A GAME AT CHESS: A BLUEPRINT FOR BUILDING AND KEEPING AN EMPIRE
For the historian as well as for the practitioner of foreign policy with a penchant for things past, Empires long defunct provide an endless source of lessons and analogies, of trials and errors already experienced, though in most instances already forgotten. Few in our times think, though, that Empires are a form of political organization suitable for solving the tribulations of the present. After all, recent attempts at recreating some sort of formal or informal Empires have ended up in utter failure. So we keep on living in a world that is parcelled among a myriad of small and medium sized States, some of them in a worrisome stay of decay, a few number of polities with the means and maybe the will to fall into the traditional category of great powers and an even fewer and frail-looking examples of supranational entities. Then, there are those multilateral organizations, regional or universal in scope, where all or some of the above meet, talk and sometimes agree about how best to respond to the most pressing challenges and threats. Empires, then, do not seem to fit in the current political taxonomy. But we would be wrong to consider them the dinosaurs of the political ecosystem, only to be contemplated in awe as they lay with their bones inertly exposed in museums, never to see their likenesses alive again and roaming among us. In fact, Empires have been the rule rather than the exception in history. Throughout the ages, the globe and a majority of humans in it have been mostly ruled by Empires and not by States, federations, confederations, tribes or hordes1. And the case can be reasonably made that under Empires humankind have known some of the most extended periods of material and intellectual productivity, religious insights and even peaceful political coexistence among diverse peoples and cultures. So, why should it be different in the future? Is it truly impossible to envision a variation of Empire, and even of World Order, that allows for democratic representation and accommodates plurality in its different expressions? All that it takes is political imagination, something our times does not seem to allow, except in some bold science fiction novels or movies. Constrained as we are by forms of political organization bequeathed by our forebears, we have settled for comfortable formulas - our current variation of democracy is the best system for lack of anything better, says one of them - that preclude any form of experimentation so common in any other field of human activity. Besides, contrary to what many people think, Empires did not have the monopoly of political violence and economic exploitation. Not by chance, when we use the term Pax to define a period of extended order, safety and even relative freedom, we always qualify it by evoking one Empire or another: Pax Romana, Pax Sinica, Pax Britannica and so on. And let us not forget that some of the most atrocious genocides in the XX century have been conducted either by totalitarian States, or by those States of any form that have tried to suppress dissent or ethnic plurality within their borders. Were Rwanda in the early 90´s or Pol Pot’s Cambodia Empires? In fact, those were dramatic examples of what can happen due to the inexistence of a Power seated beyond the State and endowed with a more effective capacity than the current multilateral arrangements to impose peace and order when needed.
In any case, given their prevalence in history and the current state of world affairs, the doubt is not if, but when a new kind of Empire will emerge, alone or in competition with others. The Age of Empires would be then not just a fanciful name for a successful videogame but also a very tangible reality for our descendants. And so, for those bold enough to try, the following question will have to be posed: where to find the best blueprint on how to build and keep a successful Empire? For sure, there will be those who will always point to the Roman and to the British Empires, maybe also to the Chinese for its endurance or to the Dutch for its commercial prowess. But I will dare to get off the beaten track and offer another example, though it might seem counterintuitive for many, particularly in the Anglo-American world: the Spanish Empire. Once we have dared to glimpse into the future, let us take a look at the past and try to learn its lessons, even from unsuspected masters. This is, after all, one of the ideas inspiring this magazine: to recover the past in order to understand the present and try to illuminate the future, and to do so with a free mind and a liberal disposition of spirit.
For those sceptics about our chosen reference, there is a hard fact: and under three different dynasties – the Trastamaras, the Habsburgs
