A Pax Upon You: The Preludes and Perils of American Imperialism

8/8/2019 A Pax Upon You: The Preludes and Perils of American Imperialism

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A PaxUpon You:Preludes and Perils of American Imperialism

Lincoln P. PaineIndependent Scholar

Clios Psyche 10:3 (Dec. 2003): 91-97.

The United States invasion of Iraq has given rise to a long overdue debate about whether theRepublic has become an empire and, if so, of what kind. Those who view the United States as animperial power usually point to the Roman or British empires as relevant or even appropriate models,but their comparisons raise a number of objections. In the first place, however we choose toreinterpret Roman or British forms of imperial governance and law in hindsight, the ethical andideological foundations of their empires are antithetical to the privileges, responsibilities, andfreedoms embodied in the United States Constitution. There are echoes of Roman and British rule inthe United States today, but they are -- or should be -- as faint as cosmic echoes of the big bang. Asecond objection is that while neo-imperialists rummage through history for precedents that mightlook good in the light of 21st-century sensibilities, todays architects of an imperial United States

simultaneously flatter themselves with the novelty of their ideas. It takes a fatal arrogance to imaginethat the Bush administration invented the pre-emptive use of brute force in defense of nationalinterests, the so-called Bush Doctrine. Mix this with the questionable belief that Westerndemocracy is the natural state of mankind and you have all the makings of aPax Americana.

Empire-building has always comprised two elements, an economic end and an ideologicalrationale. The latter is subject to variation, but there is always a vein of continuity. The Bushadministrations claim that we had to change the regime in Iraq because of its stock of non-traditionalweapons resonates because of our recent experience with terrorism. Likewise, overthrowing atyranny to make way for a democratic government is consistent with our nations self-image as thearsenal of democracy. Both these rationales have something to do with reality, but in ignoring realworld complexities, they leave us with false options. The failure to recognize the dual nature ofimperial enterprise -- the one ideological, the other material -- makes it impossible to see our nationsactions for what they are, or to address the profound perils of aPax Americana .

Grand though this Latin phrase sounds, it should strike fear in the hearts and minds ofAmericans, our allies, and the objects of our covetous gaze. Whatever imperial apologists orhistorical shorthand may say to the contrary, the peace of the Pax Romana and the Pax Britannicawere fictions. Peace was enforced by pacification, all but endless warfare in the interest of winningstrategic advantage for material gain. A Pax Americana can be no different, and it can onlyundermine the institutions and high ideals upon which our republic was founded.

The longing to emulate either the Roman or British empire is based on a selective reading oftheir accomplishments and tactics. It will foster a clearer understanding of American ambition toexamine other imperial models as well. The first to consider is surely that of Athens, in whoseimperfect and short-lived democracy we like to see our political origins. On closer examination,there is much to be said against it: slaveholding, women without political rights, and a compulsion toworship the state gods, among other things, including its brevity. Athens golden age lasted only halfa century after her victory over the Persian Empire in 479 BCE.1 In this period the Athenians sowed

the seeds of their own destruction by transforming a naval alliance created for collective defenseagainst the Persians into a grasping empire. Athens demise resulted not from alien invasion, but because of her erstwhile allies hostile reaction to her imperial reach, which culminated in thedevastating 27-year-long Peloponnesian War.2

The resulting weakness led to the rise of the kingdom of Macedonia, whose peoplecontemporary Greeks regarded as barbarians.3 In a decade of military campaigns, a young Alexanderthe Great trailed a thin veneer of Greek culture across a large swath of the Near East as far as theIndus River, but he died on the march, well before he could take steps to organize his rule. His


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Paine, A Pax Upon You 2

conquests were divided among three of his generals, who embarked on a great arms race to vie forcontrol of the Eastern Mediterranean and its contiguous lands.

At the same time, in the central Mediterranean, Rome was also embarked on an imperialcareer. We tend to view the accomplishments of the Roman Empire through rose-colored glasses thathighlight its military successes, cultural attainments, and the logistical sophistication that spreadgoods, people, and ideas -- Romanitas and later Christianity -- across vast territories. It does not

discount these achievements to acknowledge that they had a tremendous human cost. Slavery wasextensive, wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few, and the peoples baser appetites were satedwith liberal doses ofpanem et circenses --bread and circuses. Most glaring, the price of imperialadministration was exorbitant, especially the maintenance of a large, highly trained professional armyby whose arms the empire was enlarged and protected.

