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Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire Paperback – March 29, 2005

by Niall Ferguson (Author)

4.2 319 ratings

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From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower

Is America an empire? Certainly not, according to our government. Despite the conquest of two sovereign states in as many years, despite the presence of more than 750 military installations in two thirds of the world’s countries and despite his stated intention "to extend the benefits of freedom...to every corner of the world," George W. Bush maintains that "America has never been an empire." "We don’t seek empires," insists Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. "We’re not imperialistic."

Nonsense, says Niall Ferguson. In Colossus he argues that in both military and economic terms America is nothing less than the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. Just like the British Empire a century ago, the United States aspires to globalize free markets, the rule of law, and representative government. In theory it’s a good project, says Ferguson. Yet Americans shy away from the long-term commitments of manpower and money that are indispensable if rogue regimes and failed states really are to be changed for the better. Ours, he argues, is an empire with an attention deficit disorder, imposing ever more unrealistic timescales on its overseas interventions. Worse, it’s an empire in denial—a hyperpower that simply refuses to admit the scale of its global responsibilities. And the negative consequences will be felt at home as well as abroad. In an alarmingly persuasive final chapter Ferguson warns that this chronic myopia also applies to our domestic responsibilities. When overstretch comes, he warns, it will come from within—and it will reveal that more than just the feet of the American colossus is made of clay.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Every page of Colossus is provocative." —Ernest May

"Amid the seemingly endless writings and decisions about ‘America as Empire,’ the most prominent recent voice is that of Niall Ferguson." —Paul Kennedy, New York Review of Books

About the Author

Niall Ferguson is one of the world's most renowned historians. He is the author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire, Colossus, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, High Financier, Civilization, The Great Degeneration, Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, and The Square and the Tower. He is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His many awards include the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012) and the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

It used to be that only foreigners and those on the political fringes referred to the “American Empire.” Invariably, they did so in order to criticize the United States. Since the attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001, however, there has been a growing volume of more mainstream writing on the subject of an American empire. The striking thing is that not all those who now openly use the “e” word do so pejoratively. On the contrary, a number of commentators seem positively to relish the idea of a U.S. imperium.

There is certainly no question that the United States has the military capability to take on the old British role as underwriter of a globalized, liberalized economic system. Before the deployment of troops for the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military had around 752 military installations located in more than 130 countries, accommodating 247,000 American service personnel deployed abroad. On land, the United States has 9,000 M1 Abrams tanks. The rest of the world has nothing that can compete. At sea, the United States possesses 9 “supercarrier” battle groups. The rest of the world has none. And in the air, the United States has 3 different kinds of undetectable stealth aircraft. The rest of the world has none. The United States is also miles ahead in the production of “smart” missiles and pilotless high-altitude drones. Pentagon insiders call it “full spectrum dominance.”

Nor is there any doubt that the United States has the economic resource to maintain FSD. America’s 31 percent share of the world product is equal to the shares of the next four countries combined (Japan, Germany, Britain and France). So rapidly has its economy grown since the late 1980s that it has been able to achieve a unique “revolution in military affairs” while vastly reducing the share of defense expenditures as a proportion of the gross domestic product. According to the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending in 2003 is likely to amount to 3.6 percent of the GDP—substantially below its cold war average. In the space of less than five years, three of the world’s tyrannies—Milosevic’s in Serbia, the Taliban’s in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s in Iraq—have been swept from power at negligible cost. If this combination of military and economic dominance is not imperial power, then it is hard to know what is.

