In the American empire we trust
America is a hypocritical imperial hegemon, and the world is grateful for that
Trump’s liberation of the Venezuelan people is an unequivocal positive for anyone who cares about freedom and the welfare of humanity. The very fact that America decapitated one of the most tryannical regimes on the planet overnight, and will deliver justice against an evil that subjugated their people into a living hellhole, is a testament to the strengths and moral superiority of the American-led world order. Yet, many liberals complain that this operation violated a core tenet of the international rules-based order1, that one does not infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations. This grants credible charge to the claims of America’s opponents abroad regarding its hypocrisy. How can liberals square the utility of the regime change against rebelling against the Kantian peace?
Firstly, we should establish that America actually does renege against the liberal world order when it suits it. I can think of case that demonstrates such. America’s involvement in Ukraine is often justified on the basis of preventing annexation of territory. A fixed map of nation states is regarded as integral to global peace. If one nation changes the map without punishment, then this emboldens other nations to pursue their irredentist claims. Yes the norm against regime change is weaker, and the reason why America is the primary enforcer of regime change is that (unlike other countries) it yields the state capacity to do so, which should tell you something about the American model in comparison with its detractors. Yet America may soon recognise Somaliland, Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, and floated the Trumpian one-state solution to the Palestine conflict. South Sudan and Montenegro get recognised by most countries on Earth without any issues.
One may then argue that what makes Ukraine a special case is that we have a classic Manichean battle of democracy against autocracy, good against evil, and that America has a moral obligation to defend democracy. Indeed, upholding democracy itself is a major principle of the international order, which is in large part why it's a liberal order. I agree that democracy is a variable of interest here. Putin's motives for the war are to reclaim Russia's past “glory” after being subject to a lost decade of humiliation from the West. Ukraine pivoting towards NATO was the icing on the cake here. Yet how does this square with the preferences of the Ukrainians, the Russians in Ukraine, and the Russian citizens? Ex-ante, did anyone really care about redeeming a past wrong for the sake of “national pride” or “glory”? Democracies do not perfectly aggregate the preferences of its citizens, yet it's obvious that it introduces a dynamism from its focus on accountability that makes it superior to dictatorships on this front. Here we have the preferences of one man, a whole economy the size of Italy subject to the preferences of one man, holding the priorities of the immediate post-USSR era when most others have moved on, waging war against a democracy on those preferences that may not reflect aggregate preferences. Raising the cost of a major war provoked by a revanchist dictatorship is a legitimate foreign policy interest in itself in my view.
In general, America’s legitimacy in upholding and policing the world order is derived in significant part from it being a democracy, and the alliances it forms with other democracies. Those alliances, the West, is united via a shared belief system in liberal democracy. Democratisation is generally the trend across the world too, more so if you consider the flow of people across borders (most to democracies), so this democracy based order carries legitimacy. Those liberal democracies almost never wage war against one another, which shows that a Kantian peace amongst democracies is a large factor in the decline in global conflict as documented by Steven Pinker. We would not have to ask if Russia would still wage war against Ukraine if it was a democracy, as we already know that it almost certainly wouldn't!
Nonetheless, America is willing to tolerate, and often support, dictatorships when it suits its national interest. Generally, across history, this has been because the alternative (mostly communism or Islamist fundamentalism) is worse. However, this does show that America weights its global support for democracy alongside its other liberal values, such as support for capitalism.
Therefore, America is a hypocritical power. In classic game-theoretic scenarios, this hypocrisy and lack of enforcement capabilities against such hypocrisy should undermine the entire Kantian peace. Indeed, this is the main difference in geopolitical perspectives between the US and Europe, and Republicans vs Democrats, with the latter in both cases stressing the value of adherence to global norms. What this perspective lacks however is that the Kantian peace is an American peace; never based on a series of immutable deontological principles, but on a liberal hegemony with the state capacity to globally enforce its values. If we were to apply the categorical imperative to everything, then we could not send people to prison, as rationally it undermines a core human desire giving the other party the logical legitimacy to do the same. We adhere to principles and norms in large part to signal our moral worthiness, whilst acting as strict self-maximising utilitarian consequentialists otherwise. Our institutions and geopolitics functions in the same manner. Our “international order” is largely a product of American imperialism and hegemony, and this is unambiguously a good thing.
