Is the American empire already over?

All we [in Canada] seem to do these days is argue about the United States. And the arguments are awfully sparse, aren't they? Either our neighbour is the most powerful nation on Earth, a menacing imperialist intruder that we must resist, or it's the most powerful nation on Earth, a beneficial force of democracy and peace that we must join and support.

Under this school of thought, the United States stopped being the world's dominant nation years ago, and has quietly collapsed into being Just Another Country. We haven't really noticed this, the theory goes, because most other countries still act as if the United States has its old military and financial power, an assumption that could be stripped of its invisible clothes in the event of a protracted Iraq war.

This is not a fringe theory. It comes from within the United States, from respected political scientists on the Ivy League campuses. Why does it get such little play? Both the left and the right have their entire houses built on the notion of a fixed and immutable American hegemony, pro- or anti-. Somewhere between these poles is this small community of thinkers, declaring that the end has already occurred.

"The United States has been fading as a global power since the 1970s, and the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks has merely accelerated this decline." So says Immanuel Wallerstein, the Yale University political scientist who is by far the most outspoken member of this camp. A gravelly old contrarian with little time for the orthodoxies of the left or the right, he may have gained his remove by teaching at McGill University in the 1970s.

In a forthcoming book, to be titled Decline of American Power, he describes his country as "a lone superpower that lacks true power, a world leader nobody follows and few respect, and a nation drifting dangerously amidst a global chaos it cannot control."

In his view, America gave up the ghost in 1974, when it admitted defeat in Vietnam and discovered that the conflict had more or less exhausted the gold reserves, crippling its ability to remain a major economic power. It has remained the focus of the world's attention partly for lack of any serious challenger to the greenback for the world's savings, and because it has kept attracting foreign investments at a rate of US $1.2 billion per day.

But if it comes to a crunch, the United States can no longer prevail either economically or -- here is the most controversial statement -- militarily. In Mr. Wallerstein's calculus, of the three major wars the United States has fought since the Second World War, one was a defeat and two (Korea and the Gulf War) were draws.

Iraq, he told me recently, would be an end game. "The policy of the U.S. government, which all administrations have been following since the seventies, has been to slow down the decline by pushing on all fronts. The hawks currently in power have to work very, very hard twisting arms very, very tightly to get the minimal legal justification for Iraq that they want now. This kind of thing, they used to get with a snap of the fingers."

You don't have to agree with Mr. Wallerstein's hyperbolic view to be a member of the Over camp -- and many do disagree: When he first brought it up in the journal Foreign Policy this summer, half a dozen editorial writers in the United States attacked him. But more moderate thinkers have joined the club, including Charles Kupchan at Georgetown University, whose forthcoming book The End of the American Era makes a similar point in more subtle terms.

Joseph Nye at Harvard, a friend of Henry Kissinger's, argues in his new book The Paradox of American Power that "world politics is changing in a way that means Americans cannot achieve all their international goals acting alone" -- a tacit acknowledgment of Mr. Wallerstein's thesis.

This is how great powers end: Not by suddenly collapsing, but by quietly becoming Just Another Country. This happened to England around 1873, but it wasn't until 1945 that anyone there noticed.

Outsiders do notice. Spend some time talking to a currency trader or a foreign financier, and you'll glimpse the end of the almighty dollar: Right now, about 70 per cent of the world's savings are in greenbacks, while America contributes about 30 per cent of the world's production -- an imbalance that has been maintained for the past 30 years only because Japan collapsed and Europe took too long to get its house together.

A Japanese CEO told me this in blunt terms the other day: "It was Clinton's sole great success that he kept the world economy in dollars for 10 years longer than anyone thought he would. But nobody's staying in dollars any more."

There are other signs: The middling liberals, who in the 1960s would have sided with the left in opposing U.S. imperialism, are today begging for an empire. Michael Ignatieff, the liberal scholar, argued at length recently that the United States ought to become an imperial force -- on humanitarian grounds. Would this argument be necessary if the United States actually dominated the world?

I'm not sure whether to fully believe the refreshing arguments of Mr. Wallerstein and his friends, but they do have history on their side. In their times, Portugal, Holland, Spain, France, and England all woke up to discover, far after the fact, that they were no longer the big global powers, but Just Another Country.

Like the bewildered Englishmen in Robert Altman's Gosford Park, they struggled to maintain their dignity while wondering just what those strange visitors from abroad were talking about.

It is about nukes, because there's an unwritten law in the nuclear business that crazy people shouldn't have access to the bomb.

There's plenty of international law to deal with nonproliferation which we followed in North Korea. If we followed it with Iraq, the sanctions would have lifted long ago. The attack on Iraq makes more sense than an attack on North Korea (a country that has starved hundreds of thousands of its people) because we have oil interests in the Middle East and Iraq is militarily weaker and has weaker friends than North Korea.

What are the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bosnia if not local stooges? We can apply all the rhetoric of getting in, installing democracy, and getting out that we want but our two enemies, radical islam and nationalism are not going to sit back and let us do that in any of those places. In Bosnia and Kosovo we went in to smash Serbian nationalists and ended up supporting our Muslim enemies. In Iraq we are pretending to smash the Muslims and will end up supporting Kurdish nationalists who will then have to be suppressed by Muslim countries (e.g. Turkey) who will end up taking over Iraqi oil fields and become too strong themselves.

