Asia—Central or Peripheral?

McCoy intends to displace the centrality of World War II and the Cold War in explanations of Asia's historical trajectory, arguing that the “deeper driver” underlying and uniting a long line of what appear to be separate conflicts through the twentieth century was “decolonization.” Yet the driver in the story of the rise of US hegemony that McCoy tells appears to be “imperial ambitions” rather than decolonization. Indeed, decolonization seems to play a peripheral, albeit important role in McCoy's narrative of the rise of US hegemony. This is so despite the fact that it is clear from the paper that the expansion of US hegemony happens through the collaboration of a succession of Filipino elites, both before and after formal independence. It is also abundantly clear that these indigenous elites were no mere puppets, but often used their leverage to fortify their own domestic power and to manipulate great power rivalries. In other words, McCoy certainly recognizes some measure of Filipino agency in the establishment of US power on the island. But in the end, despite all the fiery rhetoric and politics that decolonization produced, the Philippines, in the story that McCoy tells, just appears to be a secondary player in the US designs for Pacific hegemony.

At times the paper appears to indicate that quite explicitly:

The phrase “reveal what rhetoric conceals” recurs throughout the paper and is itself revealing—of a motive, perhaps even a measure of intentionality. If the containment of other competing powers was but “a means to a great end”—the end being “global dominion” or the establishment of a global US hegemony—then it must be US hegemonic ambitions rather than decolonization that drive the historical trajectory of Asia. However, this theme of “intentionality” is not always consistent throughout the paper, so that while occasionally it appears that the United States does intend to become a global power rather than simply contain other threats to its own security, at other times it seems that the United States acquires its global empire, as it was sometimes said of the British empire in its day, in a “fit of absence of mind.” The question here is: were US relations with the Philippines part of a larger US strategy of global dominion, or is global dominion a product of (sometimes far-reaching and frequently contradictory) US foreign policy practices of security?

I would like to suggest that the response to this question is consequential. To draw the import of this point out more fully, I would like to put McCoy's narrative of US hegemony in conversation with two different accounts of hegemonic growth and decline—one by a realist theorist of IR, and one articulated more recently by a chorus of political commentators who subscribe to a version of liberal IR.Footnote ¹ As I hope will become clear, the political import of McCoy's arguments could be drawn out much more fully through an engagement with these theories.

Robert Gilpin's Theory of Hegemonic Transitions

Robert Gilpin comes from a school of IR theory that calls itself “realist.” Setting themselves apart from “idealists,” political realists claim to offer an unblinkered account of world politics that describes the world “as is” rather than “as it should be,” and attempt to identify the larger structural dynamics that shape the conduct of international politics and determine state behavior.Footnote ² In this world: nation-states are the primary actors on the world stage; these states exist in a state of anarchy, which means simply the absence of a global authority able to regulate relations between states; given this absence of a global authority, all states must watch out for their own self-interests, so that the pursuit of national security by states, primarily through military means, becomes the overarching dynamic of world politics. Conflict is a persistent and enduring aspect of international politics, according to this worldview, and the best that states can do is watch out for their own security. In this bleak world of militarily armed, self-serving states colliding with other similarly situated states, order and stability is produced through the establishment of different balances of power, such as through alliances of states congealing around certain core states. For some realists, the most stable global political order is created when a single state becomes the dominant political actor—a hegemon in a unipolar world—that is able to set and enforce the rules of international relations. While many political realists have taken up the question of structural continuity—how order and stability is maintained— Robert Gilpin, in his classic, widely read 1981 book War and Change in World Politics, takes up the question of how structural change occurs in such a world.

Gilpin's answer, in short, is that change in the structure of world order occurs through major wars, or what he calls “hegemonic wars,” of which the Thirty Years' War (1618–48), the Wars of Louis XIV (1667–1713), the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon (1792–1814), and World Wars I (1914–18) and II (1939–45) are all examples. Gilpin reads history through a succession of attempts to build global hegemonies—the hegemons in each period essentially taking on the task of stepping in for the absence of global governance, shaping the rules and the underlying norms of the world system—such as the establishment of a liberal trade order by Britain and later America—through the threat of force and the allure of prestige. Hegemonic wars are transition wars that occur when hegemons decline and challengers arise.