Romes transition from republic to empire occurred under Augustus, who assumed forhimself an unprecedented degree of political power. But in its territorial expansion, Rome had beenan empire in the modern sense for hundreds of years. In the first century BCE, Rome alreadycontrolled most of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and parts of Spain, North Africa. and the Balkans. By thedeath of Augustus in 14 CE, these gains had been consolidated: Gaul, Britain, and Egypt (with itsinvaluable granaries), and vast tracts of Asia Minor and the coastal Near East had been annexed. Forseveral centuries thereafter, the empire was preoccupied variously with the expansion and/or securityof its long, heavily fortified borders. In Roman Britain, Hadrians Wall stretched from the North Sea

to the Irish Sea to protect Romano-British settlements against invasion from Scotland, while a line offorts in the west guarded against incursions from Wales. The empires continental border was definedmore or less by the Rhine and Danube Rivers, natural boundaries of considerable size that theRomans nonetheless had to reinforce with more than a hundred forts. A further measure of securitywas achieved by establishing colonies peopled by retired legionnaires as a sort of veterans benefitfor people whose allegiance was presumably assured.

It is a testament to the inherent instability of the empire that by the 300s, the Pax Romanawas being maintained by more than thirty legions. Ultimately, the armies and associated bureaucracyupon which the state relied for its existence proved both unaffordable and unreliable. The level ofunrest in the empire varied by place and time, but they included local uprisings (slave revolts and theJewish revolts of the 60s and 130s CE, for instance), as well as probes by Germanic tribes along theRhine/Danube line, which culminated in the barbarian invasions of the fourth century. There wasalso chronic instability in the East, where security depended largely on the weakness of the ParthianEmpire and the willingness of buffer states to submit to Rome.

In addition to their intended role as guardians of the frontier, the armies played a decisive rolein domestic politics. In the first century of the Pax Romana, when the lands ringing theMediterranean were at their most serene, being emperor was at its most dangerous. A large part of thearmys pay derived from booty acquired on campaign, which more or less dictated that it be keptgainfully employed if the soldiery were to be kept in check. Inattention to this fact, combined withother political pressures, often proved fatal. Of the first 12 emperors, five were murdered and twokilled themselves in disgrace.

In the United States, there is a comparable problem, not with the patriotic military (hence thecavalier downgrading of veterans benefits), but with its self-serving civilian arm -- the industries ofthe military-industrial complex. Their revenues depend on the consumption of an enormous array ofweapons, goods, and services, and these industries go to great lengths to make sure their products arein demand. The degree to which military contractors have perverted American politics and foreign

policy can be seen in these companies strategic establishment of factories and offices in virtuallyevery single Congressional district in the United States, a fact that enables them to exert anincalculable influence on government from the local to the federal level. Against such an entrenchedinterest, the Son of God would have to campaign on a platform ofPax Christiana rather than ofPaxChristi.

In its 19th-century phase, Americas conquest of the lands south and west of the original 13states towards the Gulf Coast, the Great Lakes, and the Pacific seems reminiscent of the expansion ofthe Roman Republic, although there was greater technological parity between Rome and herneighbors than between American settlers and Native Americans. The American experience moreaccurately reflects that of the Russian Empire in its eastward expansion into Siberia and North


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America from the 16th to the 19th centuries. With exemplary bad timing, the Russians sold FortRoss, in California, to John Sutter seven years before the gold rush began at Sutters Mill in 1849,and then sold Alaska to the United States three decades before the Klondike gold rush. Despite theselosses, Russian expansion was spectacular. Even after the break-up of the Soviet Union in the 1990s,Russia remains the largest country in the world. The nation that began with 13 states on the easternseaboard of North America is the third.

An apt parallel for Americas more recent imperial exertions can be found in those of 15th-and 16th-century Portugal: evangelical, commercial, essentially non-territorial, militarily advancedand often ruthless in the pursuit of its aims. Two forces drove Portuguese expansion. As latter-daycrusaders, the Portuguese believed it was their mission to fight Muslims and convert heathens. Asmerchants, they sought access to the spice trade and to monopolize it at the expense of Indian Oceanmerchants (many of whom were Muslim) and in the Mediterranean, where their chief rivals werefellow Christians. In much the same way, the United States seeks to convert to democracy nationsand regions where we have a quantifiable economic interest. The war against Saddam Hussein cameabout not because the people of Iraq suffered under the government, or because the regimesweaponry posed a clear and present danger to the United States, but because the governmentcontrolled vast stocks of oil.

