Is this the beginning of the end of the American empire?

[pbi]

America is a more flexible and open society, so might well renew itself.

...and this is what will probably "save" them: their great ability to make good use of their resources in adapting to change.

The other recent examples of Imperial collapse are inconsistent as far as telling us what might happen to the US (assuming, for a moment, that it is really an "Empire" in the true sense)

The British Empire (and Britain itself) declined slowly over decades for a reason similar to that which might offer hope for the US today: it was able to adapt to its changing circumstances, even though not 100% effectively. Britain, for a long time, was a centre of learning, technology, industry, innovation, and political and social thought. It had great internal strengths, like the US does. The Empire did not vanish in a puff of smoke, or as a result of one thing-it faded out slowly.

The Soviet Empire fell to bits quite quickly because (IMHO) it was based on a wretched and hopeless system that (despite the high sounding goals set out in its theology), crushed individuals, initiative, free discourse and all the other things that make for an adaptive society.

The Nazi and Japanese Empires, built and held together solely by force and with very little shared interests, collapsed even faster than the Soviet Empire, once their enemies got organized.


Cheers

 

[tomahawk6]

America's strength stems from our powerful economy which is now crippled with a jobless recovery coupled with anti-capitalist policies. More $3 trillion in new debt in Obama's first 18 months with another  $10 trillion on the way. Spend spend spend and eventually the economy will collpase.

 

[a_majoor]

America's strength stems from our powerful economy which is now crippled with a jobless recovery coupled with anti-capitalist policies. More $3 trillion in new debt in Obama's first 18 months with another  $10 trillion on the way. Spend spend spend and eventually the economy will collpase.

True enough, and the TEA party is the open response to that (the John Galt strike is the hidden response). My guess is the sort of people who fill the ranks of the TEA party can self organize and rebuild their economy and society (starting with their own neighbourhoods, towns and cities), while the ranks of the dependent will have a much harder time of it.

(literary allusion)
What will happen after the sign of the dollar is drawn in the air...?

edit to add new article:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Tea-parties-fight-Obama_s-culture-of-dependence-91080759.html

Tea parties fight Obama's culture of dependence
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
April 18, 2010
(AP)

"Do you realize," CNN's Susan Roesgen asked a man at the April 15, 2009, tea party in Chicago, "that you're eligible for a $400 credit?" When the man refused to drop his "drop socialism" sign, she went on, "Did you know that the state of Lincoln gets fifty billion out of the stimulus?"

Roesgen is no longer with CNN, and CNN has only about half as many viewers as it did last year. But her questions are revealing. They help us understand that the issue on which our politics has become centered -- the Obama Democrats' vast expansion of the size and scope of government -- is really not just about economics. It is really a battle about culture, a battle between the culture of dependence and the culture of independence.

Probably unknowingly, Roesgen was reflecting the the midcentury sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld's dictum that politics is about who gets how much when. If some guy is getting $400, shouldn't he just shut up and collect the money? Shouldn't he be happy that his state government, headed recently by Rod Blagojevich, was getting an extra $50 billion?

But public policy also helps determine the kind of society we are. The Obama Democrats see a society in which ordinary people cannot fend for themselves, where they need to have their incomes supplemented, their health care insurance regulated and guaranteed, their relationships with their employers governed by union leaders. Highly educated mandarins can make better decisions for them than they can make themselves.

That is the culture of dependence. The tea partiers see things differently. They're not looking for lower taxes; half of tea party supporters, a New York Times survey found, think their taxes are fair. Nor are they financially secure: Half say someone in their household may lose their job in the next year. Two-thirds say the recession has caused some hardship in their lives. But they recognize, correctly, that the Obama Democrats are trying to permanently enlarge government and increase citizens' dependence on it.

And, invoking the language of the Founding Fathers, they believe that this will destroy the culture of independence that has enabled Americans over the past two centuries to make this the most productive and prosperous -- and the most charitably generous -- nation in the world. Seeing our political divisions as a battle between the culture of dependence and the culture of independence helps to make sense of the divisions seen in the 2008 election.

Barack Obama carried voters with incomes under $50,000 and those with incomes over $200,000 and lost those with incomes in between. He won large margins from those who never graduated from high school and from those with graduate school degrees and barely exceeded 50 percent among those in between. The top-and-bottom Obama coalition was in effect a coalition of those dependent on government transfers and benefits and those in what David Brooks calls "the educated class" who administer or believe that their kind of people administer those transactions. They are the natural constituency for the culture of dependence.

