Pleading with the Emperor: Pax Americana and the Transformation of Environmental Governance

The combined effects of the globalisation and integration of productive networks of capital, the hegemony of neo-liberal discourse in the framing of policy toward capital markets, the unchallenged dominance of the US military, the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the more recent signing of bilateral free trade agreements(BITs) have circumscribed the ability of governments to exercise sovereignty in the creation of environmental policy. The resultant capacity to "insulate policy from the chaos of politics" (Economist 1994, 9) has prompted a number of authors to situate issues of global governance within the context of Empire. In this paper, we chart the re-emergence of Empire as concept and phenomena. In the first section, we identify three schools of thought that invoke the concept of Empire: the image of Pax Americana held by US neoconservatives for whom Empire is a reality justified by the necessities of geo-political power; the liberal-humanitarianism of European foreign policy elites who argue for a multi-polar Empire to balance American power; and the complex multi-dimensional entity of domination depicted by the global justice movement. We reveal the tensions that exist between Empire’s agents, most notably between a vision of a multi-polar Empire and that of Pax Americana. Through the work of Hardt and Negri, Harvey and Foucault, we develop an operational concept of Empire to explore how the tensions between the agents of Empire manifest as a global system of governance. Drawing on this analysis, we discuss the implications of Empire for environmental politics and policy through a case-study of the Australian-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) to illustrate the complex, multiform strategies of power operating in the maintenance and transformation of Empire