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Colossus: The Price of America's Empire. By Niall Ferguson. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004. 302 pages. $25.95 ($16.00 paper).
Niall Ferguson, an accomplished financial historian and a prolific writer, has written what he describes as an interpretation of American history. His interpretation leads him to conclude that the United States is an empire and has always been an empire, albeit a rather clumsy one. Although many others have asserted that the United States is an empire, Professor Ferguson's conclusion has drawn considerable attention largely because he argues that America should accept its imperial status and simply get on with the business of managing the empire properly. Thus, most of those who have reviewed this book have commented more on this provocative idea than on the quality of the argument. Unfortunately, a close examination of the text reveals that Colossus is essentially a policy argument masquerading as history, and while there are several interesting chapters, the book does not work as either.
To provide a foundation for the book, Professor Ferguson must define empire in such a way as to include the United States in that category. Normally, only critics of American foreign policy refer to the "American Empire." His challenge is, therefore, to overcome the fact that American Presidents do not describe US foreign policy objectives in terms of an empire. Professor Ferguson dismisses the fact that American policymakers deny imperial ambitions by citing Freud's definition of "denial" as a primitive psychological defense mechanism, and he asserts that as US foreign policy moves from defense...