Is the United States imperialist? Has it created, or is it creating, an empire? If so, should we regard this process as desirable, even inevitable? These questions are raised by the American conquest of Iraq which, together with the prolegomenon of September 11, constitutes the first key event of the twenty-first century, foreshadowing a new world order.

First, it is important to understand what we mean by the word “empire.” Its core meaning is “rule,” with the implication “unqualified rule.” A country designated as an empire is one which possesses numerous territories but, more important, absolute sovereignty over itself. This usage came into English in the sixteenth century to designate the unlimited legal power of the Crown in parliament, and the impotence of papal writs. All the major Reformation statutes which repudiated Roman claims contained the word. Thus the statute 24 Henry VII of 1532–1533, Chapter 12, begins: “This realm of England is an empire.” The Crown in parliament could thus make and unmake bishops, revise doctrine and liturgy, and dispose at will of Church lands, then 20 percent of the total, without reference to Rome. This marked the point at which England withdrew from the medieval entity called Christendom in which kings and popes agreed to share sovereignty, after many disputes, not on an ideological but on an ad hoc basis, later formalized in treaties known as Concordats. Under the old medieval system, indeed, popes claimed the right, in extremis, to depose wicked territorial disputes. The