Liquidating the Empire
A decade ago, Oldsmobile went. Last year, Pontiac. Saturn, Saab, and Hummer were discontinued. A thousand GM dealerships shut down.
To those who grew up in a “GM family,” where buying a Chrysler was like converting to Islam, what happened to GM was deeply saddening.
Yet the amputations had to be done — or GM would die.
And the same may be about to happen to the American Imperium.
Its birth can be traced to World War II, when America put 16 million men in uniform and sent millions across the seas to crush Nazi Germany and Japan. After V-E and V-J Day, the boys came home.
But with the Stalinization of half of Europe, the fall of China, and war in Korea came NATO and alliances with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan and Australia that lasted through the Cold War.
In 1989, however, the Cold War ended dramatically with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the retirement of the Red Army from Europe, the break-up of the Soviet Union and Beijing’s abandonment of world communist revolution.
Overnight, our world changed. But America did not change.
As Russia shed her alliances and China set out to capture America’s markets, Uncle Sam soldiered on.
We clung to the old alliances and began to add new allies. NATO war guarantees were distributed like credit cards to member states of the old Warsaw Pact and former republics of the Soviet Union.
We invaded Panama and Haiti, smashed Iraq, liberated Kuwait, intervened in Somalia and Bosnia, bombed Serbia, and invaded Iraq again — and Afghanistan. Now we prepare for a new war — on Iran.
Author Lawrence Vance has inventoried America’s warfare state.
We spend more on defense than the next 10 nations combined.
Our Navy exceeds in firepower the next 13 navies combined. We have 100,000 troops in Iraq, 100,000 in Afghanistan or headed there, 28,000 in Korea, over 35,000 in Japan and 50,000 in Germany. By the Department of Defense’s “Base Structure Report,” there are 716 U.S. bases in 38 countries.
Chalmers Johnson, who has written books on this subject, claims DOD is minimizing the empire. He discovered some 1,000 U.S. facilities, many of them secret and sensitive. And according to DOD’s “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country,” U.S. troops are now stationed in 148 countries and 11 territories.
Estimated combined budgets for the Pentagon, two wars, foreign aid to allies, 16 intelligence agencies, scores of thousands of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our new castle-embassies: $1 trillion a year.
While this worldwide archipelago of bases may have been necessary when we confronted a Sino-Soviet bloc spanning Eurasia from the Elbe to East China Sea, armed with thousands of nuclear weapons and driven by imperial ambition and ideological hatred of us, that is history now.
It is preposterous to argue that all these bases are essential to our security. Indeed, our military presence, our endless wars and our support of despotic regimes have made America, once the most admired of nations, almost everywhere resented and even hated.
Liquidation of this empire should have begun with the end of the Cold War. Now it is being forced upon us by the deficit-debt crisis. Like GM, we can’t kick this can up the road any more, because we have come to the end of the road.
Republicans will fight new taxes. Democrats will fight to save social programs. Which leaves the American empire as the logical lead cow for the butcher’s knife.
Indeed, how do conservatives justify borrowing hundreds of billions yearly from Europe, Japan and the Gulf states — to defend Europe, Japan and the Arab Gulf states? Is it not absurd to borrow hundreds of billion annually from China — to defend Asia from China? Is it not a symptom of senility to borrow from all over the world in order to defend that world?
In their Mount Vernon declaration of principles, conservatives called the Constitution their guiding star. But did not the author of that constitution, James Madison, warn us that wars are the death of republics?
Under Bush II, conservatives, spurning the wisdom of their fathers, let themselves be seduced, neo-conned into enlisting in a Wilsonian crusade that had as its declared utopian goal “ending tyranny in our world.”
How could conservatives whose defining virtue is prudence and who pride themselves on following the lamp of experience have been taken into camp by the hustlers and hucksters of empire?
Yet, now that Barack Obama has embraced neo-socialism, Republicans are about to be given a second chance. And just as Rahm Emanuel said liberal Democrats should not let a financial crisis go to waste, but exploit it to ram through their agenda, the right should use the opportunity of the fiscal crisis to take an axe to the warfare state.
Ron Paul’s victory at CPAC may be a sign the prodigal sons of the right are casting off the heresy of neoconservatism and coming home to first principles.
