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.

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...

Do we really want to be "followed" or "respected" by the castrated, peace-at-any-cost Euro-weenies, the primitive hoards of the "Arab street" or the burned-out Leftists that choke with jealousy at the mention of America's name?

When you are dealing with these kinds losers, it is far better to be feared than loved.

In regards to "true power", the author should tell us what nation, throughout the course of History, has ever been able to project it's power the way that the United States can to this very day.

Afghanistan was not a test of "true power"? Tell that to the corpse of the once mighty Soviet Union. What the Soviet Union of the 1980's could not accomplish next to it's own border, America accomplished in a few months from the other side of the Globe.

The author's premise is wrong. Bad assumptions lead to stupid conclusions.

As pointed to here, Americans don't want an empire. When William McKinley had to choose between keeping an American force at Manilla - an accepted necessity - or taking the entire archipelago, he prayed to God for guidance.

Whatever God's feelings, McKinley made the logical military choice to occupy all the islands. Then he made the inspired -- and perfectly American decision not to colonize the territory. He would give it all the benefits of America, and when the populace was ready for self-government he'd let it go.

We kept Porto Rico for the exact same reason. The island simply fell into our lap. Down went the Spanish flag, and up the American, and the locals wanted it that way.

There's plenty to say of American imperialism, be it Dollar Diplomacy, territorial expansion, or whatever. None trump the essential and operative reason for American expansion: the democratic ideal. Any argument that ignores this fundamental purpose is flawed in that it studies effect not cause, and it sees only negative effects.

Another mistake, and it is sadly assumed by most Americans, is that we lost the Korean and Vietnam wars. Those were not wars, they were battles. We won the war. Leftists won't admit it, for they look upon Vietnam as the crux of the 20th Century, and admission that we won the Cold War destroys their argument and life views.

Lastly, what won the Spanish-American war was naval power. What wins similar wars today is air power.

America has every appearance of an empire. America seems to act like an empire. America has the capability of an empire. America is not an empire.

We'll keep fooling the rest of the world so long as individual Americans remain free to pursue happiness.

When we ordered the B-52 we ordered 600. The B-1 we had 76 and we just moth- balled half of them in the last six months. When we ordered The B-2 we where going to get 60 I believe, we cancelled half because of cost and ended up with 30. When Regan took office we had about 70 over sea military bases now I believe we are down to just 15.

There's a simpler reason for this than decline. Modern airplains are fearsomely expensive and complex creatures to build. The higher tech a system becomes, the longer it takes to build. For a B-29, you basically needed what amounted to a riveter and welder to produce it. For an F-22, you need an electrical engineer and a programmer. It's all about price and the complexity of the thing being produced. It takes longer to produce fewer planes today because the planes being produced are much, much more complex and expensive. I don't know for certain, but I suspect if you were to take a look at the man-hours necessary for the production of a P-51, an F-4, an F-16, and a YF-22, you would see that it steadily increaces. So too would the price of all of the above mentioned systems increase almost logarithmically. It's a necessary evil if you want to have the most advanced combat aircraft in the world.

We use to have an active Army for each section of the country four of them. Now we just have one active and half of it is made up of reserves. Our Navy fleet was reuduced by at least one-third in just 8 years of Clinton. I know we have good technology but most of our military planes are 30 years old and you can only recondition and update the same frames so many times.

Well, one ought remember that our military mission is no longer to stop the Soviet hordes pouring through the Fulda Gap. As such, we really don't need that big a military. The years from 1941-1968-ish (I'm using '68 as the cutoff year since that's about when the Democrats adopted anti-anti-Communism as their policy) were unique in several respects. Yes, there was a huge draftee army and a general bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, but it was due to extraordinary circumstances. Indeed, since we don't really have the threat of fighting a land power in the near future, we don't really face the need that there was to create the huge army that we had during the Cold War.

On the other hand, the area in which we face a real weakness is procurement. By the time a system has gone from the drawing board to being fielded, a young PFC will be a crusty old Sergeant Major. This is an extreme weakness brought about by excessive bureacracy, but it's hardly a harbinger of our decline as a military power.

