The world really needs a good game-theoretic model of informal empire. I suppose Bruce Bueno de Mesquita already has one, but I’d like to see something more specific.
What’s informal empire? Well, if “empire” happens whenever one sovereign state exerts its authority over an area previously under a different sovereignty (or none at all) then that empire is “formal” when the imperial state exerts its authority through a bureaucratic chain-of-command that runs from the imperial executive through the local government and down to the person in the street in the new territory. (Similarly, an empire has formal characteristics if judicial decisions can be appealed upwards to courts in the center, or if the imperial legislature can pass laws for the subordinate territory.)
Since 1898, the United States has generally eschewed formal empire. The exceptions are Haiti in 1915-34, the Dominican in 1916-24, Japan in 1945-52, Germany in 1945-55, Okinawa in 1945-72, and Iraq in 2003-04. (The European Union exercises formal authority over parts of the governments of Bosnia and Kosovo.) The U.S. has relied on a combination of treaty arrangements, sanction mechanisms, and moral suasion to get its satraps to do what the government of day wants them to do. The famous SOFAs kinda sorta sometimes formalize quasi-imperial arrangements by giving U.S. troops special privileges inside host countries, including sometimes the right to shoot people, but that is not the same thing as giving the American government the right to give local bureaucrats direct orders under the threat of unemployment or imprisonment.
Sometime informality works and sometimes it doesn’t. Right now, informal empire has hit its limits in Afghanistan and Honduras. The U.S. can’t make President Karzai crack down on corruption, form a coalition with Abdullah, or negotiate with the Taliban. Considering both the number of troops we’ve got running around the country and the number of dollars we pour into its government budget, the lack of influence (let along control) is pretty depressing. What kind of an empire is that?
In Honduras, the recent agreement between Micheletti and Zelaya appears to have collapsed. The Honduran legislature has not voted to reinstate Zelaya, and Micheletti is continuing his modus operandi of “what the hell?” by picking a fight over who will lead the interim cabinet until Congress votes. Washington may be able to pick something up out of this mess, but U.S. leverage is limited. Aid is suspended and visas were as well until recently; stronger sanctions, meanwhile, will just sock it to a lot of very poor people. We could give up and run out the clock, which would be the best option if the rest of the hemisphere agreed. They don’t, so something had to be done, and a few days ago it looked as though the Secretary of State had done it, by brokering a solution.
Only now Micheletti keeps going off the reservation, and there seems to be no quiet easy way to keep him on it. There is still something a little ridiculous about the lack of American leverage. What kind of an empire is this?
Not much of one, actually. To be honest, I suspect that the U.S. will be able to knock some sense into Micheletti. If pushed, I’d bet on the agreement coming back to life. But still, the limits of informality are clear. Even in Afghanistan, let alone Honduras, local political actors are autonomous, and the threats that the U.S. could use to sanction them are not credible.
Running an informal empire is complicated, and running a formal one is often impossible. The implications are left as an exercise for the reader.
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