ABSTRACT
The nature, meaning, and consequences of international hierarchy are poorly understood by policymakers and scholars alike. This is most evident, perhaps, in the debates over whether the United States today is a new empire. When asked by the Arab news network al-Jazeera if the administration of George W. Bush was bent on empire building, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld simply denied the possibility, declaring: "We don't seek empires. We're not imperialistic. We never have been. I can't imagine why you'd even
ask the question.',8 On the same day in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, however, British economic historian Niall Ferguson took a diametrically opposed view: "The great thing about the American empire is that so many Americans disbelieve in its existence .... They think they're so different that when they have bases in foreign territories, it's not an empire. When they invade sovereign territory, it's not an empire."9 These contrasting statements embody the widespread and profound confusion today over the nature of international hierarchy, of which empire is merely an extreme form.