"Modern airplains are fearsomely expensive and complex creatures to build. The higher tech a system becomes, the longer it takes to build."

Also, as I remember my reading, a single modern bomber can accomplish, with more accuracy and, as a result, more pin-point lethality, than a WWII bomber wing. High tech automatically results in requiring less quantity (although, as they say, quantity has a quality of its own). A modern rifle platoon can now cover the front of one or two old-style companies. Ships, planes, and armored vehicles take longer to build, are more difficult to maintain, are hideously more expensive, but are exponentially more effective and destructive than their counterparts from even the '60s and '70s.

I would much rather be buttoned up in an M1A2 Abrams than those motorized-zippo lighter Shermans or Stuarts. I would much rather have a single B-2 or A-10 overhead for fire support than a wing of Flying Fortresses or Liberators.

Thanks for bringing up that point as well (which I didn't think of having typed the thing on the fly on my way out the door). Hell, the weight of a single bomb carried on an F-117A is IIRC equivallent to the bombload of one of the WWII bombers.

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.)

Good God, I was in Reseda twenty years ago. I saw plenty of Spanish signs. That does not mean that the language is taking over. Merely that businessmen are catering to a demographic group of immigrants. This has happened before in our history.

Besides, El Paso and Juarez are right next to each other. I mean, goodgawdawmighty, every billboard was in English!

English as a language has so much more utility in the modern world than Spanish. That's what is not understood on this board. It's the language of business. Period.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

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.

Pardon me, but this is bull$hit.

The war against Hitler and the Japanese was justified. Period.

If you don't believe that, imagine the world as it would have been had he been able to fight a war on the Eastern Front without worry about a Second Front. Then imagine his possession of the atomic bomb.

Your points about Saddam are well taken, but fail to recall our need to stop the ambitions of the ayatollahs in Tehran. That was our sole reason for our support of Saddam's war. We did not support the initial invasion, but once the fool went in, we could not afford to let him lose and allow Iranian Pasdaran and regular infantry to sieze Iraq's oil wealth. This is practical, pragmatic politics. I'm sorry it doesn't fit in with what you believe, but as Bismarck maintained, politics is the art of the possible. Deal with it.

As to bin Laden, you're merely parroting the canard that we created bin Laden. We did not. Bin Laden was his own man, motivated by his own inner demons and fanatical beliefs. People never give the sumbitch the credit that was his due for forming his own outfit. Weapons supplied by us did find their way to him, and he did get direct support from Pakistan's ISI, who had their own fish to fry. Most of our support went to the Mujahideen under Ahmad Shah Massoud. They successfully defended the Panshjir Valley against continues Russian armored and airmobile assault. Massoud was the best commander of the Afghan war. We put our money behind the right guy. The ISI backed Omar and bin Laden because they thought that they could control the "Afghan Arabs". That isn't the first stupid thing the Pakistanis have done.

As to North Korea, it is in the process of falling apart from within. We have no geopolitical reason to start a war there. Iraq has oil. Mate oil wealth with the capacity to create relatively primitive nuclear weapons. I shouldn't have to do the math for you.

Finally, as to international law. International law is upheld by the country with the largest navy. Other than that, international law is an artificial construct of agreements between states. Suppose you are invaded. Suppose you scream "international law". Will your invader withdraw? No, he will continue to kick your ass, rape your cows, and rustle your women. Unless, of course, you can convince a Great Power to drop by and apply a little "international law" to the situation at hand.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

That is exactly what I am saying.

We went into Afghanistan to depose a group of people who were giving shelter to our sworn enemies.

We are not about the business of trying to force the Afghans to accept our imperium. We have, quite correctly, looked at the history books and judged that to be an impossibility. So we are concentrating on our objective at hand (kill the Al Qaeda) while pursuing "nation building" as a secondary objective (we have a lot of warlords on the take). That explains Karzai. That also explains why we have so few troops there. The Sovs had 100,000 men in their invasion force, and thousands roaming all over the country at any one time. We, otoh, are leaving most of the Afghans alone to live their lives. The only part of Afghanistan you see us running around in is the extremely religious and pro-Taliban Pathan southeast along the border. We're also renting the loyalties of local headmen for as long as they'll stay loyal (about a week until their next bribe comes through). And, unlike the Russians, we are spending money. Afghans like that about us.