Interestingly, in the Massachusetts special Senate election the purported beneficiaries of the culture of dependence -- low-income and low-education voters -- did not turn out in large numbers. In contrast, the administrators of that culture -- affluent secular professionals, public employees, university personnel -- were the one group that turned out in force and voted for the hapless Democratic candidate. The in-between people on the income and education ladders, it turns out, are a constituency for the culture of independence.

Smart conservatives like David Frum, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam argued in 2009 books that modest-income conservative voters have had stagnant incomes over the last decade and that Republicans should offer them compensatory tax breaks. That seemed to make sense in the wake of the 2008 election. But it's been undercut by developments since. As Roesgen discovered, tea party supporters are not in the mood to be bought off with $400 tax credits.

They have a longer time horizon and can see where the Obama Democrats are trying to take us. Lazarsfeld saw politics as just a matter of dollars and cents. The tea party movement reminds us of what the Founders taught, that it has a moral dimension as well. They risked all in the cause of the culture of independence. The polling evidence suggests that most Americans don't want to leave that behind.

Michael Barone, The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His columns appear Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Tea-parties-fight-Obama_s-culture-of-dependence-91080759.html#ixzz0lVrhcvkQ

 

[Edward Campbell]

Let's remember, please, that we are dealing with an Anglo-American Empire hegemony that has been growing in strength since about 1575. This was not, always, an empire, per se, and even when it was an empire it was not like most others. The real 'founder' of the British Empire was Sir Thomas Gresham; his imperial aims were not remarkably different from those of almost anyone else: profit. What was different was the way Gresham (and Cecil) guided Elizabeth in her first, halting steps towards empire: trade rather than war was to be the primary tool (although Elizabeth and Cecil could not resist the easy profits of piracy). In this philosophy Gresham set the model for the (eventually) 13 American colonies that were self governing - by 1765 too self governing for British tastes.

The handoff of global leadership from Britain to America took, arguably, 25 years, to accomplish (1915 to 1940) and it wasn't clear, not at least to Dean Acheson, that it was a fait accompli until after 1945 when Britain was unable to sustain its imperial responsibilities.

I would argue that a "decline and fall" can, sometimes, be traced to one or two critical acts or omissions. In Britain's case I blame the entente cordiale (1904) which was rooted, in part, in a loss of confidence following the Boer War and a preoccupation with the rise of Germany. Britain, in my opinion, had no business joining, in 1914, what was just another Franco-Prussian war - generally good things in themselves in that the end result, usually, was fewer French and fewer Prussians and more British profits. And even as dense a government as that led by Asquith (with Grey as foreign secretary) would not have had to enter the war in 1914 had he not been bound by Balfour (and Grey's) silly entente cordiale.

Does anyone see a parallel in an American loss of confidence after Viet Nam and a preoccupation with the rise of China?

 

[pbi]

While I was not one of those silly Canadians who rushed out and bought Obama T-shirts, and while I realize that like any US President he's driven by his domestic political agenda first (ie: servicing his key constituencies), is it really fair to advance an argument that the bad state the US is in now is due solely (or even largely) to a government that has only been in power such a short while? Is there no "legacy" issue here?

How many long standing problems and bad policies were inherited by the Obama administration, in the manner that any govt inherits the mess its predecessors leave? Did this culture of entitlement spring fully formed the day after his election, or has it been brewing in the US just as it has in all Western countries, regardless of the political stripe of the incumbent government?

How much of what confronts this administration is due to changes happening in the world that the US can do very little about? Is any administration really in a position to do anything magical about the rise of new economic powers, or the creditor/debtor relationship that has developed between the US and China? What about the impact of foreign industrial competition on the very constituency that the author of the piece refers to: the "real" middle class? How many of them are going to be drawn increasingly into some form of dependency on govt programs delivered by city, state or federal agencies?

And, is it really fair (or even accurate) to suggest that it's only under a Dem govt that key decisions are made by a small group of elites without public consultation? Wasn't that one of the biggest complaints against the Bush administration? (And, by extension, the Harper Conservatives?)

Finally, I find a bit of a threatening "anti-education" tone appearing here and there. While I'm only an undergraduate myself, and certainly have no time for ivory tower intellectuals, the US has always been distinguished by a very high level of access to higher education. (Compare the % of Americans with degrees to the same % for Canadians). Stirring up people against "the educated", or using higher education for a convenient whipping boy for political demagogues doesn't seem like a smart move in the long term. I'm reminded of a saying:

"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance".

Cheers

 

[pbi]

Britain, in my opinion, had no business joining, in 1914, what was just another Franco-Prussian war - generally good things in themselves in that the end result, usually, was fewer French and fewer Prussians and more British profits. And even as dense a government as that led by Asquith (with Grey as foreign secretary) would not have had to enter the war in 1914 had he not been bound by Balfour (and Grey's) silly entente cordiale.

