There’s a review of historian Niall Ferguson’s new book on the British Empire in the Financial Times this weekend. Ferguson is an interesting and sensible writer. I’m not convinced that the same is necessarily true of his reviewer, one David Gilmour. Check out his final paragraph. It’s in response to Ferguson’s comment that the US is an empire “in denial” that should now accept its historic international responsibility:

“The United States as benevolent or enlightened imperialist? The power that endowed the world with Pinochet and similar dictators in three continents, that nearly obliterated Indo-China, that bombs Iraq for disobeying UN resolutions while encouraging Israel to flaunt them for half a century? A power that repudiates Kyoto and dismisses the threat of global warming so that it can continue to pollute the planet on the cheap? No, surely not. Until the current American administration begins to care about the rest of the world we can only be relieved if American imperialism remains “in denial””.

Lets put the question about whether the US should exercise an imperial role to one side,

and ignore for now a debate on the matters highlighted by Gilmour in his indictment of the US record abroad. Instead just focus on certain minor matters that, strangely, he chose not to cite. Oh, let me think, here’s a few: World War II, the Marshall Plan, holding off and then routing the Soviet dictatorship during the Cold War, and, most recently, rescuing Europe from its own incompetence in the Balkans.

I wonder why he didn’t mention those examples.