Recent scholarship regarding the idea of a U.S. Empire has raised serious questions as to the feasibility and desirability of imperial ambitions. This paper traces the debate over the net-benefit of empire back to the Classical economists. Adam Smith argued that the British Empire was a net cost...

How does the permanent war economy interact, and subsume, the private, non-military economy? Can the two remain at a distance while sharing resource pools? This paper argues that they cannot. Once the U.S. embarked upon the path of permanent war, starting with World War II, the result was a...

A successful post-conflict reconstruction is characterized by a self-sustaining liberal political, economic and social order that does not rely on external support. It is argued that the extent of reconstructed orders is constrained by their institutional prerequisites. These prerequisites—a...