Posted on 08/14/2011 2:23:57 PM PDT by Steelfish
The US has been respected by its friends and feared by its enemies
The US DID interfere in Afghanistan and the USSR tried to do so in Cuba.
The wars were in places far away from the main centres that could ignite nuclear war
Now, over Taiwan, China does not want to risk its economic growth for an island that is for all purposes its biggest investor and which shares the same world domination aims as the mainland Chinese do.
An Irani president walking into a next-door country has more heft than a US dignitary due to the sheer fact that much of Iraq is Shia and Iran has its squads that could take out any threat -- these could even be locals.
The US has a strong sense of isolationism -- hence the late entry to WWI and the abandoning of the League of Nations
Think of the preceding superpower -- Britain. If any small, non-European defied them, they sent in a gun-ship.
If the US acted uppity in the early 1800s, the British burned down Washington DC (as they did in 1812), if Zanzibar defied them, they bombarded it for 45 minutes until they surrendered
For Western European nations, this was too close to home, so the English played diplomatic tricks, dividing one against the other, chessboards
The English were feared and placated as they played their cards thinking of their country first.
The US is like a modern-day Athens, but with more "morals" in the sense that it has always debated if it is right to go and attack someone, even if that is in the US' interest
Imagine if the USA became utterly isolationist after WWII and shut itself up in North America. Then the USSR would carte-blanche walk over much of the world and it would have been incredibly cruel -- if you want to know cruel, meet someone from the Ukraine or Moldavia, I have
in the USSR, Stalin shifted nations from one place to another, the soviets destroyed ancient works of art and architecture, they destroyed peoples etc.
The US has not been "feared" in that way by its friends or even by the ambiguous (India in the late 60s and 70s comes to mind) but feared by its enemies -- the USSR never dared to directly challenge the USA after the Cuban missile crisis and China plays it's Sun-Tzu games carefully.
For a long time people have wished for the USA to decline. Now that that IS what is happening, we see the powerplay coming to effect
I see China as biding its time as the US declines -- no war against the US, but a carve-up of various parts -- South-East Asia and Africa comes to mind (unfortunately AC, I don't see a strong native African coalition as being able to oppose the Chinese colonisation).
India may be able to oppose the rise of the chicoms, but it still hasn't got its act together -- either internally or externally. It has made strides internally economically and militarily, but it has a long way to go AND is hampered by the cancer that is Pakistan. Externally, the Indians are silently creating a necklace of alliances from Japan to S. Korea to Singapore to Australia to the Philippines to oppose China, but this still has a way to go.
Europe as a whole is declining economically and will not be so relevant in the future
South America I see as being dominated by Brazil and some kind of Spanish coalition of Chile-Colombia-Argentina with the other mixed states as being by the wayside.
if a RINO or even a moderate Republican is elected, that will only slow the decline, but the decline will continue
If Palin is elected, the decline will halt, but there needs to be continuous effort for a decade or more and during that period of time Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Turkey, Chile, Mexico, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania etc. will grow (the Russian market I dismiss as it seems just an oil state to me) -- and in the case of China and India, they will grow at 7 to 10% --> think of it, if Palin is elected 2012-2020, the decline will slow in the middle of that period, but growth will be slow, near 0, while these two giants grow at break-neck speed during those 8 years
No, the time for utter US domination is over.
What we need to do is have a strong coalition of friends -- hard to do after Obambi has been busy snubbing the British, Indians etc.
Even if the US could dominate the World militarily and economically in the past, it can no longer do so now. The outcome of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars contribute massively to this lack of fear. (Military planners throughout the World now understand that the US is best contained asymmetrically and that the US “usually does not get the politics behind the War”).
About the British Empire and gunboats. The British Empire was ultimately a failure because it was based on a wrong set of ideas (racial superiority, colonies serving the metropole). It collapsed like a pack of cards, exhausted after the Second World War.
Maybe the US was the only major power to realise the folly of colonial enterprise. My view is different, the US spent so much energy during the 19th Century trying to come to terms with it’s Continent-sized land mass that it barely had enough time and resources to devote to a European-style empire. There were colonial excursions (e.g. The Philippines, parts of Latin America), but unlike Britain and France the US could afford not “keep up with the neighbours” with an extensive colonial empire.
The US “feared” the USSR just as much as the USSR “feared” the US. A threat by the Soviets to intervene militarily in the war between Egypt and Israel was enough to get Kissinger on the phone with the Israelis. There are so many examples, like the trailing of the USS Enterprise by a Soviet Nuclear Sub during the India - Pakistan war or the reluctance of the US to escalate the conflict in North Vietnam for fear of drawing in the Chinese into the war. The Korean War is a classic example.
correct.
the colonial enterprise is not and has not been a "folly"
The British Empire was ultimately a failure because it was based on a wrong set of ideas (racial superiority, colonies serving the metropole). It collapsed like a pack of cards, exhausted after the Second World War.
