"Colossus" by Niall Ferguson

It's a perfect argument for a British imperial apologist -- for who thrived on the niceties of administration more than the efficient, stiff-upper-lipped Brit of yesteryear? The unstated implication is that if the United States could only marry its might to some good old-fashioned British common sense, the result would be an intoxicating new concoction, suitable for warm climates and equal to the task of managing all the truculent dark-skinned peoples of the Earth. Exactly like the gin and tonic.

I don't mean to sound too glib. There is much to admire in "Colossus": reasoned historical analysis (showing more knowledge of obscure bits of U.S. imperial history than most Americans possess), firm command of economic statistics, pleasing literary cadences. The English, God bless 'em, can still turn out writers along with would-be colonial administrators. Ferguson's central point is important and indisputable -- that the United States resembles a global empire far more than most Americans, still living in L. Frank Baum's prelapsarian Kansas, take the time to understand. Even before Iraq, we had 752 military installations in more than 130 countries. It is absurd to claim, as President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have ad nauseam, that Americans never leave occupying armies in countries after winning victory. Certainly something like the "liberal empire" that Ferguson calls for -- a global order based on shared ideas of human rights, free trade and international responsibility, enforced by U.S. military and economic power -- is a powerful desideratum.

But in spite of that general correctness, there is something mildly off-key about Ferguson's assumptions. Now and then, in his angrier moments, he resembles English actor Terry-Thomas, who hilariously plays Lt. Col. J. Algernon Hawthorne in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," endlessly berating the incompetent Americans who foil his pursuit of treasure. In a nutshell, Ferguson recommits the essential blunder of the British Empire: He fails to consider whether the world's peoples want to join this new order, even if it is clear to him that they would benefit from it. Consensus is boring and difficult to achieve, especially with irritating partners -- as the military planners of the Kosovo operation said afterward. It is also essential to long-term stability.

In "Empire" and in "Colossus," Ferguson is at his most impressive when he discusses the ways in which the British empire fostered legal and economic modernity. His argument sounds tinniest when he gets into human rights, not one of the high priorities of the old Raj and the weakest part of the Bush team's inconsistent message to the Middle East. One wonders how anticolonialist Frantz Fanon would respond to Ferguson, or to the new spirit of adventurism evident in the world today -- not just the ubiquity of U.S. military personnel but of the freebooters who follow in their wake, setting up cronies in power and distributing economic perks to their friends. It undoubtedly would not be pretty.

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