Europe Hears Echoes of Empires Past

NY Times -- "The key terms of the new imperialism will be the ability of the U.S. to provide security and stability for other nations without imposing an American way of life," Karl-Otto Honrich, a sociologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, said in a telephone interview. After the war in Iraq began, Mr. Honrich wrote a much noted article subtitled "Without a Hegemonic Power There Can Be No Peace."

"Over the last 10 years, U.S. hegemony has become clearer as a function of what America has done in the world," he said. "It has taken on the role of world police in several cases, and successfully done so.

"The function of the U.S. right now is to tell the world there is someone who is ready to fight in cases of big security and disorder," Mr. Honrich said. "The U.S. has taken on this role, and hence its leadership has become a social reality."

In the more radical view of American power — represented by The Guardian or by Mr. Frölich — the United States is seeking global dominance almost for its own sake. The more moderate view is that Washington has reacted, or perhaps overreacted, to the threat of terrorism. The American destiny, as the German newsweekly Der Spiegel put it recently, is "to bring peace to the world through war." In other words, the motive is good, even if the actions are violent and possibly unjustified.

But there seems to be a strong emerging view that the immensity of American power amounts to something different in the world.