Perhaps the most surprising turn of events in recent months has been the re-surfacing (in a positive light) of the idea of 'empire.' A new book has come out assessing the history of the British Empire non-pejoratively and, indeed, daring to suggest that America should embrace 'empire' as its new manifest destiny.
Few agree. The history of empire, domination, however you cut it, by another power, has little innate marketing appeal. And as President Bush indicated in his recent speech atop a massive aircraft carrier, while some nations had stayed and conquered they had come and now they were going home.
Yet, though the book going the rounds in New York has become well known mostly because it is inevitably controversial, issues of neo-empire are bound to force themselves upon America. In a world of interlocking economies, where a bomb is only a plane flight away, and where, conversely, America is able militarily to do pretty much whatever it wants, America is going to dominate.
