| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Let me begin by putting my own moral and ideological cards on the table, since I assume that I have been asked to participate in this symposium because of, and not in spite of, the fact that I reject the idea that America's global hegemony is not just good for the United States but assures global peace and stability as well, and thus is good for the world. In his recent book-length article for a special issue of the New Left Review titled "American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers," a brilliant, implacable anatomization of the American Empire, Perry Anderson approvingly quotes Christopher Layne's observation that "in international relations, benevolent hegemons are like unicorns-there is no such animal." That is certainly my view. And I would add that a democratic empire (for other than its own citizens, at least) is quite simply a contradiction in terms.
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