Munkler: Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Angient Rome to the United States

Munkler, H., 2007. Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States, Cambridge: Polity Press.

What is the difference between empire and state? What is the difference between empire and imperialism? What is the difference between hegemony and empire? Is the US an empire?

Munkler begins by exploring what is not an empire. “First, an empire must be distinguished from a state…which operates according to completely different imperatives and a completely different action logic” (4-5). “Empires have no neighbours which they recognize as equals, that is, as possessing equal rights; with states, by contrast, this is the rule” (5). “Whoever thinks of imperiality as simply an alternative to statehood will come to the conclusion that no empires exist today. Whoever, on the contrary, proceeds from the superimposition of imperial structures on the state order will encounter structures of power and influence not identical to those of the state” (6).

“Second, empire must be delineated in contrast to hegemonic structures of dominance…Hegemony is supr3emacy within a group of formally equal political players; imperiality, by contrast, dissolves this…equality and reduces subordinates to the status of client states or satellites” (6).

“Third…empire may be delineated in contrast to what has since the nineteenth century been called imperialism…’Imperialism’ means that there is a will to empire” (8).

In addition, one must consider both spatial and temporal factors before determining whether or not something is an empire. If it doesn’t last, and if it doesn’t cover enough territory, it is not an empire. This is one important and difficult set of factors to distinguish between when asking questions about US empire in comparison to other historical instances of empire. For example, the world of the British was much “smaller” when they were an empire, the world of Athens, much smaller still.

“How does this [the distinction between empire, imperialism and hegemony] relate to the question of whether the United States is now an empire or a hegemon? The first point to be made is that the distinction between the two is much more fluid than it I soften assumed. If we take interference in the internal affairs of smaller states as the only hallmark of imperiality, and a basic lack of interest in their internal affairs as integral to hegemony, then the United States has been an empire since President Carter launched his human rights offensive, but was a hegemon in the preceding period when it tolerated military dictatorships even within NATO” (46).

The Augustan Threshold: The period when an empire goes from ascent to decline and when it moves from plundering the periphery to “civilizing” it.