The Afghans are getting wealthier off of us. They like that. Most of them, anyway.

What is impossible for us to do is impose an imperium on Afghanistan at the point of a bayonet.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

America has every appearance of an empire. America seems to act like an empire. America has the capability of an empire. America is not an empire.

We'll keep fooling the rest of the world so long as individual Americans remain free to pursue happiness.

America is developing something the world has never seen before, and the closest approximation people use is the word "empire". That word doesn't really fit.

America roams the world, looking to buy goods, services, or raw materials that 250 million individuals want. In turn, other countries buy things from us that they badly want. Along the way, they're importing pieces of American culture, whether they know it or not.

As a commercial nation, we want trade to flow freely. A large navy is good for that, as is a large air force to quickly reach out and hit targets too far inland for the navy. Currently, "large" is a relative term because are Navy and Air Force are smaller than before, just far more powerful than any coalition of possible rivals.

If America was an "imperial" country, it wouldn't have the puny Army it does now. Thanks to our technology, our military is vastly more powerful than anybody else's, but is still not configured for "imperial" duty. And it never will be. If we didn't take over the world in 1945 when we had 12 million men under arms, sole possession of nukes, bases all over the world, and a gigantic economy fully converted to wartime production, we never will. And that's good.

America, however, is subverting much of the world with its example of freedom, peace, and prosperity. Certain academics find that horrifying, and label it "imperialism". They wouldn't know real imperialism if it bit them in the ass.

And the things that are in America's best interests are also in the best interests of lots of more-or-less free and capitalistic countries. England is one of the few with the guts to stand with us. There's nothing wrong with Blair playing Tonto to Bush's Lone Ranger. As the Fonz would say, Tonto saved the Lone Ranger's bacon plenty of times, and except for trying to take off the Lone Ranger's mask, the worst thing you could do would be to mess with Tonto.

Big topic. What we're really seeing here isn't the classic model of "empire" at all, IMHO, as many have noted. What it is, though, "ain't exactly clear."

It isn't, for example, based on control of foreign governments so much as a selective change of a small number that prove inveterately hostile or dangerous. Proof of this is the vigorous dissent to U.S. policy given daily by governments which, were they truly client governments, would be incapable of doing so - the list is long, including such old members as France, Germany, the Philippines, and Japan, and such new ones as Panama, Haiti, and Grenada. These are not clients, colonies, or puppets, nor are they part of an "empire" in the older sense.

It isn't, for another example, based on control of lines of communication (as the Athenian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and British empires were) and their exploitation for commercial purposes. If it were we certainly wouldn't be arguing about tariffs in the U.S., they wouldn't be necessary.

I'm not sure "dominance" is even the most accurate word. Perhaps "pervasiveness" or "ubiquity" might be more accurate. The mechanisms behind this are primarily economic and technological especially in terms of information and communications technology, and much of what passes for military dominance is, instead, a necessary consequence of the other two. Why else could a country with less than 1% of its population under arms be described as "imperialistic?" In what historical empire did the emperor ever have to take his case to his people and justify his actions to world opinion in order to stomp on an offender less than one-tenth his size?

If America is a bull in a china shop, at least let it be one that has learned to move carefully. But not to move at all is just as potentially fatal as thrashing about wildly.

What category do the individuals talking about using oil revenues to rebuild Iraq fit into? Imperialists or losertarians? What happens to the oil revenues that have been supporting the UN on the cut they take out of sanctions? Do we pick up the tab on that in return for using the oil revenues?

I suppose you have seen the satellite pictures of Iraq rebuilding their WMD facilities. Why don't they take a little side trip from the no-fly patrols and take them out? The Israelis solved their problem with Saddam's nuclear plant in short order without going to war and wasting billions. Why don't we start using our heads for something besides a hat rack?

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