The man credited with kick-starting Portugals overseas adventures was Prince Henry, whoma 19th-century British historian dubbed the Navigator. A strong advocate of the Church militant,

Henry cajoled his brother to embark on a crusade against the Moors. After casting about for a likelytarget, in 1415 Henry took part in the capture of the Moroccan port of Ceuta, a place of littleeconomic or strategic significance to Portugal. The victory proved a white elephant, for the territorywas costly to maintain but impossible to surrender without losing face. A subsequent attack on themore powerful port of Tangier failed, and Henry eventually turned to more commercial pursuits thattook his caravels into the archipelagoes of the western Atlantic, especially Madeira, and south alongthe Guinea coast of West Africa, a source of gold, slaves, and cheap pepper.

The aims and rationale of this 600-year-old European anticipate the strained arguments of theBush administration. Although crusading was properly an altruistic activity undertaken for spiritualrather than material gain, Henry was unquestionably a merchant prince who had no problem mixingcommercial opportunity with the work of the Church militant. Similarly, President Bushs version ofmilitant democracy serves as an ideological banner around which business interests rally in search ofmarket share. In his denial of the obvious economic rationale for U.S. adventures in Afghanistan andIraq -- but not in Saudi Arabia, which has too much oil, nor in North Korea, which has none -- heprotests too much. Afghanistan gives access to the gas fields of Central Asia and Iraq has the worldssecond largest reserves of oil.4

Rather than admit what the whole world knows, the Bush administration insists that theAmerican invasion of Iraq is not about oil. With some qualification, this is correct: It is not about oil-- alone. Any number of opportunists are hiding in the wings, from the administrations friends andassociates at corporations such as Halliburton -- whose former chairman is Vice President DickCheney, and whose board of directors includes President George H.W. Bushs Secretary of State,George Schultz -- and Bechtel -- whose board of directors includes George H.W. Bushs otherSecretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger. Other luminaries who stand to gain enormously includeAmerican businessman and hawk Richard Perle, and Saudi arms dealer and businessman AdnanKhashoggi, trusted veteran of the Iran-Contra scandal.5 There are myriad ways to cash in onrebuilding and rearming Iraq, if you know the right people and have the right access.

An especially striking parallel between Prince Henry and President Bush is their staunchadherence to outmoded legal concepts to justify their actions. Prince Henry promoted the notion thatfighting Muslims was just war as sanctioned by the Church. His insistence on this point disregardeda growing body of ecclesiastical and lay legal writing that maintained that neither popes nor princeshad the authority to wage war against non-Christian states simply because they were not Christian.6

With similar ideological fervor, President Bush has argued the need to export democracy to thepeople of Iraq, even if it means disregarding international law and opinion, or even, as it maytranspire, the wishes of the Iraqi people.7

At the end of the 15th century, the Crusader ethos was still alive and well in Portugal, andwhen Vasco da Gama reached the Indian port of Calicut in 1498, one of his first acts was to drive a


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wedge between the Hindu rulers and the citys community of Muslim merchants. So eager were theyto find co-religionists with whom they could make common cause against the Muslims that thePortuguese determined that the local Hindus belonged to a previously unknown sect of Christians.This tendency to see things not as they are but as we want them to be is a salient characteristic ofBushs foreign policy, in which all issues are divided into black and white and democracy is treatedlike a marketable commodity. The presidents announcement that if you are not with us, you areagainst us, has a corollary of uncertain value: if you are with us -- in this case, against Hussein -- youmust also be like us, that is, democratic.

This error is not unique to Bush. It was tragically made in Afghanistan during the Sovietinvasion; when we armed the fundamentalist factions who went on to form the Taliban governmentand Al Qaeda.8 We are poised to make the same mistake in Iraq, where the anti-Hussein lineupcomprises virtually every shade of the political spectrum from Kurdish Communists, to Sunni clerics,to democrats-in-exile whose political credentials and legitimacy are thin. This is not to suggest thatno Iraqis believe in democracy, but opposition to Baath Party rule takes many forms, and it is notclear that a secular majority has much chance of winning a clear mandate to form a democraticgovernment, especially if the winner is perceived as an American puppet. Any government that trulyrepresents the fractured will of the Iraqi people will have to make concessions and embraceideologies that are anathema to the militant democracy espoused by Bushs own RepublicanGuard.