Yet the idea that the United States is now an authentic empire remains entirely foreign to the majority of Americans, who uncritically accept what has long been the official line: that the United States just doesn’t “do” empire. In the words of George W. Bush during the 2000 election campaign: “America has never been an empire. We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused, preferring greatness to power, and justice to glory.” Since becoming president, Bush has in fact initiated two invasions of sovereign states, successfully overthrowing their governments in both cases. The Office of the President has produced a document on “National Security Strategy” that states as a goal of U.S. policy “to extend the benefits of freedom…;to every corner of the world.” But Bush himself has continued to deny that the United States has any imperial intentions. Speaking on board the homeward-bound Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier on May 1, President Bush declared: “Other nations in history have fought in foreign lands and remained to occupy and exploit. Americans, following a battle, want nothing more than to return home.” A few days previously, Donald Rumsfeld was asked by a journalist from Al-Jazeera if the United States was engaged in “empire building in Iraq.” “We don’t seek empires,” shot back Rumsfeld. “We’re not imperialistic. We never have been.” Few Americans would disagree with that sentiment.

The Victorian historian J. R. Seeley famously joked that the British had “conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.” But the Americans have gone one better. The greatest empire of modern times has come into existence without the great majority of the American people even noticing. This is not a fit of absence of mind. This is mass myopia.

It is not hard to explain such attitudes given the anti-imperial origins of the United States. However, just because you were once a colony doesn’t mean you can’t ever become an empire. England was once a Roman colony, after all. Americans also like to point out that they don’t formally rule over that much foreign territory: the formal dependencies of the United States (like Puerto Rico) amount to just over ten thousand square kilometers. But nowadays, thanks to air power, it is possible to control vastly more territory than that with a network of strategically situated military bases. And as for the claim that when Americans invade countries they come not to subjugate but to emancipate, the British said exactly the same when they occupied Baghdad in 1917. “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors, or enemies, but as liberators.” Those were the precise words of General F. S. Maude’s proclamation to the people of Mesopotamia, dated March 19, 1917.

Unfortunately, the American refusal to recognize the reality of their own imperial role in the world is one of the things that make their empire very different from—and significantly less effective than—the last great English-speaking empire. For a start, Americans feel no qualms about sending their servicepeople to fight wars in faraway countries, but they expect those wars to be short and the casualty list to be even shorter.

Moreover, compared with the British Empire, the United States is much less good at sending its businesspeople, its civilian administrators and its money to those same faraway countries once the fighting is over. In short, America may be a “hyperpower”—the most militarily powerful empire in all history—but it is an empire in denial, a colossus with an attention deficit disorder. And that is potentially very dangerous.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Publishing Group; Reprint edition (March 29, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0143034790
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143034797
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.94 x 8.44 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #636,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #451 in International Diplomacy (Books)
- #613 in Political Economy
- #1,165 in Economic Conditions (Books)

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Niall Ferguson

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Niall Ferguson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, former Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and current senior fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and founder and managing director of advisory firm Greenmantle LLC. The author of 15 books, Ferguson is writing a life of Henry Kissinger, the first volume of which—Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist—was published in 2015 to critical acclaim. The World's Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild won the Wadsworth Prize for Business History. Other titles include Civilization: The West and the Rest, The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die and High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg. Ferguson's six-part PBS television series, "The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World," based on his best-seller, won an International Emmy for best documentary in 2009. Civilization was also made into a documentary series. Ferguson is a recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Service as well as other honors. His most recent book is The Square and the Tower: Networks on Power from the Freemasons to Facebook (2018).

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Customers find the book well-written and engaging. They appreciate the author's insightful analysis and erudition. Readers describe the book as thought-provoking and enlightening.

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19 customers mention "Readability"17 positive2 negative

Customers find the book well-written and engaging. They appreciate the author's interesting perspective and new facts. The book is described as a must-read for concerned citizens.

"...a pleasant Summer evening with an old friend who happens to be unassailably erudite and enviably eloquent and I am listening to him expound his well-..." Read more

"...Summation: Colossus is a academic book, but very much worth reading. I'd like to leave you one of Ferguson's key quotes from the book: "..." Read more

"...However, I highly recommend the book, to serve as a warning.t book, although I don't share all content, but is great help to analyse the current..." Read more

"This is a wonderful book with wonderful conclusions that is ill-served by a rather poor historical argument in the first half...." Read more

17 customers mention "Thought provoking"17 positive0 negative

Customers find the book insightful and enlightening. They praise the author's erudition and eloquence. The book is praised for its thorough arguments and conclusions.

