American foreign policy has been recently dominated by the venture into Iraq. This has not gone well. Most criticism has focused on ‘mistakes’ – there were not enough US troops, or they were of the wrong type, the Iraqi army was mistakenly disbanded after it surrendered, looting was not anticipated, oil expectations were unreal, the US depended too much on Iraqi exile claims, and so forth. Indeed, these were mistakes. 250,000 troops trained also in police roles would have made a difference. So might Iraqi army units converted into security police. So might better planning all round. But the mistakes were only the surface phenomena of a more profound American failure. The Iraq venture was doomed from the outset by the attempt to create what some neo-conservatives styled a ‘New American Empire’. This exaggerated American powers, made facile historical comparisons with previous Empires, mis-identified the enemy, and mis-identified the century we live in. This early twenty-first century attempt at Empire is failing. There will not be others.