516
ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR.
ment
in
ancient Egypt, "the machine now created the wars it required."
The outburst of European imperialism toward the end of the nineteenth
century was in this view atavistic - the last hurrah of an obsolescent
warrior ethos.
In contending that the progress of capitalism would steadily elimin–
ate the warrior class (and in supposing that the United States, as the
purest form of capitalism, would be least likely to have martial pro–
pensities), Schumpeter omitted the possibility that war among modem
states might produce a new warrior class and new forms of imperialism.
Has not something like this happened in the United States? The Amer–
ican imperialism of the tum of the century was a clear case of Schum–
peterian atavism. Men like Roosevelt, Lodge, Brooks Adams, Admiral
Mahan, who as historians had celebrated the old Federalist vision of the
American role, now hoped to redeem the new and odious commercial
society by giving it a martial purpose. But the imperialism of the neo–
Federalist elite could not last because it lacked a serious institutional
base in American society. Half a century later, however, two World Wars
had brought a great military establ>ishment into existence, and the Cold
War made it permanent. Contrary to Schumpeter's expectation, Amer–
ica at last had its warrior class.
Of course other factors helped make the climate which invited
American intervention around the planet in the postwar years - the
vacuums of power created by the Second World War, the doctrinaire
execution of a perfectly honorable belief in a universal peace system, the
old missionary faith in America's regenerative mission to suffering man–
kind, the quite real menace of Stalinist communism, the absolutist
counterideology of anticommunism. All these things led the United States
into attitudes of u:J.iversalism and messianism. But the hard precipitating
factor, which hastened us on into the catastrophe of Vietnam, was surely
the influence and power of the new warrior class.
Schumpeter's account of the military imperialism of ancient Rome
has an uncomfortable contemporary relevance. He called it
that policy which pretends to aspire to peace but unerringly gen–
erates war, the policy of continual preparation for war, the policy
of meddlesome interventionism. There was no corner of the known
world where some interest was not alleged to be
in
danger or under
actual attack.
If
the interests were not Roman, they were those of
Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be
in–
vented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest
-why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The
fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was al–
ways being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for
a breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of
enemies.
(
