has really accepted high casualties.

I mean, the highest casualty war we had was, of course, the Civil War if you count both sides as the United States. But even if you look at, um, World War II, our casualties are, they’re terrible, but they’re nowhere approaching the Soviet Union or Germany- Mm-hmm … or something like that. So this is not a country that goes to wars that have high casualties, and I think this is actually an important thing that most p- politicians and policymakers, like, haven’t been forced to be fully cognizant of.

For example, I mean, the United States probably could, quote-unquote, “hold on to Taiwan,” but not at any cost that would be deemed- Right … acceptable by any American. Right. You know, not at the cost of hundreds of thousands of casualties, which is what a full… W- w- if, if China was to really go for it, that’s what a f- uh, full-scale thing would actually, a full-scale defense would actually entail.

[00:29:22] Jeremi Suri: I, I think it’s so interesting, Danny, and it’s a, it, it’s a p- a point that comes through in this wonderful book, um, how much the United States was able to exert power over such a wide space at relatively low cost in terms of casualties, not low cost in terms of dollars, but low cost in terms of casualties to Americans and to basically offload many of the costs, um, at least from those in positions of, um, uh, who w- who would have otherwise had to die to maintain an empire if we think historically what other empires went through.

[00:29:54] Daniel Bessner: Precisely. And even te- I mean, that’s even true, and I don’t mean to minimize, uh, all death, and I really mean this. Uh, every single death is a tragedy. But if you look at, like, the casualties of Korea and Vietnam, they’re just not the types of usual casualties that you would expect from a globe-spanning empire.

It’s just they’re, they’re, they’re relatively limited. Uh, and w- when you compare, for example, the Soviet using– Union losing between 20 and 25 million people during World War II. The, the– it’s really in-incomparable. And this is just a country that I don’t think has ever really experienced in, in modernity, uh, particularly high casualty rates, and I don’t think it’s a country that’s going to experience particularly high casualty rates.

And I think one of the things that thing, uh, events like the Revolution in Military Affairs tried to do was to try to basically have hegemony on the cheap. Or, I mean, Jeremi and, and Zachary, I’m sure you know this. This was the original fantasy of air warfare going back to Billy Mitchell in the 1920s.

But it’s just, I think, proven empirically over the course of the 20-21st centuries is that you can’t actually achieve strategic political victories through those types of low casualty wars. So to my mind, the great problem of the age for the American foreign policy maker is how to responsibly draw down American global power.

And this sort of imperialist realist ideology that we have prevents us from thinking through what I consider to be, at least personally, not everyone needs to or should agree, the major question of American power in the next generation.

[00:31:19] Zachary Suri: Yeah. I’m curious. You, you talk about a lot of these issues in your book at, at a cultural level, as we’ve already touched on.

I’m curious what you think maybe that looks like for ordinary Americans or for our listeners moving forward, those who are not in a position to themselves determine foreign policy, and as you’ve talked about, are more alienated from those who are actually making foreign policy, um, than probably ever before.

I’m, I’m curious what, what you think this means and what, what, what the future of American imperial or non-imperial culture could look like.

[00:31:51] Daniel Bessner: It’s a really difficult question because I, I don’t think we’ve had even a modern entertainment industry without the United States being globally powerful. Uh, I mean, one thing that you could imagine a post-imperial space, you’d have more Star Treks, or you’ve ha- you would have more shows.

Or, or the original Star Trek, not the newest one. But you’d have more entertainments that try to imagine sort of a post-imperialist, post-capitalist future. But again, I think that th- now we’re l- living in the realm of utopia because nothing to my mind at least suggests like anything like that is in, is in the cards.

Um, so I, I genuinely don’t know. I think we’re in a moment of diagnosis as opposed to a moment of trying to figure out what the, the post-imperialist realist, capitalist realist space would look like. And, and to be honest, to my mind at least, I d- it doesn’t look like we’re about to, you know, transcend in a Hegelian sense either capitalism or imperialism.

Um, so I think that question will have to wait for the future, or the answer to that question will have to wait to the future. We should be thinking through it now.

