Empire or cosmopolis? Civilization at the crossroads

Abstract

The paper raises the question where contemporary civilization is heading: toward imperial domination or cosmopolis? The process of globalization has brought into view the contours of a global empire of unprecedented dimensions (often labeled ‘pax Americana’). The paper traces the formation of this new imperial structure, accentuating its conflictual relations both with domestic democracy and the prospect of a broader ‘cosmopolitan’ democracy. The chief focus of the paper is normative: it seeks to sort out the arguments typically advanced in support of empire or else in opposition to it. To profile contemporary arguments more sharply, the paper presents a comparison with the argumentative strategies surrounding the early-modern Spanish Empire. As the comparison shows, the most prominent justification used by defenders of empire is the claim of civilizational benevolence (‘white man's burden’) backed up by the asserted need to control backward peoples, if necessary by military means. What differentiates the contemporary situation from the Spanish example are the immense advances in technological and military sophistication; in addition, new theoretical resources have become available (drawn often from Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Nietzsche). After recounting the chief arguments of empire's opponents (from Las Casas to Enrique Dussel) the paper ends with a plea for a more interdependent global commonwealth—though not a tightly unified or blandly homogeneous cosmopolis but one where interdependence is nurtured by local and regional centers of political agency.