Imperialism not a replacement for good governance, it is its consequence

In this third and final part of our series on neo-Imperialism I would like to start with the most important observation: Successful and lasting imperialism is a consequence, not a cause, of domestic strength of the imperial power.

While imperialism certainly changes the nature of the political entity that engages in it, said entity has to be successful at home before it can project power abroad. The 19th century British historian John Robert Seeley once remarked that the British “seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.”

The same argument could be made for the Roman Republic, which was less driven by collective imperial ambitions than by the economic interests by one – admittedly very ambitious – man named Julius Caesar. His conquest of Gaul was the true beginning of Rome’s imperial era, and to this day various forms of his name are forever connected to the idea of Empire: Czar, Kaiser, Emperor. There was no imperial masterplan, and as the historian Tom Holland has demonstrated in his magisterial books, early Roman expansion was driven not only by conquest but non-Roman people actively trying to join the Republic. Successful Imperialism is not just done by military force, but also by persuasion. 

Yet neither the British nor the Romans could have accomplished what they did without their superior organisational skills that allowed them to outperform – and finally overtake – other peoples who lacked the ability to build a highly-functioning social structure. It has been a key feature of all empires that they were able to produce a functioning bureaucracy, effective (albeit not necessarily moral, which is an entirely different topic) governance, tax collection systems, military structures that rewarded merit over kinship and ultimately the ability to produce an economic surplus that allowed the maintenance of an intellectual class of creative individuals either in the form of administrators, religious leaders, or both. Slavery and forced labour also played a key role, of course, but they alone did not suffice to become a successful empire. The places in the world where slavery is still practiced today are among the worst governed in the world such as North Korea, Eritrea, and Mauretania.

I would argue that both Roman as well as European imperialism were almost unavoidable in the same way that a company with a superior product will increase its market share until it holds a monopoly. A possible counterargument would be that Chinese sophistication in governance did not lead to imperialism, but I would dispute such a claim: China itself is the result of the imperial ambitions of the Qin Dynasty in 230BC. The reason we look at contemporary China as a unified nation is due to successful imperialism. For a long time, the territory of modern-day China was the battleground for multiple independent states, and it was only after one of them enacted sweeping internal reforms that the unification of China into a unified state started to take form. The most successful imperialism is the one we no longer recognize: We just see China as a unified state, and rarely question how it came to be and whether, in an alternative scenario, instead of one China there could be several fully independent states.

Indeed, the Qin Dynasty is the best-case study for my argument: Its rise began as a consequence of the political reforms of one Shang Yang, who understood that foreign policy ambitions can only be accomplished by superior domestic structures. Even by today’s standards, his accomplishments are impressive. As Francis Fukuyama has documented in the first volume of his “The Origins of Political Order”, the Qin dynasty was able to mobilize, arm, and organise 8 to 20 per cent of its total population for war. In comparison, the Roman Republic managed around 1 per cent, the Greek Delian League 5 per cent, and early modern European nations a fracture of that. Although Shang Yang suffered a violent death brought on him by those who did not benefit from his reforms, this does not change the fact that he got the basic order right: If you are strong at home, you will be strong abroad.

And this is a crucial observation when it comes to the possibility of neo-imperialism in the 21st century. Many of those nations who toy around with imperial ideas are domestically weak and view imperial ambitions as an antidote to this weakness, which happens to be the exact opposite of what one should do.

From the perspective of domestic weakness, the Russian invasion appears not only as a crime, but also as a strategic mistake. Like most countries at the time of writing, Russia struggles with an unsustainable low birth rate, making not the acquisition of territory but the lack of people its biggest problem. What is the point of expanding Russia, if the Russian people are on the brink of ending up on the endangered species list? Maybe Putin is hoping that reviving the imperial spirit will also inspire his people to procreate more actively, but that even that is at best a long shot. Fighting a war to increase your population? That would be a historic first, as wars usually reduce, not increase, the population size of the warring parties.

Unfortunately, the outlook for Ukraine is not much better. Already before the war the fertility rate was around 1.4, commonly known as the “lowest low” of fertility rates from which no society has ever recovered. It might sound cruel, but the future of the Russian and Ukrainian people is not decided on the battlefield as much as in the maternity wards. And on that front both countries are losing.

Similarly, China has much bigger internal troubles than external issues like competition with the US or reunification with Taiwan. Based on current projections, China’s population will age more quickly than that of the US, giving the latter a potential long term advantage. On the other hand, China will have the advantage of a relatively homogeneous population, something that uncontrolled mass migration and polarisation will make ever more difficult in the US.

The future of neo-imperialism is not one of a newly emerging Roman empire, but potentially one of states troubled by internal problems they hope to compensate for with foreign policy adventures. At a time when the most pressing issues from demographics to economics are internal and domestic, I am afraid that too many will start to take the wrong lesson from history: That imperialism is a replacement for good governance, when in fact it is its consequence.