“…how do conservatives justify borrowing hundreds of billions yearly from Europe, Japan and the Gulf states — to defend Europe, Japan and the Arab Gulf states?”
I think it’s called “enabling.” The sooner America weans the world from its military teat, and weans ITSELF off the poisoned milk of the neocons, the better!
Are there any jobs for these soldiers when they come home?
Yet, the spending on the individual soldier (healthcare, post-enlistment training, etc.) is absolutely pathetic compared to the spending on hardware that will never get used.
True conservatives find the Vermont declaration strangely similar to globalist pimp Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.” The neo-con’s plan to assemble the “Ron Paul Tea Party” movement, by fraudulent means, into their dreams of global corporate fascism.
The socialist democrats will benefit from this republican split as they did in 1992, our reward being the Clintons for eight years.
The electorate will be left with the same choice, the lesser of two evils.
As a related FYI, here’s a link to Victor Davis Hanson fully revealing himself as an intellectual mess:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjA3YjY0NmM1YTBkNDc4MDVhMGUxNDViOWYxN2UxNTM=
Dick, have you ever seen an electoral paradigm wherein the choice was NOT the lesser of two evils?
Dick makes the same argument Glenn Greenwald recently made–that the libertarians and Bushcons/Neocons are nearly polar opposites, and hence the conservative movement will split.
In response, I made the point on my blog that the Bushcons, Neocons, Neoliberals and left-liberals are essentially all the same, hence there’s nowhere left for average Americans to go except towards the Ron Paul paleocon-libertarians:
“What post-Christian America amounts to is nothing but special interests, government-connected corporatists, ethnic rackets, government unions, welfare junkies and war profiteering “defense” industry fraudsters all attempting to “game” the American taxpayer, the Americans public, the American youth, and unborn Americans out of current and future resources. Probably a plurality of the country is involved in one government-connected swindle or another, and the end result is that basic government services — the public infrastructure, public safety, social safety nets and “three R’s” of public education either get incorporated into scam, or held hostage until the spongers and parasites get their “cut” first…MORE…
http://www.libertariantoday.com/2010/02/are-bushconsneocons-trying-to-game-tea.html
hate to cite Ralph Nader, but when you choose the lesser of two evils, you’re still choosing evil.
“Is it not absurd to borrow hundreds of billion annually from China – to defend Asia from China?”
As an American residing in Asia, I’d like to thank you for pointing out the obvious absurdity of the arrangement.
Let us also remember that for the privilege of allowing us to defend them from their enemies, Japan and South Korea have for decades allowed us to open our markets to their products while closing theirs to ours, thus helping us rid ourselves of the nuissance of having a manufacturing base.
Nothing much I can add except, “Amen, brother Buchanan!”
Peace be with you.
I agree, but I will be long in my grave before the either party accepts the need for such obvious measures…..unless, of course, China employs their financial leverage to insist.
if all politcs round the globe would read this article every morning we’d live in a much better world. thank you.
“But with the Stalinization of half of Europe, the fall of China, and war in Korea came NATO…”
The author need to learn the history of XX century:
1. NATO was established on 4 April 1949
2. Korean war began on 25 June 1950
3. Warsaw Pact was established on 14 May 1955
Don’t rearrange causes and effects! It was American Empire who began the Cold War.
What about the danger from forces out to harm the USA. All day anfd night men and women come on the radio and Fox news saying we may be attacked and our vital interests abroad may be taken over by fanatical Islamists. Putin and the Chinease need to be contained and only a strong US military can insure that freedom will continue to exist throughout the land. It seems to me after reading this that we can still do what’s necessary much more economically. Eisenhauer warned against the military industroal complex. Once entrenched it seems to me that unless forced they won’t back away from the feeding trough
It’s apparent that today US is declining power and the victim of it’ s own imperialistic ambitions. The near future is going to be very interesting- arising Chinese, who are not aggresive untill one day, when they will be tired of Taiwan provokations…Arising European Union, which begins to realize that US is becoming too dangerous ally, and begin to show the door to US military bases,(as well as Japan), post- imperialist Russia, which is strengthening today and becoming more reliable ally than US for EU…Two lost wars, increasing rate of migration from Mexico, huge debt- so many problems for the Empire that forces us to conclude that very soon US is going to be just a regional power..
re: andy
” The author need to learn the history of XX century:
1. NATO was established on 4 April 1949
2. Korean war began on 25 June 1950
3. Warsaw Pact was established on 14 May 1955
Don’t rearrange causes and effects! It was American Empire who began the Cold War.”
