The Yankees as Caesars

THE AMERICAN EMPIRE by Amaury de Riencourt. 366 pages. Dial. $7.50.

The notion that Americans are 'The New Romans" has been dealt with before in a variety of contexts. Most recently, a group of essayists put together a book by that name, describing the spread of American legions into Canada. In The American Empire, French Historian Amaury de Riencourt (The Coming Caesars) takes up the subject once again. De Riencourt specializes in sweeping, Toynbee-like historical patterns, especially symmetrical parallels between the Roman past and the American present. He has the indispensable arrogance of a born generalizer who, with mixed success, has assigned himself such breathtaking abstractions as The Soul of China and The Soul of India. For what he lacks in formal scholarship, he nearly makes up in sheer dogmatic confidence.

De Riencourt has one resounding theme: "The major development of our time is the gradual and partly unconscious establishment of the American empire." It will appear to future historians, he dares to predict, as the end result of "everything that happened in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."

Chosen Nation. What does it take to build an empire? Will to power? Greed? Not in De Riencourt's book. Historically, the true empire builder, he thinks, is motivated by "an idealistic longing," a faith in universal law, a passion for a "common culture." He is more in the spirit of a missionary than of Genghis Khan. De Riencourt quotes Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana speaking half a century ago: "God has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has marked the American people as his chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world."

De Riencourt takes that outdated boast with deadly seriousness. Something deep in the character of the Puritan (an "iron-hard, practical, sober fanatic dedicated to hard work") ideally equips Americans to play 20th century Romans. When Puritan qualities are combined with the "innate and relentless expansionism" of the frontiersman, it becomes clear that "it was just not in [Americans'] dynamic temper to become the peaceful Swiss of the Western Hemisphere." Yet Americans, De Riencourt insists, have been "fundamentally reluctant" imperialists. They have not really played the game of colonialism, which he defines as an ephemeral grab for pseudo empire. The problem is that history has given them no choice. Though there might once have been another option, this century's two world wars destroyed the chance for a united Europe and thrust the U.S. into the power vacuum.

Meanwhile, those "unconscious" imperialists, the American Presidents, were exercising the appropriate "Caesarian powers," including the right to initiate wars without asking Congress. As a result, believes De Riencourt, "the United States has gradually become a garrison state." Counting "Pentagon satellite military establishments" in Europe, Latin America and the Far East, De Riencourt reckons that the U.S. has the biggest army, by "relative size," since Rome.

Thus, according to De Riencourt, the "idealistic longing" that drove the historical empire builder has now been forsaken. Not only has it been replaced by military expansion, but as De Riencourt sees it, the chief agent of power is the American businessman--the Yankee trader. U.S. assets and investments abroad have more than tripled since World War II. Noting that politics is the camp follower of economics, De Riencourt predicts that to protect its vast investments, the U.S. "is going to be compelled to interfere increasingly in the internal political affairs of Europe." Soon, more or less automatically, U.S.-approved "local political leaders will seem to emerge out of a natural 'democratic' process."

High Percher. The chief internal crisis of the American empire, in De Riencourt's opinion, is race relations. He casually suggests that "total miscegenation is the only long-term solution" and then turns to the chief external crisis: Russia. He concludes that the Russians are no great problem. He prophesies a "Great Condominium" in which Americans and Russians will "accept each other's empires" and "focus their competitive instincts on a peaceful exploration of outer space, while jointly ruling the earth."

After a while, De Riencourt's lofty perspective becomes a little dizzying. His assumption that history is mostly a mystical matter of "preordained" patterns rather than men's decisions seems unpardonably pat and serene. One of history's mechanics, rather than poets, he suffers a narrowness of heart. His methodical calm before the ultimate nightmare of excessive political power suggests his dangerous limitations. He is simply not scared enough and, because of his arrogance, his very insights become his blinders.

All high perchers on Olympus ought to pay their dues of compassion on the way up. De Riencourt has not paid his. He is a man in love only with his own theories, who proves that lack of sympathy eventually may become lack of understanding. His talk of empire may easily mislead. America is clearly trying to be an influence for order in the world, and its culture almost inevitably spreads--but that is not necessarily empire building. Still, as an agent of provocation and a brilliant exaggerator, De Riencourt is useful: he forces readers to face up to life's own exaggerations.

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