Well I guess I should have said it only makes sense to a paranoid nutcase such as yourself.
The Shah has been out of Iran for 25 years. Where’d all that money go? If they were poor b/c of US involvement, why aren’t they rich now that we’ve been out of the country for 25 years? Why are they still poor? A billion barrels at $30+ doesn’t amount to much when you spread it over 60-70 million people, even with no Shah.
You remind me of Ed Asner saying that the USSR was a murderous inefficient system b/c the US send White Russians to try to overthrow the communits in 1919 or thereabouts. The US is so bad that once it is involved with a country in any way shape or form it ruins it forever. Why look at the misery we inflicted on poor Japan!
SA spends hundreds of billions a year on US weapons? Care to cite? Some of the Bechtel and Halliburton contracts they get are to do things like build oil pipelines and maintain oil wells. A large conspiracy right there!
Yes, we will force Iraq to buy weapons from us at inflated prices. Right after we install a “stooge”. Let me guess, anyone in power in Iraq, even if elected by Iraqi people, will be a “stooge”. Circular reasoning at its best.
The US has a natural advantage pointed out in previous posts of being a continental power. There simply is no other 800 pound gorilla at the moment.
Certainly a truely unified Europe could be another player, but then there would be 2 800 pound gorillas.
China and India, well I’m not really up on India, but take the case of China and perhaps analogous to the situation in India. There are simply too many people too support. Gains in GDP go to consumerism and rising standards of living, and much less to global projections of power. In China’s case, you’ve got labor intensive light manufacturing being their competitive advantage. China is decades away from being able to export something like passenger cars to developed countries. Dell makes computers for the China market, but doesn’t export those computers to the US because the labor component in the cost base is simply too low. There isn’t value added margin to make a cost advantage over producing in the US.
As far as high tech, China is waaaaaaay behind the US. Now, perhaps in bio-engineering China has an advantage as the US prevents stuff like brain cell research. This gives China a comparative advantage. There are other areas of comparative advantage, but I can not readily think of any major fields of absolute advantage that China holds over the US.
I work for a multinational. My clients are multinationals operating in China. They are a) going after the domestic market, b) taking advantage of some comparative advantages in relatively low tech fields, c) off shore support fuctions taking advantage of cheaper labor to outsource.
I’m dubious that China can make it into the 800 pound gorilla club any time soon if ever. They have come a very long way in a very short time frame, but it’s one thing to have the most mobile phones in the world and another to have real base infrastructure.
Well? It is undeniable that the final form of the Soviet system was determined, in part, by the fact that the Bolsheviks, having seized power, had to fight a long, bloody civil war to keep it. Russia’s involvement in World War I began the demolition of such capital formation as the country had, and the civil war completed the process. By the time Stalin came to power, the national economy was reduced mostly to peasant farming. Industrialization had to be started over again, from the ground up, and we all know about what methods Stalin chose to do that. If there had been no civil war, or if the Western powers had not intervened in it, things might have gone very differently. Still not very well by our standards, but differently, and better. On the other hand, if the U.S. had stayed out of the Russian civil war, that probably would not have made much difference, so long as the British and the French were still willing to intervene.
China Guy: interesting stuff, but think about this: when Nixon made his trip to China, that was part of a game of playing China off against the USSR so as to weaken the both of them, IMO (no cites, just me trying to think logically). Granted, that was more pointed at weakening the USSR, but still, even thirty years ago China was considered important enough geopolitically to merit this kind of game.
And of course both China and India are part of the nuclear club.
But based on your feedback I’ll put the date at 2100 instead of 2050 for when these two countries become powerful enough to become the chief foreign policy worry of the U.S. Of course we’ll both be safely dead by then, so I guess I don’t have to worry about being wrong, eh?
I never said “hundreds of billions”. I said “billions”, and I was correct. Simply go to Google and punch in “Saudi Arabia Defense Budget”. The first cite gives you $16.3 billion in 1993.
The only country in the world that spends “hundreds of billions of dollar per year” in defense is the United States of America. Now, you go figure why?
You still think this is not Imperialism and Empire building?
How we are defining “empire” has still not been addressed. Classical definition involving outright political control or direct administration of territory outside a nation/state’s traditional sovereign boundaries? Or in a more modern sense of indirect control through economic exploitation and/or political influence? I would argue that the United States is neither. The U.S. is at its core an empire of ideal, or perhaps a “cultural empire”. A bunch of posts have seemed to identify capitalism as the centerpiece of U.S. empire, but capitalism is hardly unique to the U.S. - frankly about as ubiquitous as flies on poop. I question whether globalisation will allow for any one entity to be an “empire” of the sort these posts have described.
