Varieties of "Imperialism"

Varieties of "Imperialism"
by Tibor R. Machan

    Imperialism is the policy one country has toward others when it is intent
on ruling them. But these days the idea is also used to point to one
country’s efforts to spread ideas and institutions outside of its borders,
regardless of what those ideas and institutions are. So by some people’s
account—evident often in the pages of The New York Review of Books, The
Nation, and so forth, for example—whether one country aims to impose a
system of slavery or servitude on others versus a system of liberty and
the rule of law, the mere intent to spread any idea or institution beyond
one’s borders qualifies as imperialist.

    Yet consider this: Suppose your neighbor is brutalizing his or her spouse
or children and you go into the home and rescue the victims. Are you
imposing your will on your neighbor? Are you engaging in the building of
some sort of empire of your own? Or are you perhaps merely liberating the
victims, saving them from the violence to which they are being subjected?
Suppose once you have made sure that the victims are no longer being
brutalized, you quickly leave and have nothing more to do with how your
neighbors live? Is this an interventionist, aggressive approach toward
your neighbor?

    In contrast, suppose you have a neighbor who happens to have some very
fine china in the house and you decide to intrude and take the china for
yourself. Moreover you make it clear that should your neighbor obtain
other valued items that please you, you will not hesitate to come over and
take them as well. And you will, furthermore, henceforth force your
neighbor to do chores for you—clean your garage, mow your lawn, etc.

    In both instances you are meddling in your neighbor’s affairs. Your
approach to your neighbor can be deemed interventionist. But the quality
of intervention differs drastically in the two cases.

The same can be said of the foreign policies of different countries that
embark upon interventionism. Indeed, calling both “imperialistic” is
highly misleading since in the one case the objective is to force the
other country to yield to the other’s oppression, to deprive the other of
what the imperial power has no right to whatsoever, while in the other
case the objective is to export elements of public policy that are
liberating for the population.

    Of course, in many historical instances there is a mixture of these two
forms of intervention. When the United States of America interferes
abroad, not only does it routinely attempt to export some of its highly
desirable, just principles and institutions; it also tries to secure some
advantages that can be obtained. We hear this a lot when people talk about
oil and other resources. Never mind that even in the case of trying to
obtain such benefits as oil, a study of the relevant history often reveals
that the oil abroad was actually discovered and its refinement cultivated
by American or other foreign companies, so claiming flatly, as Venezuela’s
Hugo Chavez and other governments which have nationalized oil companies
have done, that the resource belongs to the people there is open to
serious doubt.

    So the description of a country’s foreign policy as imperialistic or
interventionist does not suffice to end the discussion of whether that
policy should be approved. But there is another element to even the most
benign form of intervention (or even imperialism) that needs to be kept in
mind as one considers whether such policies have any merit. This is that
government’s of free countries are not supposed to run around the globe
rectifying all the wrongs outside their borders. Even when a country’s
government intervenes so as to liberate the people in a corrupt or
oppressive regime, even if this is done without embarking on seeking
various advantages for the country but merely to do some good over there,
there is still the objection to interventionism that such a policy in
effect involves a government’s leaving its post, as it were. As the
American Founders noted, “to secure these rights [namely, the rights of
the country’s citizens], governments are instituted among men….” This is
an obligation of the government of a free society and embarking on various
foreign adventures, however well motivated, is in effect the violation of
the oath of office of government.

This is not the same issue as whether the government is imperialist in its
foreign policy. But it is a woefully neglected point in most discussions
about foreign affairs. It would be vital to keep the point in mind even as
one has to admit that there are very different types of
intervention--“imperialism”—that a country’s government can engage in and
that not all of them are of the same quality.

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