"...with an old friend who happens to be unassailably erudite and enviably eloquent and I am listening to him expound his well-informed views...." Read more

"...He also draws many parallels to the British empire -- and shows how a great deal of their forays were not successful..." Read more

"This is a very interesting approach by Ferguson concerning the role America plays as the 21st century's sole dominant nation...." Read more

"...Although Ferguson has an impressive intellect and an open and inquisitive attitude, "Colossus" somehow fails to land any "killer blows"...." Read more

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Thomas M. Sullivan
Another Thought-Provoker
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2004
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You will correctly surmise from purusing other reviews of this work that Niall Ferguson's books attract very well informed and thoughtful readers who are not at all reluctant to let him have it if in their view he strays too far into the counterfactual world he helped revive and refine with his works such as "Virtual History." My own take on the rather strong negative reactions engendered by "Colossus" here and elsewhere is that they are generated--like many counterfactuals--by Ferguson's message being taken too seriously on the one hand and not seriously enough on the other. "Colossus" is an essay on possibilities, not a prescription for world domination. It asks--and attempts to answer--the question of why the United States is such a reluctant world leader (in terms of active intervention in its affairs) and explores the possible implications of its shedding its historical aversion to international activism.

What I find lacking in negative reviews is an appreciation, however reluctant, of the value of this inquiry whatever the likelihood of its practical application. And this failure to "get" the message I attribute latently to our historic isolationism and explicitly to the same cause Ferguson highlights as one of the principal reasons why we are unlikely to change our minds: our national attention deficit disorder.

Irag provides the perfect illustration of one of Ferguson's most telling points: we were hardly there before we said we were leaving and then reinforced our apparent disenchantment with the enterprise by becoming politically irrational and transfixed by prisoner abuse and the failure to find WMD's. No reasonable person can argue that if we leave Iraq prematurely, we will have wholly failed to achieve our stated goal of bringing democracy to the Middle East, which conclusion raises the even more compelling public policy question of if we could have foreseen that home front and/or international political pressures were going to prompt us to cut and run, then why did we undertake the enterprise in the first place?

You can't go by me: I am an unabashed and unrepentent Ferguson fan. Every time I pick up one of his books, I feel like I am taking a walk on a pleasant Summer evening with an old friend who happens to be unassailably erudite and enviably eloquent and I am listening to him expound his well-informed views. Neither in these fanciful strolls nor in my critical reading of his works do I feel compelled to agree with him, but I am inexorably forced to think about what he is saying and consider the wonderfully diverse and provocative implications of his musings.

Finally, what troubles me is not whether this or my fellow readers' reviews will prompt you to buy and read this book. No, the question I ask is whether our policy makers ever choose a book like "Colossus" as their summer reading. Our recent foreign adventures suggest to me at least the exercise would be very much worth their--and our--while.

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Auren Hoffman
Colossus has Colossal thought
Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2004
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This new foreign policy book really made me think. Ferguson's argument is that America is an empire, albeit a reluctant one. He alludes to believing that this could be a good thing -- both for America and the world -- but often also shows how the costly running an empire really can be. He concludes the book by stating "I believe the world needs an effective liberal empire and that the United States is the best candidate for the job."

But what makes his book extremely interesting is the historical context he uses. Ferguson goes over so many of the U.S. large wars and tiny wars over the last 150 years. He also draws many parallels to the British empire -- and shows how a great deal of their forays were not successful (both in terms of British and the colony's interest).

The examples that most stared at me were the Philippines and Egypt -- where he draws parallels to Iraq.

The first example is one that is often used. America "liberated" the Philippines in the Spanish-American War and lost about 1000 lives conquering it (which was a very small amount for that day). However, people in the Philippines were not content to just shake off one master and get a new one. Over the next decade America lost another 4000 lives due to rebel activities on the islands. The war and conquest, which in the beginning was extremely popular, became increasingly less so over time. So much so that successive Presidents were trying to find a way out ... and fast.

