Paul Johnson: America as "Empire of Liberty"

British historian, Paul Johnson, here, makes the argument that America has, since 9-11, "reawakened" to its responsibility as an "empire of liberty" (a phrase borrowed from Jefferson--where?). America's foreign policy following WW II was tailored to address the Cold War (or as Eliot Cohen compelling puts it, WW III, below), so containment was the solution.

Now, America finds itself in a place of needing to become more active and involved for change around the world. And Johnson thinks this is the good that empire has to offer. As he recalls of Britain in his younger days,

When I was a boy in the 1930s, a quarter of the world on the map was colored red, that is, part of the British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations. It was a liberal empire and a democratic commonwealth, and its aim, as with America in the Philippines, was to prepare its components for self-government. There have been some outstanding successes: Canada, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and, most of all, India; with a billion inhabitants it has become the world's largest democracy.

It is singularly good timing that Johnson's piece should be published now, seeing how Bush signaled a reversal of the Cold War policy, in his National Endowment for Democracy speech last week (see below). There, Bush says many wonderful and powerful things, such as, this:

Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.

UPDATE:

Here is yet another Johnson article on "Empire of Liberty." Is this the same article?