Except, I'm reminded of the traditional British foreign policy concern that no single continental power could be permitted to become too dominant in Europe, whether it be Napoleonic France or Wihelmine Germany, lest that single great power then be able to turn its attentions seaward, and harm Great Britain either physically or economically. 

Another aspect of WWI that distinguished it from other continental struggles involving Germany (or Prussia) was (IMHO) the serious German naval aspirations in the years leading up to the War (I recommend Dreadnought as good reading on this). It's a bit difficult to demonstrate that Prussia posed any sort of naval threat, real or potential, to Britain.

Cheers

 

[vonGarvin]

Except, I'm reminded of the traditional British foreign policy concern that no single continental power could be permitted to become too dominant in Europe, whether it be Napoleonic France or Wihelmine Germany, lest that single great power then be able to turn its attentions seaward, and harm Great Britain either physically or economically. 

Another aspect of WWI that distinguished it from other continental struggles involving Germany (or Prussia) was (IMHO) the serious German naval aspirations in the years leading up to the War (I recommend Dreadnought as good reading on this). It's a bit difficult to demonstrate that Prussia posed any sort of naval threat, real or potential, to Britain.

Cheers

Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, I tend to agree with E.R. Campbell in that the UK would have probably been better off had the Prussians, Hessians, Saxons and Bavarians beaten up on their French neighbours.  Sure, the "Germans" were new to the whole empire "thing", but a vanquished France would be less of a "threat" (navally) than a victorious "Germany".  (Remember that in 1914, "Germany" was a mere 40-something years old, and that as a "nation", Germany was nowhere near as united in many ways than the French were.  With but one or two major ports facing the UK [Hamburg and Bremerhaven], should the Germans had gotten a bit more "adventurous", it would have been much easier to hem them in than the french, what with all their ports facing away.  Which is probably why the UK and France had beaten each other up so often previous to 1914.)

 

[George Wallace]

And the North German ports?

 

[vonGarvin]

Wilhelmshaven and Bremen too, I suppose; however, Kiel, Lübeck and Rostock and further on down to Danzig and Königsberg are (were?) effectively "bottled up"| (should the need arise) behind Denmark.  But to get out to the Ocean, the Prussians, Holsteins and Saxons would have had to either get through the Channel, or pass way up north.  The RN would have been in a much better position to "block" any such moves, whereas in comparison, the French had pretty well free reign access to the Ocean, and thence to colonies beyond.  The only point I intend to make is that relatively speaking, the French were in a much more advantageous position vs the UK vice the Hessians and Swabians.


(PS: I deliberately am using the various "nations" that formed Germany to make a point.  Though it was Prussian drive that forged the 2nd German Empire in the 1870s (on the broken back of a defeated France), the Alsatians and the Westfalians were still considering each other as "foreign" in 1914, a weak point that the British knew oh too well, what with them being direct descendants (mostly) of the Angles and of the Saxons.)
EDIT TO ADD: Yes, the Kaiser-Wilhelm Canal would allow German Navy ships to pass from Baltic to North sea; however, should the need have arisen, it just emphasises my point that the Germans had few options to go about the UK.

And yes, Gibraltor pretty well hemmed in the Med; however, the French Ports from Brest on down went straight out into the wilds beyond, no UK to bypass. 

 

[George Wallace]

I suppose.  Don't forget, the British had Gibraltar and that would have forced some of the French to take the extremely longer route through Suez.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

I suppose.  Don't forget, the British had Gibraltar and that would have forced some of the French to take the extremely longer route through Suez.

However, remember at that time Egypt was a British "protectorate" and therefore controlled the Suez, so any French/German/Italian ships trying to pass through Suez wouldn't have gotten far.

 

[a_majoor]

As an Oceanic Power, America is unique in that it has direct access to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and can enter the Indian Ocean relatively easily around Africa (or try forcing the more difficult passage through Indonesia).

As a Maritime power, The United States has free access to global markets (beyond its continental internal market), and also has the ability to deny access to the oceans to others (or more tellingly, provide inexpensive protection for oceanic trade by her friends, who will choose to save expenses by not building a navy of their own.)

America isn't an Empire in the usual sense anyway (no Procouncils levying taxes on the locals to pay to the Senate and People of the United States), but a commercial one, and a rather insular one at that. British Imperialists tended to spend lots of time away from the metropole and out in India, Africa, the Colonies etc., while most Americans are content to stay at home.

While many of the problems like out of control spending and an unbalanced economy are common to past empires, America is rather different, and I don't see direct historical analogies applying very well in this case.

 

[bdave]

To be honest.
If the US of A were to fall, I would be more afraid of what Russia, North Korea, China, Iran and/or Israel would do.