American empire?

Is America an empire? These days the word empire almost always has a derogatory ring to it, mostly because it is assumed to entail a large and powerful nation exploiting a smaller, peripheral people and its territory.

But Paul Johnson defines it differently in this New Criterion article: "From the evil empire to the empire for liberty." For him empire simply connotes what most others would describe as sovereignty, that is, absolute authority or "unqualified rule." In this respect empires attempt to bring order where this is either lacking or severely weakened.

Under this definition America almost certainly is an empire. How else might one explain George W. Bush's claim to be exploring "all options" to end the longstanding troubles in Liberia, where there are few genuine American interests at stake? That the US risks spreading itself too thin would seem evident, given that its troops are already heavily committed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Yet it is also clear that the United Nations is incapable of supplying a semblance of order within the international arena. What are the alternatives? There are no easy answers. But an article by James W. Skillen in the Public Justice Report provides a possible place to begin.