[00:32:52] Zachary Suri: Okay. Thank you. That’s very helpful. Um, Jeremi, you had one last question.

[00:32:55] Jeremi Suri: So, so Danny, I wanted to connect this really fascinating and important discussion, uh, and your, your important book to the, the 25th anniversary of September 11th, which comes up this week.

M- many of our listeners will be listening to this, um, in that context. Um, and many of us, I’m sure you’re d- you’re doing this too, many of us are writing essays right now and publishing essays on the 25th anniversary. How do you think of your argument in that context? Not so much, I don’t want us to re-litigate Uh, 9/11, but more, um, this, this event which y- y- it’s hard not to think of it as a seminal event, yet an event that also seems not to fit well within our current narrative.

How do you think about it?

[00:33:37] Daniel Bessner: I, I think it’s a great question, and I am writing a piece. It’s funny, right before, right before we got on, I was reading the New York Times 1966, how was the 25th of Pearl Harbor, uh, uh, portrayed, and I’m, I’m trying to think through, uh, the similarities and differences there. And you can find it on my Substack, imperialistrealism.substack.com.

Uh, but basically I think imperialist realism actually existed before the global war on terror. I, I, I mean, Jeremi, you were around for this. I was a bit young, but there was that whole discussion during the early 1990s in the Clinton administration about basically drawing back defense spending and, and drawing down the bases, and that was basically q- quickly nipped in the bud due a variety of international and, and domestic factors.

Um, so I think very, very quickly by 1994, 1995 the latest, uh, American political elites had decided that the global position of strength was going to be retained. That the United States wasn’t going to, quote unquote, “Go home,” which is actually what a lot of the people who built these institutions in the ’40s thought would happen.

They thought once the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States would be able to draw back its military presence and return to a more traditional American posture of, of basically being dominant in the hemisphere and not being dominant all over the globe, and of course, that didn’t happen. But, um, I don’t think that it w- as, uh, necessarily foreordained that the United States was going to be as violent as it wound up being during the global war on terror.

Hmm. Now, there are some data points against that, in particular the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, this bipartisan act that was signed by Clinton, uh, and which basically committed the United States to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. I mean, that, that’s a pretty aggressive move, but, uh, as bo- all, all three of us know, ac- a lot of things are signed but never implemented.

Right. I’m not sure that would have been implemented, um, absent 9/11. So I think 9/11 pushed American global power or American empire or what have you in a particular, uh, direction. And I also think what 9/11 did is that– And I think this is difficult for people to remember, but there was a lot of– Even if it was, it was obviously a grave moment, there was also a lot of hope in the year or two after the September 11th attack that the United States was going to use its awesome power to make sure that terrible events like 9/11 never happened again by, by he-helping make the world, uh, more democratic.

And to some sense, that was the apotheosis of the progressive era idea instantiated most, uh, you know, importantly in Woodrow Wilson, but held by a lot of people, that you could manage interfares– uh, international affairs in a semi-rational way. Um, and I think what the global war on terror did is, is, is that it showed, and this is almost a conservative in the sense of a small C conservative critique, that critics of progressivism like Friedrich von Hayek were, were in some sense correct, that human affairs can’t be managed in the way that progressives imagined them to be.

Um, and I think 9/11 really demonstrated that, and I think the, the f- the, the hopes that were dashed by the realities of the global war on terror are really the, the source of our current moment and, and do force a rethink of the ability from almost an ontological position, uh, as to whether or not global affairs can be, quote, unquote, “managed.”

To my mind, at least, the history of US power since World War II suggests that they cannot be, and that’s ultimately a, a conservative critique that I, I actually agree with.

[00:37:06] Zachary Suri: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Professor Pitzner. This has been a fascinating discussion, um, as always. Uh, so thank you for joining us.

[00:37:13] Daniel Bessner: Thank you very much for having me. It was a genuine pleasure.

[00:37:16] Zachary Suri: Wonderful. Thank you so much, and thank you, of course, to Professor Jeremi Suri as well. Um, and thank you most of all to our wonderful listeners for joining us for this latest episode of This Is Democracy.

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