All hegemons eventually decline for a variety of reasons, chief among which is overextension overseas. Such overextension can occur, for instance, through the proliferation of bases around the world, as discussed by McCoy, leaving fewer resources devoted to internal growth and affecting over time the dynamism and resilience of the national economy of the hegemon.

Challengers arise, sometimes in the shadow of the security umbrella provided by the hegemon. The hegemon can prevent the challenger from changing the status quo through either generating more resources or decreasing the costs of maintaining empire. The former may require raising domestic taxes, which might negatively affect the long-term dynamism of the home economy, or through increasing the efficiency of managing resources, and the latter might lead to the raising of overseas tribute from allies and subordinates.Footnote ³ In order to deal with the emerging challenger, the existing hegemon may resort to preventive war, retrench its global footprint, make new alliances, or offer concessions to the challenger. Over time, argues Gilpin (Reference Gilpin1981), the systemic disequilibrium gets too large, eventually leading to war. Thus, hegemonic war emerges from a systemic disequilibrium in the face of a global redistribution of power, generating a new hegemon that reorders the world in its own image.

McCoy's paper hints at just such an emerging redistribution of global power, but without fully elaborating on its consequences for the future of global politics. The paper ends with a short discussion of the emerging geopolitical rivalry with China over influence and control in Asia. One could extend this analysis further to take stock of China's increasing presence in other parts of the world, as well, such as in Africa and Latin America. The rise of China as a significant global player has become the basis for considerable analysis and speculation, with some IR scholars debating the possibilities of a new “Asian age” or a possible shift in global norms toward “Eastphalia” (Coleman and Maogoto Reference Coleman and Maogoto2013; Fidler, Kim, and Ganguly Reference Fidler, Kim and Ganguly2009; Ginsburg Reference Ginsburg2010; Lo Reference Lo2010), while others—scholars, as well as some current US politicians—are concerned about the emerging “threat of China” and its impact on US power and influence (Friedberg Reference Friedberg2011; Ikenberry Reference Ikenberry2011; Mearsheimer Reference Mearsheimer2014). Toward the end of the paper, McCoy writes:

While the bulk of McCoy's paper is concerned with the establishment of US hegemony in Asia, it seems clear by the end of the paper that this hegemonic power now has a challenger in Asia. This challenge raises significant questions for the future of global geopolitics that McCoy seems particularly well equipped to answer. Are we headed toward a new hegemonic war, as Gilpin might ask, between two nuclear rivals, albeit with significantly different force levels and structures? Can we expect this redistribution of power to settle toward a new bipolar world such as during the Cold War, and which some IR theorists think is the most stable form of balance of power? Or is China, like the Soviet Union before it, merely another blip in the continued rise of US hegemony, as the quote above appears to suggest is possible? If the last, then what are the larger political, social, and cultural consequences of a global US hegemony with few credible challengers in the near future? This last question takes me to a second theory of global hegemony that articulates a very particular normative position as its response.

A Liberal Articulation of a Benevolent Empire

Liberal IR has offered a version of world politics that is much less bleak than that described by political realists. Unlike the latter, liberal thinkers do not subscribe to the inevitability of international conflict, instead trusting the capacity of states to set aside their narrow self-interests and instincts for violence and engage in the kind of cooperative behavior that leads to the building of enduring institutions for global peace and security. In more recent years, an interesting set of thinkers and commentators has emerged in this camp that has articulated the important role of a benevolent empire in the creation of such peace and prosperity. What sets this set of writers apart from the purported realism of political realists is that they reject the presumption that international relations are doomed to exist within a cycle of distrust and disaffection, and see the promise of an expansive foreign policy in generating the structural conditions for enduring peace.Footnote ⁴