Sorry the cold war was started by the Stalin, Politburo and the apparatchiks…..
1. with going back on their words about the fate of eastern europe
2. closing down eastern europe and other areas
3.expanding communist subeversion activity all over the world with great succes i.e. China
4. It was american help that helped the soviets win the war and get respect, technology, economic respect and the naivette of US administration regarding the communists helped the Soviets greatly
5. the warsaw pact was merely an overt empty gesture to make the communist bloc look like voluntary participation group when we all know it was the soviets who held everything in their hands and the other nations were mere worthless token pawns unlike nato who were banding together for mutual support and initially was very weak.
Therefore, history shows that for all the faults of american foreign policy after the cold war, we did not start the cold war.
re: sid
sid, you also need to learn the history of XX century
closing down eastern europe and other areas – was done by west. Exactly “iron curtain” was invented in Sweden to “not allow communist propoganda”
It was american help that helped the soviets – yes, but… US aid was very importaint, but not dominating factor in victory. Read something about Stalingrad Battle, e.g.
pablos said:
“It was american help that helped the soviets – yes, but… US aid was very importaint, but not dominating factor in victory. Read something about Stalingrad Battle, e.g.”
Barely serious. Even if one can say that Lend-Lease wasn’t “the dominating factor,” which is highly dubious in itself, it’s damn near ridiculous to believe that the Soviets could have won without Hitler having to devote massive resources to his Western front. Seems to me only some unreconstructed Soviet hack could even argue that this *wasn’t* the dominating factor given all the statements Stalin and his cohorts made that same was absolutely essential for the SU to even just survive, much less win.
Indeed, Stalin and his flacks had even made similar comments about Lend-Lease alone, and I somewhat doubt that anyone can find a non-Soviet historian who would say that the Soviets could have won without same. At best they might have been pushed back to the Urals and maybe maintained themselves there just barely—as the Germans would have allowed and they were in fact just poised to do with the Germans on the outskirts of Moscow at one point—but that would still have been losing as it would have essentially meant ceding to Germany virtually all of the parts of the SU that had any real productive capacity.
So anyway if Lend-Lease wasn’t “the dominating factor” in Stalin’s victory over Hitler certainly same combined with the Western front was. Without both, and indeed perhaps without even either, Hitler would have fallen on the Soviet regime like a wolverine on a chipmunk. As the old military saw goes, amateurs talk tactics and strategy, professionals talk logistics.
And as to the US starting the Cold War as opposed to Stalin, one can hardly imagine a proposition worthy of a deeper horse-laugh. Of course one can play word games toying with what “the Cold War” was and thus when it “started” and who did so under this or that tortured definition or etc. But the manifest truth was that even if there were those in the West who didn’t realize it, there was a Cold War going on with the West from the very second Lenin took power that never abated in the least and indeed was openly (and gleefully) cited by Stalin as *the* reason he approved the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact given its nearly realized potential for seeing the West destroy itself.
But no, somehow … the subsequent Cold War that instead resulted wasn’t something desired by Stalin: Suddenly of *course* he only wished us the best. It was us and not his regime that resulted in conflict: After all it was just mere *happenstance* that the most fundamental and central ideological tenet of the Soviet regime was an utterly implacable, mortal hostility to democratic capitalism and not only the inevitability but indeed the desirability of constant conflict with same. And of no importance either that Stalin was such a leader who serially slaughtered millions upon millions of his fellow regime members who dared deviate even one molecule from any of its lesser tenets….
No no, wasn’t good old Uncle Joe.
Sheesh.
tgb
What amazes me is that we have all these troops around the world so that we “don’t have to fight the terrorists at home”, yet we purposely fail to close our borders. Under Bush, we were letting in 60,000 immigrants from Muslim countries each year and God only knows how many thousands who over-stayed visas they never should have had.
Bring our troops home and protect the borders.