Americans are naturally reluctant to build empires but our leaders have taken us into one war after another in the name of democracy over this century. The wars always seems justified until you look at our allies like Stalin, Saddam, and Osama Bin Laden and realize we are just sowing the seeds for the next crisis.

The US has troops in 144 countries, and now we're going to conquer most of the Middle East. We're an empire, and empires always fall. Get a clue.

Conquer? What is your definition of "conquer"? I tend to lean towards liberate. Conquering, to me, means to put some minion in power that is a puppet for the conquering force. Karzai seems hardly like a puppet with his constant bitching about us moving our focus from Afghanistan.

Their participation currently is about the same as the German gardeners who settled here a century ago...they have neighborhoods and their own groceries, and have brought their customs with them. I imagine that as their children attend schools they will become more assimilated.

Exactly so. The historical experiences of immigrants to the US are remarkably similar, regardless of where they are actually from. Whether it was Germans in the 1830's, Chinese in the 1880's, Irish and Italians in the 1890's, the pattern is always the same. The first generation remains almost entirely unassimilated, reconstructing the culture of their former homes in segregated communities, and learning little to no English, for the most part. The second generation is almost invariably fluently bilingual, and moves with ease and comfort between the old country society of their parents and the society of mainstream America. And the third generation is almost entirely assimilated - knowledge of the languages of their grandparents is usually rudimentary at best, and often non-existent altogether. Culturally speaking, the third generation is almost indistinguishable from the rest of society, retaining some vague ethnic awareness, channeled into socially acceptable forms - pride in one's heritage, ethnic festivals, and the like.

Eventually, some of the customs of Hispanic immigrants will just be a part of the larger social fabric. We've managed to survive having Italian-Americans celebrate their heritage on Columbus Day and Irish-Americans celebrating their heritage on St. Pat's Day - I think we'll survive if we throw Cinco de Mayo into the mix ;)

Most Mexicans try to learn English as quickly as possible.

I don't think you live where most of them are coming ---in many parts of the US you won't find them learning English all that quickly. Here we have people who've lived here over 20 years that can't/won't speak English at all. They don't have to anymore, everything is being switched over to Spanish for them. One third of the people here speak no English.

Here we have people who've lived here over 20 years that can't/won't speak English at all.

What about their kids? Their grandkids?

The first generation almost never assimilates. I'm of Irish, German, and Swedish ancestry--my grandmother was the last one in the family to know any Swedish (and not MUCH Swedish at that), what German I've learned came from taking a year of same in high school, and I don't know a lick of Gaelic.

The attack on Iraq makes more sense than an attack on North Korea (a country that has starved hundreds of thousands of its people) because we have oil interests in the Middle East and Iraq is militarily weaker and has weaker friends than North Korea

Iraq has the third largest standing army in the world and some of the best (or worst depending on perspective)military hardware money can buy. They are far superior to Korea militarily with the exception of possible nukes. Iraq more than makes up for that lack with biological weapons. Further what makes you think that Korea has any different friends than Iraq? Have you noticed the sales of radar systems and anti-aircraft missles to Iraq from China? (Ironically it appears that Isreal sold the missle technology to China in the first place) It's not as if we are picking on the weak kid on the block to get cheap oil!

A feature of all empires is direct rule from the "metropolitan" center using local stooges to back up your imperium and imperial troops to enforce order on the fozzies at the point of a bayonet. That is not what we are about.

Excuse me...

You're saying that is not what's happening in Afghanistan?

I'm not suggesting we are picking on Iraq for cheap oil. But Iraq is clearly a weakling, we beat them already and they have not rearmed since. The size of their army doesn't matter since it is mostly cannon fodder. There are many reasons to pick on Iraq but the main one is that is that they are a potential threat to the Mideast oil supplies. That was our reason in 1991 and it hasn't substantially changed since then.

There's a difference between "going in for Iraq's oil" which is what the leftists charge, and going in to protect our Mideast interests in general.

Firstly, our native population is replacing itself at a greater rate than you suspect.

Our "native" population has wavered at replacement rate for decades. Virtually all anticipated real growth is due to the influx of Mexican immigrants. The future statistics for Kali offer a striking similarity to Kosovo.

I saw this out in Los Angeles and El Paso on my way to California. All the business signs were in English.

You were not in EAST LA. 20 years ago, every sign in East LA was en espanól. Next time you're in LA, find the Bonaventure Hotel and head due East. I guarantee you will soon find yourself a stranger in a strange land. If that doesn't work, ask for directions to Pacoima. (Bring your Kevlar.)

No, we are not. Saying so does not make it so.

Ditto. Imperialism is the imposition of government, not the imposition of order. Afganistan is a case in point. Karzai is setting up their government. The US is merely making sure he has the chance to succeed.

These grapes are as sour as green persimmon wine.

"...what German I've learned came from taking a year of same in high school"

My heritage is German/Irish. I had to go back to my great-grandfather/great-grandmother to get any Gaelic/Irish. My great-grandmother could still remember her German but never used it anymore by the time that I was around.

I took four years of high school German and two years of college German and it was just enough to get me into deep kimchi when I was stationed in Germany.

I could, in general terms, ask directions to the streetcar stops, the train station, some of the larger stores, and order off a German menu. When I actually tried talking to the Germans, I got my head handed to me on a platter.
8')