Egypt is an example I have not yet heard. The British effectively took over Egypt in 1882 when the country's pro-British ruler was overthrown. And though the British claimed on countless occasions that it wanted to leave Egypt as soon as possible, it was still ruling the country for the next 74 years. In fact, in 1956, the year the British did leave (and only because the national purse could not afford it), the British still had over 80,000 troops on its Egyptian base -- which was a tract of land near the canal that was the size of Massachusetts!

We learn from these examples that our transformation of Iraq is going to be enormously difficult and costly. If odds makers were making bets (and some surely are), the odds would definitely be against us succeeding. And Ferguson weaves in Americas huge debts (see Running On Empty by Pete Peterson) of unfunded liabilities to the tune of $45 trillion (!!!) make saving the world an increasingly difficult thing to do.

Like Peterson's book, my outlook after finishing Colossus is one of decided gloom. And gloom is generally not in my character. Though I tend to be an eternal optimist and believe the world is becoming an increasingly better place, it is difficult to not see the enormous challenges that lay ahead of my generation.

Summation: Colossus is a academic book, but very much worth reading. I'd like to leave you one of Ferguson's key quotes from the book:

"there are three fundamental deficits that together explain why the United States has been a less effective empire than its British predecessor. They are its economic deficit, its manpower deficit and -- the most serious of the three -- its attention deficit."

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Xavier Atlas
America's world domination is in jeopardy
Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2013
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This is a very interesting approach by Ferguson concerning the role America plays as the 21st century's sole dominant nation. Ferguson argues that America is in fact an empire, because it shares almost all of the characteristics an empire must have, including military and economical dominance, and subject states.

The twist Ferguson gives this book, is his conviction that is is actually a positive thing to have an empire like the United States dominating the world. His point is that, following the example of the British Empire in the 19th century with India and Egypt, America helped failed states (including Japan and Germany) by occupying them for a long period of time, organizing their democracies until they were ready to be governed on their own. On the other hand, quick military action to expell failed regimes like the Taliban or Saddam, and then the urgency to leave, fails to save those countries from chaos and disunity in the short to medium term. The problem, the author states, is that America's short election periods, the general lack of interest of its well-educated classes and the overrated concern about the international community's opinion are putting the country's dominance in jeopardy, by failing to act in favour of America's interest in the world's military and economical stages.

Wether you agree with Ferguson or not, the book delivers concise and thorough arguments that are very hard to refute. Ten years after been written, the book still makes a very interesting and up-to-date read.

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Top reviews from other countries

Tellsit Likeitis
A Very Good Book
Reviewed in Canada on August 30, 2024
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A very good book written by an extremely knowledgeable and intelligent man. How can one give less than 5 stars to Niall Ferguson?

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Klien
Hard to put down
Reviewed in Germany on April 29, 2023
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I think the reason he is so good is Ferguson is a great storytelling historian. It reads like a thriller.

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Sasank P
Poor quality
Reviewed in India on July 20, 2019
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Got a old book. Cover worn out. Paper quality is poor.

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bluevapo
Written in 2003.
Reviewed in Australia on March 14, 2021
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Well written, but woefully out of date.

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P I
Niall Ferguson's book is excellent and he shows in this book shows the remarkable ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 4, 2015
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Niall Ferguson's book is excellent and he shows in this book shows the remarkable rise from a colony to the most productive and technology advanced and richest country in the world. In this book he writes about the future causes of Americas decline and he shows how America is getting to relent on Chinese loans to keep Americas war machine funded and to fund it's out of control deficit spending. He also shows in this book how fiscally unbalanced the U.S are and he shows what the future problems the USA could have in near future if they do not address the root causes of these problems. Ferguson shows how America feels about it's self post September 11 and how it has changed how seen its self since that horrifying day and it's changed outlook on the world and most important of all itself.

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