Once in the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese might have adapted themselves to the laissez-fairepatterns of an ancient network of trade that passed goods from East Africa and China. Instead, theyseized strategic ports; built and garrisoned fortresses; demanded protection money from Muslim,Hindu, and other merchants; and attempted to monopolize the Indian Ocean spice trade. In so doing,the crown relied upon soldiers who died by the hundreds of disease or in battle, and on viceroys andgovernors who usually exploited their offices for personal gain. The American empire alreadyemulates this approach with military bases strung like a necklace around the world. The jewels in thewestern Indian Ocean region include Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Iraq, and Diego Garcia(whose entire population was forcibly removed between 1965 and 1973). Together these help shapethe patterns of world trade -- especially the oil trade -- in Americas interest. Those nationsdependent on Middle Eastern oil and Central Asian natural gas must tread lightly for fear ofantagonizing the United States.

The last empire to consider in this brief comparative survey is that of Great Britain, one ofseveral successors to the Portuguese and by most measures the most successful. At its height, itsterritories were the most extensive in the world, including Canada, Australia, India, vast tracts ofAfrica and Asia, and smaller holdings in the Americas, Antarctica, and Europe -- Ireland andGibraltar. The underlying factors for English expansion in the 16th century were essentially practical-- a desire to compete for spices and to provide an outlet for their domestic trade, which the Spanishhad curtailed. But like the Portuguese before them, the English were animated by a militantideology, one originally founded on a virulent hostility to Catholicism in general and to Spain andPortugal (by then part of the Spanish empire) in particular.

This ideological foundation quickly took on a life of its own. In the early 1600s, Englishpropagandists decided that in their failure to develop the abundant resources available to them in theEuropean manner, Native Americans had effectively ceded their right to the land. North Americawas considered virgin territory that hath yet her maidenhead and which was, therefore,attractive for Christian suitors. The attraction was not, however, absolute, and much of the rawlabor for the colonies had to be provided by indentured servants, criminals, and religious dissidents

from the British Isles, and African slaves. The latter were a staple of the English Atlantic trade forcenturies, and when the slave trade was finally abolished in the 19th century, British traffickers inhuman cargoes simply shifted to the coolie trade -- the shipment of Indian and Chinese laborers inconditions that abolitionist Frederick Douglass, himself a former slave, described as almost as heart-rending as any that attended the African slave trade.9

Despite their differences, abolitionists and slavers alike believed that the world was filledwith inferior races. They parted company on the issue of what to do about them. The former arguedthey could be civilized, the latter that they were good for little more than brute labor. One can sensethe tension between these two lines of thought in Rudyard Kiplings turn-of-the-century ballad in


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which he urged people to take up the White Mans burden to serve your captives need. By1899, the British had their empire well in hand (their meddling in the Middle East would have to waituntil after World War I) and Kipling was addressing himself to the people of the United States, whohad just taken up the White Mans burden -- The savage wars of peace in the Philippines, newlywon in the Spanish-American War.

If religion and ideology account for the zeal with which the British undertook their

expansion, their success must be attributed to their relative commercial sophistication and theiressentially pragmatic approach to business. The chartered companies that initiated foreign trade andcolonization were run by merchants who were quick to adapt to changed circumstances. Investors inthe East India Company fully intended to profit from the spice trade, but when the Dutch establisheda monopoly in the East Indies and shut them out, the Company withdrew to India. At first, they wereall but ignored by the Mughal court, but they persevered, especially in Calcutta. As the MughalEmpire declined (as all empires must), by the end of the 18th century the Company had all butannexed Bengal through the deft use of trade, diplomacy, and arms. By the end of the NapoleonicWars, it exercised either direct or indirect control over most of the lands that now comprise India, SriLanka, and Bangladesh. The British governments involvement in India grew gradually from themid-17th century, but it was only in 1858 that the government assumed formal control of India.

A crucial reason for the British success in India was the lack of homogeneity in thesubcontinent. The East India Company exploited divisions of race, religion, and caste to gain

commercial and territorial concessions. Another was the British reliance on trafficking in low-value,high-volume goods within the framework of traditional intra-Asian trade, especially in Indian cotton,lead, silver, and pepper, and Chinese silk, porcelain, and lacquer ware. Profits from these trades weresignificant, but, as important, such commerce did not justify the imposition of a monopoly and thehuge expenses required for its maintenance; such costs ate deeply into the profits of the Portugueseand Dutch spice trades.