Reflected in the writings of historian Niall Ferguson (Reference Ferguson2004a, Reference Ferguson2004b), human rights scholar and aspiring Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff (Reference Ignatieff2002, Reference Ignatieff2003), and Council of Foreign Relations fellow Max Boot (Reference Boot2002, Reference Boot2003), among others, this chorus of voices rose to prominence in the context of the post–September 11, 2001, War on Terror, and actively supported the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.Footnote ⁵ Writing and speaking as public intellectuals in prominent media outlets, they made a strong case for US hegemony, arguing that a benevolent US empire was the only hope for crafting a stable and peaceful world order. To make this argument, they first suggest that the United States is already an empire, pointing as evidence to its full-spectrum military dominance (including the enormous string of military bases McCoy describes) as well as its various forms of “soft power,”Footnote ⁶ while recognizing that most Americans are hesitant to acknowledge that reality. Indeed, they write to urge Americans to get over their hesitance to use, as Ignatieff (Reference Ignatieff2003) says, the “e-word” to describe the empire that America already is, and more importantly, toward a more expansive version of which it needs to aspire. Getting over this reluctance is critical in order for the United States, they argue, to take on its responsibilities as a global hegemon. In other words, this group of writers is concerned about the decline of US hegemony and the global disorder that that portends, and do not believe that any challenger, and in particular China, is well positioned to take on the task of creating a desirable global order. They are blunt about their politics, which includes advocating actively for stanching US decline and containing China as necessary for the United States to assume its role as a benevolent empire.

There has been considerable critique of the quality of intellectual work and the problematic political positions articulated by these writers, but it is important to emphasize that these are not marginal thinkers and commentators and that they are writing in forums with wide currency among policy makers. To make their case for American empire, many of these writers draw from the historical example of the British empire, lauding its contributions and urging US policy makers to learn from its mistakes. In rather frank words, Ignatieff (Reference Ignatieff2002) calls upon the United States to take on the “white man's burden.” The term “white man's burden” harkens to Rudyard Kipling's infamous poem by that title, which, it may be helpful to recall in this context, was written by Kipling to urge the United States to take on the annexation of the Philippines. In the revisionist historiography of Boot, Ferguson, and Ignatieff that sings the glories of British colonialism, there is considerable historical amnesia regarding the pernicious effects of imperial expansion, and especially the toll it took on the lives and worlds of the colonized. In fact, when Boot (Reference Boot2003) recalls America's history of “liberal imperialism” and “progressive imperialism” for its lofty ideals and ambitions, he reminds us that it was the United States that carried the “white man's burden” in places such as the Philippines.Footnote ⁷ Purged of stories of torture, brutal imprisonments, political repression, economic devastation, and extraction of resources, the British empire, in these narratives, appears simply as the harbinger of democracy and modernity.

I would like to suggest that the lack of attention in McCoy's paper to the effects of US imperial expansion in the Philippines contributes to that kind of amnesia, and leads, unwittingly, to making the US empire appear more benevolent than perhaps intended. The conclusion to McCoy's paper suggests that the word “war” in the Cold War is distracting, since the bipolar rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union brought “relative peace” to the region. In a tone that appears far too celebratory, the paper sees the culmination of that history in the emergence of Asia as democratic and economically dynamic. Even though the paper begins by recognizing that: “Washington's relations with … the Philippines have been shaped … not by any exercise in tutelary democracy or ephemeral economic interest, but instead by a constant quest for geopolitical power,” democracy and economic growth end up being the most significant outcomes of this relation, erasing the enormous toll that the US presence took on life in the Philippines. It is helpful to remember in this context that the “Cold War”—also called “the long peace” by IR theorist John Lewis Gaddis (Reference Gaddis1987)—was neither particularly cold nor peaceful from the perspective of Asia, especially if one was to consider the experiences of many nonelite groups in places like Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia, or even the Philippines.

There is the occasional reference in the paper to US support in helping put down revolts and insurgencies in the Philippines, but little description of the toll that took on Filipino civil society. For a paper whose point of departure is the expansion of military bases, it is surprising to see no acknowledgement of the effects of US military bases on life in host societies, and in particular the widely documented, perverse effects that came with the growth of the prostitution industry around Clark Field and Subic Bay. McCoy does acknowledge that the impact of the United States on the Philippines has been “profound” in some ways, and there is much lingering resentment still, but without a thicker description of the ravages or brutalities of the hegemonic US presence in the Philippines and elsewhere, the US empire starts to look relatively benign. Does this sort of narrative then make one sanguine about the kind of US empire that the likes of Ignatieff, Ferguson, and Boot are trying to recuperate, and help make an argument for continued US hegemony, say against China, for instance? What are the politics of this reading of US-Filipino relations from “exploited imperial periphery to engine of global growth”?