You forget the main result of the British Empire was to make England rich. It got captive markets and captive suppliers and got richer and richer. From a poor, small state of 4 million in 1600, it became the industrial powerhouse with massive monopolies by 1900. This was not a failure
Well, that is history.
Rome steadily declined over hundreds of years, the British Empire collapsed shortly after Gandhi led thousands to the sea to make salt.
For a nation that controlled one-sixth of the World’s surface area as recently as 1936 to be a smaller economy than Germany or Japan must mean something - and its not catastrophic success.
Remember I used the qualifier “ultimately”, not “while it lasted”.
In contrast, the age of America is an age based on mutual respect, trade and equality. It is an “Empire of the Mind”, not an Empire based on jackboots, gunboats and preferential tariffs for cotton manufacturers in Manchester.
Remember I used the qualifier “ultimately”, not “while it lasted”.
In contrast, the age of America is an age based on mutual respect, trade and equality. It is an “Empire of the Mind”, not an Empire based on jackboots, gunboats and preferential tariffs for textile mills in Manchester.
The colonial system made sense up to a point. Maybe the US was quick to see that and the British weren’t. The British insisted on grabbing every rock they could lay their hands on - and they were strained financially.
Remember I used the qualifier “ultimately”, not “in its heyday”.
the British Empire collapsed shortly after Gandhi led thousands to the sea to make salt.
not quite -- the Dhandi march was in 1930.
Most Indians at that time wanted a dominion-status like Canada or Australia, but the British didn't do that
WWII had a big role to play in forcing the British hand
For a nation that controlled one-sixth of the World’s surface area as recently as 1936 to be a smaller economy than Germany or Japan must mean something - and its not catastrophic success. --> It was a success if you consider England's position in the 1600s and even NOW it is better off than a rocky island off the coast of Europe
Assyria was the first true superpower and now it does not exist. Persia is reduced to a shell as are the Mongols
What is more important are the ideas that an Empire leaves -- the Roman, the Persian ideals, the Arab influence, etc. all linger.
a 'successful' empire is measured by that, the lingering aspects.
Not really -- the British wanted India for its wealth, they got ahold of Australia that was basically unpopulated except for stone-age tribes
in Africa they wanted to connect the north to south and so have a great commercial enterprise
They were strained financially only after the war. Otherwise, the Empire was slowly moving to a Dominion-like status.
A more robust enterprise would have been strengthened rather than weakened by the war (e.g. US).
It beats me why the British did not establish a solid manufacturing base in India. They could have very easily defeated the Japanese if they made that effort.
There are two reasons why we are communicating in English - the British Empire and American led commerce. In many parts of Africa, this conversation would have been in French.
Not necessarily -- you are comparing apples to oranges -- the USA is a huge country, self-sufficient and was far, far away from the theatres of war -- except for Pearl Harbor it was not really attacked on home ground and could manufacture away with no fear of bombing.
The UK, on the contrary was a mercantile economy, right next to the theatres of operation. One part of the Empire, namely Canada came off pretty well from the war, but the others, India and Australia were also directly threatened during the war.
Britain's factory were irrefutably damaged by German bombing raids and they outsourced much of the large scale manufacturing to the US, destroying much of their economy. HOWEVER, the overall "enterprise" that was the British Empire came out of the war well enough economically compared to other "enterprises" except of course those in the Americas.
The British also realised that they had lost the opportunity to make India a dominion and that they could not morally keep India a colony when they had supposedly fought for democracy.
And of course the Indian freedom movement felt that keenly too! Remember that before WWI, the Indian civil movement was aimed at getting Dominion status but after that "war for democracy" the question was "why not democracy for us too?"
It beats me why the British did not establish a solid manufacturing base in India -- because the Empire's centralization was India provides the cheap, captive source and the cheap, captive market. The manufacturing was in England. This was changing somewhat under the Tatas but not enough.
That was the problem. So in effect, the British had to ship industrial supplies at great cost and under great danger to contain the Japanese. If the US had not entered the war on the side of Britain, British possessions east of the Suez would have been lost.
That is not correct -- Indians had no aim to see British Imperialism replaced by Japanese and the Indian army gave the Japanese a big defeat at Kohima
Also the Australian army was still there to head back home
British holdings east of India may have been lost, but not India or australia
I disagree.
Without the distraction of the US Navy and the US Military, the Japanese would have easily taken over sparsely populated Australia and India would have been the next logical step from Burma.
A certain Mr. Bose and the Indian National Army were not too displeased with the Japanese. (In fact, an international airport has been named after him).
>The Soviet Union collapsed because they persisted in promoting an unsustainable economic model, not because they feared the US.
True, but by itself it wasn’t enough to bring about the USSR’s fall. It was Reagan’s policies of confrontation which helped bring it about for example by Moscow’s arms buildup which increased the economic problems.
No Indian wanted to replace the yoke of the British which was light with the demonic yoke of the Japanese
Without the US Navy and US Military, the Indian army kept the Japanese at bay pretty well, thank you
Over time the Indian army would have smashed through into Burma, while the insurgent movement in Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia would have cut off the legs under the Japanese.
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