Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

Benjamin Wallace-Wells, in a profile of Niall Ferguson, critiques the author's view that America should openly pursue an empire: “like many other pro-war intellectuals, Ferguson was so seduced by the boldness of his idea that he neglected to follow the logic of the evidence he saw. And the simple explanation for the failure of the imperial and quasi-imperial attempts of the last 50 years may not be that France, Russia, and the United States all went about it all wrong, but that the project of empire is just not possible in today's world, that the prevailing political tempers, on each side of the colonial equation, won't permit it.”