The East India Companys trade remained profitable and balanced until the 1720s, whendemand for tea in Britain grew sharply, a development with profound consequences for Britain,China, and indeed much of the world. Starting in the 1720s, tea comprised more than half of theCompanys exports from China, and a century later it accounted for all of them. The governmentskeen interest derived from the duty it imposed on tea, which by the 1820s accounted for 10 percent ofgovernment revenues. As China was self-sufficient for virtually all its needs and traders had almostnothing they wanted in exchange for tea, Europeans were forced to pay in silver. The British needfor silver to pay for the Napoleonic Wars and for the pacification and administration of India at theend of the 1700s forced the Company to search for an alternative to bullion, which they found in theform of opium. So successful was the East India Companys cultivation of Chinas appetite foropium that it stopped carrying silver to China in 1805, and two years later it was actually importingsilver from China. (American merchants also shipped Turkish opium to China, to the chagrin of theBritish and the consternation of the Chinese.)10

The only problem with this trade was that it was completely illegal in China, where the firstlaws proscribing opium had been enacted in 1729. The effects of opium use were widespread andhad both moral and economic effects that the Chinese could ill-afford. Trade in daily goods declinedas addicts devoted more and more of their income to the drug. Bullion outflows from China had adirect impact on the treasury, which collected taxes in silver. In response to these growing problems,in 1839 the emperors imperial commissioner at Canton seized and burned about 140 tons of opium.In response, the British government dispatched a force of 16 ships and 4,000 soldiers to demandsatisfaction. The British victory over the antiquated Chinese forces in what became known as the

First Opium War was swift and total. By the Treaty of Nanking, the British secured millions inrestitution and forced the Chinese to open additional ports to foreign trade. China lost two more drugwars, and Britain ultimately secured the legalization of the opium trade, which towards the end of thecentury brought in 10 million a year for the British Raj in India.11

The opening of the treaty ports had a number of unintended consequences, two of which areof particular relevance to the United States. Having observed the overwhelming superiority ofBritish arms against the Chinese, Japan responded promptly to U.S. demands to open its ports toforeigners after several centuries of relative isolation. Thereafter, Japan industrialized rapidly,working especially closely with Britain to develop its naval and merchant fleets. In 1895, Japan


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1Per the editors request, this article was published in Clios Psyche without notes; the following were added subsequently

and include sources published after the article was written, but which are nonetheless applicable.

Victory over the Persians: The Greek army that defeated the Persians at Plataea in 479, one year after the Battle of Salamis,

was comprised of Spartans, Athenians and others.

2 Reaction to imperial reach: The anti-Persian Delian League (478 BCE) was an alliance of Greek city-states, most of them in

Ionia (Asia Minor) under the de facto leadership of Athens, then the most powerful city-state in the Aegean. Over time, it

gradually degenerated from an alliance of equals to an Athenian empire.

3 Barbarians: Desmothenes, Third Philippic: And shall not Philip [Alexanders father] and his actions raise the like

indignation? he, who is not only no Greek, no way allied to Greece, but sprung from a part of the barbarian world unworthyto be named; a vile Macedonian! where formerly we could not find a slave fit to purchase!

http://www.4literature.net/Demosthenes/Third_Philippic/. Accessed December 1, 2003.

4 Obvious economic rationale: In January 2002, Henry Kissinger observed that The challenge of Iraq is essentially

geopolitical. See George Monbiot, Americas Imperial War, The Guardian, Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2002, which refers to anarticle Henry Kissinger published in theKorea Times.http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,648832,00.html

5 Opportunists are hiding in the wings: See Seymour M. Hersh, Lunch with the Chairman: Why was Richard Perle meeting

with Adnan Khashoggi? The New Yorker2003-03-17. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030317fa_fact. Posted

2003-03-10. Accessed December 2, 2003. For Perles reaction, see the transcript of CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer,Showdown: Iraq, aired March 9, 2003: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0303/09/le.00.html

Blitzer: Let me read a quote from theNew Yorkerarticle, the March 17th issue, just out now. There is

no question that Perle believes that removing Saddam from power is the right thing to do. At the same

time, he has set up a company that may gain from a war.