Consider instead global peace and security as a public goods problem. America provides that public good. It satisfies the IR constraints of nations aligned with American interests (generally liberal democracies, but can include capitalist autocracies such as the Gulf states), and the IR constraint of America (enhanced global security, and reduced nuclear proliferation, yields positive spillovers for American security). For the IC constraints to be satisfied, these nations unite by a shared belief system: call this “liberalism”. This liberalism and democracy, by aggregating the preferences of its citizens better than other systems, guarantees the legitimacy of those national governments, and America’s leadership. Because America yields this legitimacy, its return for providing the public good is that it yields the legitimacy to unilaterally use force abroad to defend its interests, which are generally aligned with liberal values in the long-run. The rational common knowledge that those nation states within this order are aggregations of the preferences of their citizens, with a distaste for war, means that nations in the order can be confident that they will never wage war against one another.
A Kantian peace, fuelling peace amongst democracies, arises. Outside of this liberal democratic alliance, this peace is less guaranteed. Even capitalism alone cannot guarantee this, as perhaps best exemplified via the rise in geopolitical tensions with China despite its turn towards markets. Nuclear weapons cannot explain why non-nuclear powers often attack nuclear powers (most recently, Hamas against Israel).
Moreover, upholding this peace often requires the use of force against nation states that do not submit to liberal values, “regime change”. The liberal world-order has always served individuals first and foremost; sovereignty being a convenient heuristic to respect to make peace more likely, yet not an unconditional constraint. Values are not credibly upheld using words, but require the use of tangible (often costly and risky) action to support them. What can be a better way to demonstrate your support for liberal capitalism than liberating a socialist hellhole on your doorstep? Yes, this is imperialism: imposing your rules onto another nation regardless of whether they voluntarily submit.
Yes, this liberal imperialism is justified, and indeed its track record in outcomes is positive. We consider the rare cases (usually in the Middle East) where nation building and interventions fail, yet (due to negativity bias) neglect the successes. Sierra Leone? Yugoslavia? We updated far too strongly on the War on Terror, and for the last decade have been cowered into timidity as a result. As US foreign policy becomes more interventionist again, alongside its alliance with an emboldened Israel to enact its interests in the Middle East, we could be seeing an imminent end to the Iranian theocracy. Would this have occured if the West continued to restrain itself with its guilt?
In light of these geopolitical developments, I have updated some of my views myself. Democracies consistently vote for gerontocratic welfare states, closed borders, and protectionism: a tyranny of the majority, so for a long time I've been sceptical of the utility of democracy. However, the alternative, an economy operating under the whims of one man, is far worse. Hayek demonstrated that decentralised processes are the only means to aggregate information regarding preferences, and centralised mechanisms of authority will almost certainly make mistakes (as Russia's overconfidence in invading Ukraine demonstrates). Accurate information aggregation is vital for state capacity, and is a reason why Russia and China are still weak compared to America, or else they'd have retaliated to the operation against Maduro.
While we are on the subject of state capacity, this is the variable that allows us to depose a socialist maniac with limited damage, and to engage in the task of nation building. Only America has demonstrated the state capacity to perform this feat. Therefore scale is also crucial, and so whilst in the past I advocated for replacing the order of nation states with charter cities competing for citizens, such an idealistic utopia cannot occur in a world where scale is necessary to uphold global stability, and defend against threats to our liberties. Only an American empire - a Kantian peace amongst fellow liberal democracies, and occasionally subjecting nations that refuse to submit with force - can spread freedom across the planet.
I will leave aside the fact that delivering justice for “crimes against humanity” is one important tenet of international law. If the annihilation of Venezuela by socialism is not a crime against humanity, then what is?