Is the American empire already over?

What are you talking about? In addition to having some pretty damn scary missiles, North Korea has a tremendous command-and-control infrastructure, protected in bunkers carved into solid rock. Their army is better trained, better equiped, and smarter than the Iraqis. Not to mention other minor details, like the fact that South Korea would expel us if we seriously started planning an invasion, the fact that North Korea could easily flatten Seoul with any of your pick of WMD, China's historic willingess to intervene in Korean Wars, or the reassuring rarity of North Korean agents in Al Qaeda.

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.

I think the US is on a downward spiral which has nothing to do with what the author talks about.

This countries' people and their elected officals have settled on a strategy which advocates that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence be ignored in favor of their pet issues.

Since the only thing that stands between the US and a banana republic are those documents and the ideas they represent, the demise of them shows the US to be moribund.

My two cents.

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.

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.

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

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GO SIMON

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

Excellent comments here.

TheUS has troops in 144 countries

Like Germany, you mean? Is Germany part of the US empire? You are a pathetic, self-deluded peckerhead.

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.

Bookmarked ... #74 is a KEEPER!

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.

I swear I didn't read your post before sending mine. You said it better.

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?

Pinging thou.

Yes he did, but yours wasn't bad, either.