Perle: I dont believe that a company would gain from a war. On the contrary, I believe that the

successful removal of Saddam Hussein, and Ive said this over and over again, will diminish the threat of

terrorism. And what hes talking about is investments in homeland defense, which I think are vital and are

necessary. Look, Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly.

6 Authority to wage war: Peter Russell,Prince Henry the Navigator: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p.

136: [T]he Tangier project made Duarte I [Henrys brother] aware that there was now a body of international opinion,ecclesiastical and lay, which denied the unrestricted right of the papacy to authorize, or Christian princes to undertake, wars

of conquest against infidel or pagan states merely because these did not belong to the Christian community.

7 Disregarding international law: WashingtonTimes.com, UPI hears...Insider notes from United Press International for

Nov. 21, 2003 http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20031121-113121-6609r.htm. Accessed December 2, 2003:

The accusation that the Iraq war violated international law is getting a curious backhanded endorsement

from a most unlikely source inside the Beltway. Pentagon hawk Richard Perle startled a London audience

this week when he celebrated his presidents state visit to the First Ally by commenting: I think in this

case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing. Perle, who was speaking at an eventorganized by the Institute of Contemporary Arts at the Old Vic theatre, continued, international

law...would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone.

8 This error: In the early modern period, European Christians who sought an alliance with the Shiite Persian, Shah Ismail

Safavi, against the Ottoman Turks, emphasized his Christian qualities: He is much beloved of his sect which is a certainreligionCatholic in their way, according to a Venetian spy. A resident of Damascus reported to the Signoria that Ismails

religion was more Christian than otherwise. Palmira Brummet, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age

of Discovery (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1994), pp. 29-30.

9 almost as heart-rending: Frederick Douglass, Cheap Labor, The New National Era, Aug. 17, 1871. Quoted at

http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/fredfree.htm. Accessed December 2, 2003.

10 Silver flows: James Louis Hevia, Opium, Empire, and Modern History, China Review International10:2 (2003): 313.
http://www.4literature.net/Demosthenes/Third_Philippic/http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,648832,00.htmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,648832,00.htmlhttp://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030317fa_facthttp://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030317fa_facthttp://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0303/09/le.00.htmlhttp://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0303/09/le.00.htmlhttp://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20031121-113121-6609r.htmhttp://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/fredfree.htmhttp://www.4literature.net/Demosthenes/Third_Philippic/http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,648832,00.htmlhttp://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030317fa_facthttp://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0303/09/le.00.htmlhttp://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20031121-113121-6609r.htmhttp://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/fredfree.htm


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11 Opium revenues: John F. Richards, The Opium Industry in British India, The Indian Economic and Social HistoryReview 39:2-3 (2002): 149-80; see especially table 1.2, Opium Exports and Revenues, 1839-40 to 1888-89, p. 161. See

also Hevia, Opium, Empire, and Modern History, p. 313.

12 Virtues of individual rights: As Ghanas Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah wrote: All the fair brave words spoken about

freedom that had been broadcast to the four corners of the earth took seed and grew where they had not been intended.Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (London: Nelson, 1957), p. 103.

13 Military authority: Economist.com, Country Briefings: Iraq. Political structure. Sep 17 th 2003. From the Economist

Intelligence Unit. Source: Country Report. Executive. The ultimate military authority in Iraq, under what is recognised by

UN Security Council Resolution 1483 (May 2003) as a military occupation, is the commander of coalition forces Iraq,Lieutenant-General David McKiernan. The civil authority is represented by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), also

established under the aegis of Resolution 1483 (May 2003). The CPA consists of 11 directorates headed by US and British

officials, who will direct policy in their spheres under the overall leadership of Ambassador L Paul Bremer. Both

Ambassador Bremer and General McKiernan are answerable to the US Defence Department. The UN resolution called for

an Interim Iraqi Administration, which was formed in July as a 25-member Governing Council with, initially, limited

powers. The administration of Iraq was initially under the Pentagons Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian

Assistance, led by retired general Jay Garner.

14 OPEC: Following the UNs imposition of trade sanctions in 1990, Iraq was not included in OPECs system of production

quotas and it attended OPEC meetings only sporadically. After initial opposition, especially from Venezuela and Iran, theIraqi oil minister appointed by the U.S.-backed coalition government was welcomed as a full voting member of OPEC at

their meeting in September 2003.

Documents

A Pax Upon You: The Preludes and Perils of American Imperialism