Raj is a word that should be in everyone’s vocabulary. Out of style for a generation or so, it is now creeping back into usage, this time to define a different set of characters.

Raj (“reign” in Hindustani) referred to the 100-year British rule over India and assorted principalities – a reign that ended in 1947 when the British Indian Empire was voluntarily partitioned into India, Pakistan and Burma.

Not to let a good word go to waste, America has adopted it – if not in name, then in fact. The United States doesn’t administer or rule foreign lands directly as did the British Raj, but the permanent American bases in Japan, Germany and South Korea, the worldwide economic domination and direct subsidies – to say nothing of armed invasions in the Middle East – certainly look like the Raj, walk like the Raj and talk like the Raj.

While an American reluctance to get involved in international politics has existed since George Washington’s famous admonition to “avoid foreign entanglements” and John Quincy Adams’ statement that “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” a national ambivalence has also been present. It expanded with the Marshall Plan and post-war occupation of Germany and Japan, and was to metastasize with the Cold War.

During the Cold War, America saw itself as the leader of the “free world,” a self-assumed duty as a global policeman nourished by fear of the Russian Bear. Then, following the collapse of the U.S.S.R., a paranoid view of radical Islamic terrorists and imaginary weapons of mass destruction picked up where Bolshevism faded.

However, the new American Raj is reaching its limits. Iraq and Iran are teaching the United States a lesson that should have been learned in Vietnam: There are limits on what America can do. While conservatives routinely exhort the United States to maintain a foreign presence, the Darth Vaders who advocate more American arms (John McCain, “Send air power into Syria!!”) seem increasingly like quaint figures from the past.

Maintaining a foreign empire in today’s world requires oceans of knowledge and experience, plus a gargantuan administrative overhead. The world and what makes it run are far too complex, has too many unique problems – communications alone define entirely new governing techniques. America does not possess a career civil service with the depth, the permanence or the authority the British Raj enjoyed for generations, and the “loyal opposition” in Washington devotes itself to chaos and standstill, aimed toward the next election.

Great Britain, Russia and China are proof of the speed with which change can occur. In less than two years after World War II, the Raj was dissolved. The U.S.S.R. suddenly yielded power over several geographically intimate administrative subdivisions that had belonged for decades. China has risen from Maoist insanity to world power in two decades. The rapidity of these changes means that America’s share of the world’s sovereignty will be relatively smaller in the historical blink of an eye.

And the signs are plain to be seen.

America today reminds one of Britain after World War II. Deficits and debt speak much more loudly than dreams of empire. Much as the Second World War meant the end of the British Raj, future historians may well see the Bush financial crisis of 2008 as the end of the American Raj. Deep in debt and committed to solving the health insurance problem, needing to reform a shameful tax structure, shrinking a bloated arms industry and reviving a sluggish economy, the United States does not have enough muscle to maintain world hegemony. Like Britain, Uncle Sam can no longer afford to run an empire.

A financial crisis and mounting indebtedness have finally led to a shrinking of American imperial behavior.

No, no, Nanette – no more Rajs!

Devil’s Dictionary ?quote of the week

Conservative: One who is enamored of existing evils; as distinguished from a liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

Rodney Quinn, a former Maine secretary of state, lives in Westbrook. He can be reached at rquinn@maine.rr.com.

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