Empire building

[Montie_Claunch]

I was wondering about something. I heard someone off handedly say that Bush was building an “Empire”. Now, weather bush is or not isn’t the question but, would Empirism (?) be a sin, scince it would be subjecation (and hopefully assimulation into) by another power? Like the europeans in africa and us for a short while taking terrotory from spain. Thanks and God bless.

 

[BryPGuy89]

Montie Claunch:

I was wondering about something. I heard someone off handedly say that Bush was building an “Empire”. Now, weather bush is or not isn’t the question but, would Empirism (?) be a sin, scince it would be subjecation (and hopefully assimulation into) by another power? Like the europeans in africa and us for a short while taking terrotory from spain. Thanks and God bless.

I wouldn’t say it could be a sin. Emperialism is just the expnsion of a nation or kingdom. I guess it would be how they went about it. If they murdered, raped, and pillaged then yeah I would say it was a sin, but not the action of imperialism, but the means they went about doing it. Over a third of our country is from emperial expansion. I wouldn’t even say that it would be subjecation, they are more assimilated at least under the ideal of imperialism.

 

[tjmiller]

As the creator of the once and future Holy Roman Empire, I doubt the Catholic Church would have any problem with imperialism, per se…The question rather is, “What kind of empire?”

 

[JimG]

Well, there are probably many sins that could be attributed to the British during the apex of the British Empire. Yet, many of their former colonies seem to be worse off after independence than they were under colonialism.

The same could be said for nearly any empire. I doubt that most of the components of the ancient Roman Empire really wished to see the empire fall, as it worsened the lot of ordinary people. (Yet the Church stepped in to keep civilization from crumbling entirely.)

And there is a difference between empire and hegemony. America would like to extend its hegemony to as much of the world as possible, but it does not seek empire. Islam would like to extend Islamic hegemony beyond the traditional Islamic regions. Whether it seeks empire in the form of universal Islamic law is a disputed question.

 

[BryPGuy89]

JimG:

Well, there are probably many sins that could be attributed to the British during the apex of the British Empire. Yet, many of their former colonies seem to be worse off after independence than they were under colonialism.

The same could be said for nearly any empire. I doubt that most of the components of the ancient Roman Empire really wished to see the empire fall, as it worsened the lot of ordinary people. (Yet the Church stepped in to keep civilization from crumbling entirely.)

And there is a difference between empire and hegemony. America would like to extend its hegemony to as much of the world as possible, but it does not seek empire. Islam would like to extend Islamic hegemony beyond the traditional Islamic regions. Whether it seeks empire in the form of universal Islamic law is a disputed question.

I agree with the empire part, but the part of America trying to build a hegemony made me laugh. The U.S. has and probably will remain to be an imperialistic country. We don’t try to ally with countries for better good, but to guarentee our own strength. As for the Islam I’m not sure, it could go many differ directions.

 

[JimG]

Well, let me give an example. During the cold war, both the Soviet Union and United States were vying for worldwide hegemony. That’s why we kept fighting proxy wars around the world. (Better to have proxy wars than one big war between the superpowers.)

We won the war for hegemony, mainly by outspending the Soviets. At this point, we could retreat into semi-isolationism. But if we do that, someone is going to gain hegemony, and it will probably be someone who is either expansionist or who exports values we don’t like.

 

[BryPGuy89]

JimG:

Well, let me give an example. During the cold war, both the Soviet Union and United States were vying for worldwide hegemony. That’s why we kept fighting proxy wars around the world. (Better to have proxy wars than one big war between the superpowers.)

We won the war for hegemony, mainly by outspending the Soviets. At this point, we could retreat into semi-isolationism. But if we do that, someone is going to gain hegemony, and it will probably be someone who is either expansionist or who exports values we don’t like.

This hegemony is what caused both the World Wars, both come down to whos whos ally, bringing the world into darkness and war.
I myself would rather a country fight the other country and not bring friends because then it gets so much messier, that is if they had to fight.
We won because we had some good economists, we out spent by going into severe debt. Later we experienced a stock crash and didn’t really get out of the problems till Bush Sr. Clinton times.

 

[JimG]

You’re right; a tangle of alliances can sometimes make war pretty much inevitable (and our Founders also worried about foreign entanglements.) That’s what happened with WW I.

