"For starters, this country embodies something utterly unique: History's first democratic empire. Beginning in the post war era, we have used free trade and democracy to create a series of interlocking relationships that end war"
About this Quote
“History’s first democratic empire” is a deliberately provocative mash-up: it borrows the moral glow of “democratic” to disinfect the harder truth embedded in “empire.” Williams is trying to normalize American power by reframing it as a benevolent, rules-based project rather than domination. The phrase invites readers to feel exceptional without feeling imperial, a rhetorical two-step that turns critique into pride.
The intent is clearer in the mechanism he offers: “free trade and democracy” as tools that “create a series of interlocking relationships.” That’s the language of networks, supply chains, alliances, and institutions - NATO, Bretton Woods, the EU-adjacent American security umbrella - presented as a kind of anti-war architecture. The subtext is reassurance: if the U.S. leads the system, the system prevents conflict; therefore, U.S. primacy is not self-interest but global maintenance.
What makes the line work is how it glides past the coercive edge of that architecture. Empires don’t just “create relationships”; they set terms. Free trade can mean market access and growth, but also dependency and asymmetry; democracy promotion can mean genuine reform, but also selective enforcement and regime-change baggage. “Beginning in the postwar era” quietly anchors the argument in America’s most flattering origin story - rebuilding Europe and containing fascism - while muting the messier chapters that complicate “end war,” from proxy conflicts to Iraq.
It’s a columnist’s grand synthesis: the U.S. as indispensable mediator of peace. The irony is that calling it an empire concedes the critique, then tries to win the argument anyway by insisting the empire is different - not because it lacks power, but because it claims a higher purpose.
The intent is clearer in the mechanism he offers: “free trade and democracy” as tools that “create a series of interlocking relationships.” That’s the language of networks, supply chains, alliances, and institutions - NATO, Bretton Woods, the EU-adjacent American security umbrella - presented as a kind of anti-war architecture. The subtext is reassurance: if the U.S. leads the system, the system prevents conflict; therefore, U.S. primacy is not self-interest but global maintenance.
What makes the line work is how it glides past the coercive edge of that architecture. Empires don’t just “create relationships”; they set terms. Free trade can mean market access and growth, but also dependency and asymmetry; democracy promotion can mean genuine reform, but also selective enforcement and regime-change baggage. “Beginning in the postwar era” quietly anchors the argument in America’s most flattering origin story - rebuilding Europe and containing fascism - while muting the messier chapters that complicate “end war,” from proxy conflicts to Iraq.
It’s a columnist’s grand synthesis: the U.S. as indispensable mediator of peace. The irony is that calling it an empire concedes the critique, then tries to win the argument anyway by insisting the empire is different - not because it lacks power, but because it claims a higher purpose.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
|---|
More Quotes by Armstrong
Add to List
