While I take issue with some of what Dr. Friedman writes (about how we got there the U.S. as accidental imperialists, and about the impossibility of letting it go - the broken pottery rule of the imperialists), in the main, his two framing concepts (premises) are indisputable:
The book is framed by two concepts. The first is the idea that the United States is an unintended empire of vast power, deeply interlocked with the affairs of most of the world. It is not a question of whether Americans want this empire; it is impossible to let go. The question is what to do with it. Like a child you did not expect and may not have welcomed, it is still your responsibility.
I'd take issue with including Reagan as an exemplar of the Machiavellian Presidency, at least during his latter years in office when he was clearly in the throes of Alzheimers.
The second concept is what I call the Machiavellian Presidency. I consider three presidents exemplary: Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Reagan. Each possessed a deep moral core. Each fully understood the uses of power, lying and violating the Constitution and human rights to achieve the respective moral necessities of the abolition of slavery, the destruction of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and the destruction of the Soviet Union. When we recall that Roosevelt allied with Stalin to defeat Hitler, we capture the Machiavellian President.
While Friedman may well be correct that the president can preserve the republic while managing the empire, my empirical studies suggest that Presidents have taken ever more power unto themselves and are incurably inept at choosing advisers to counsel them wisely. This might not have to be the case, but it has most assuredly been so since I've been alive.
The United States has stumbled into empire. It now faces the crisis of Rome that the empire will annihilate the republic. I argue that of all the institutions of our Constitution, it is the president who can preserve the republic while managing the empire. I also argue that the greatest threat to the republic is living in denial about what the United States has become. The issue, then, is how to manage the unintended and unwanted in the next decade.
But with Friedman's conclusion "that the greatest threat to the republic is living in denial about what the United States has become" there is no argument.
Time's a-wastin. Better start doing something about this.
And bringing these ideas into the mainstream conversation about who we are is an absolutely minimum required first step.