And in WW II, the U.S. public was strongly isolationist, with Churchill trying to get us into the war, and Roosevelt helping as much as he could to turn public sentiment. Perhaps if it hadn’t been for Pearl Harbor, we might have ended up providing only moral and materiel support, which may not have been enough.

Could Europe have eventually emerged from Nazi hegemony, or would it have spread further, endangering the U.S.even more? I don’t know; but in hindsight I wouldn’t want to have risked it.

 

[Philip_P]

I don’t know if you could say Empire is a sin, in and of itself, but it has so many associated sins it may be inseparable from them (kind of like the concept of “near occassion of sin”).

Sins of pride come immediately to mind, along with presumption and assorted vices. For instance, look at the British Empire and their concept of “white man’s burden.” Their pride led them to justify any number of objectively sinful acts, from the slave trade to massacres of native populations, all in the name of spreading “civilization.” Worse, some took that a step further, claiming Britain as a sort of new “chosen nation” and thus presumptiously claiming to know God’s will and to be the agents of it. Hardly an example of humility before the Lord.

It is true that much disruption followed after the fall of empire, but rather than proving that empire was just, it rather is yet another of the adverse consequences empire left in its wake. Here, for instance, we can look at Belgium’s colonial policies, which artificially and arbitrarily divided the colonial subjects in Africa in Hutu and Tutsi. Though the violence in Rwanda in the 94 took place long after Belgium left, the roots of the violence can be found in the colonial era.

So in short, I’m not sure we can say Empire is a sin, but it’s not a good idea.

 

[JimG]

So you’re saying the Hutus and Tutsi’s turned on each other because of the Belgians, even after they were long gone? I don’t get it.

 

[Philip_P]

JimG:

So you’re saying the Hutus and Tutsi’s turned on each other because of the Belgians, even after they were long gone? I don’t get it.

Hutu and tutsi were social, not ethnic, divisions. Germany, succeeded by Belgium, reinforced that division, further segragating the population and establishing the minority tutsi over the majority hutu population. The “tribal conflict” of the 94 genocide was therefore a conflict between tribes largely created by the European colonial regimes. I cite this as an example of how colonial policies reverberate and have consequences long after the colonial power has left.

Many country’s borders were drawn by European powers with an aim to giving the colonial power the most benefi (e.g. access to resources) rather than correpsonding to any actual distrubution of population groups in the area. Many of the ethnic conflicts that have convulsed the world in the last 50 years thus have roots in the colonial era. Of course, many of these counties have made their own mistakes since independence, but it’s important to realize that colonial policies also meant many of these countries were hobbled from the get-go.

 

[marcadam]

BryPGuy89:

I agree with the empire part, but the part of America trying to build a hegemony made me laugh. The U.S. has and probably will remain to be an imperialistic country. We don’t try to ally with countries for better good, but to guarentee our own strength. As for the Islam I’m not sure, it could go many differ directions.

Some points of difference:

First, every alliance is obtained on the part of two coutries in part to help guarantee their mutual strength. Both would most likely view that as being “for the greater good”.

Because of what the US does not do, specifically, making colonies and governorships of conquered foreign lands, it simply doesn’t meet the definition of “empire”. Note: encouraging, even forcing foreign countries into a new system of self-governance does not qualify as “colonialism”, since that would require simple seizure and governance of the land and it’s peoples indefinitely. Doing so to create a network of subordinate allies, which is most definitely a US strategy, does in fact meet the definition of hegemony.

 

[BryPGuy89]

marcadam:

Some points of difference:

First, every alliance is obtained on the part of two coutries in part to help guarantee their mutual strength. Both would most likely view that as being “for the greater good”.

Because of what the US does not do, specifically, making colonies and governorships of conquered foreign lands, it simply doesn’t meet the definition of “empire”. Note: encouraging, even forcing foreign countries into a new system of self-governance does not qualify as “colonialism”, since that would require simple seizure and governance of the land and it’s peoples indefinitely. Doing so to create a network of subordinate allies, which is most definitely a US strategy, does in fact meet the definition of hegemony.

What the US has done were acts of imperialism, but now it is dangerous to actually conquer new territories. Having governments in charge that support ours, but the people hate us, would not really be to beneficial of an alliance.