Defining an empire of ideals - U.S. is unique among all historic or contemporary dominant powers in that is grounded in no one particular religion, ethnic group, geographic or geologic region, or particular ideology. The only thing that unites the U.S. as a sovereign state is a cultural commitment to the free and comprehensive inclusion of every conceivable ideal an individual or group of individuals can espouse. While this commitment to inclusion renders such a state incredibly vulnerable, it also permits unprecedented resilience. With this in mind, coupled with the more than ample evidence (e.g. Michael Jordan jerseys in sub-Saharan Africa; India has a thriving Hollywood-style film industry; every business person in the EU speaks better English than the president of the United States; former Soviet republics basing their new governments on documents they refer to as “constitutions”) that U.S. culture has filtered down to every corner of the globe, leads me to doubt that the Empire of Ideals will ever come to an end. This particular die has already been cast, and there is no evidence that the people of this Earth really want to go back to domination and servitude as characterized by “empires” like Imperial China, Classical Rome or Victorian England.
Before someone starts stabbing me with jingoist or manifest destiny knives, re-read my words. I’m not talking about everybody being just like the U.S. I’m talking about everybody wanting to make their own untrammeled choices about how to best acheive what they decide their goals are. If it’s to be an Islamic republic? - then so be it, but it will be an Islamic republic chosen because people genuinely believe it is the best way to meet their cultural needs, not an Islamic republic composed by a minority of clerics trying to assert control over the masses through fear and intimidation. The United States is undoubtedly the most successful example of this type of self-determination in action.
Another factor in the longevity of U.S. “empire” is the plain fact there are no other candidates for the job. Rome was supplanted by the Goths; Byzantium by the Turks; the French, Dutch, Germans, and English all took turns. But by now, there is simply no other nation or state that contains an even remotely similar combination of population, geography, resources, technology, power projection, political stability, and institutional flexibility. Even were the U.S. to start to “slide” in the fashion many posts have predicted, we would have to go a LONG way before getting down to the level where anyone else could take over #1. And frankly, if the U.S. went down that far, the realities of globalisation suggest everyone would go down together, which would still leave the U.S. at the top of a decidely nastier and impoverished heap.
Finally, several people have gone all Chicken Little about fossil fuels. The conclusions drawn about production are reasonable and understandably of concern. But statements about the ubiquitousness of fossil fuel use and the lack of alternatives are total bunk. You cannot on one hand laud the explosive and rapid growth of technology and on the other hand bemoan reliance on oil. If there were a powerful market force inspiring the development of alternative sources of energy that were just as affordable as gasoline (e.g. all the oil fields in Saudi Arabia go dry!)? - then by God, the market would come up with an alternative, and right quick at that! The real problems come when entrenched businesses try to artificially control market forces and suppress innovation (innovation = competition).
To summarize, the U.S. is a different kind of empire than ever seen before, and therefore is not subject to the same forces that led to the demise of other empires. The resilience of the type of empire that the U.S. is, and the fact that there are no competitors for the position at present, would lead one to conclude that for all practical purposes, the U.S. empire (as defined in the terms above) will continue indefinitely. The only apparent scenarios to the contrary would be either planetary apocalypse or the expansion of said empire into a broader global framework.
Your assertion was that the Saudis spent billions on US weapons. You may or may not be correct, but simple reliance on the total Saudi defense budget does not support your contention. Weapons procurement is but one part of a military budget - it constitutes 20% of the US defense budget, for example.
And, of course, the Saudis can buy weapons from other countries besides the US.
kwildcat, just because the market is stimulated to come up with an alternative doesn’t mean it will. None of the alternative fuels or drives being looked at for motor vehicles – hydrogen fuel cells, electric batteries, ethanol – appear likely to be able to substitute for petroleum, in the sense of being able to move our cars around as quickly, conveniently and cheaply as gasoline does now. Further research and development along these lines might solve that problem – or it might not. Some technological problems cannot be solved. Just ask any engineer.
OK, BrainGlutton - and the earth is flat, illness is caused by demons, men will never fly, the sound barrier is impermeable, and the Apollo program was a hoax. Your statement about R&D nullifies your own argument. I asked just any engineer (my wife) and she informed me that the whole point of engineering, lo and behold, was to solve problems! The gall of that woman…
Oil
The foolish practice of paying the Muslims for Oil is the greatest threat to the US “Empire”. All the problems of the mideast can be laid at the foot of this silly policy. With a minimum of troops and a good dose of horizontal drilling, the Muslim Radicals can be completely defunded. The challange of Radical Islam is thus seen to be much smaller than it has appeared.
A prissy sense of propriety and a foolish addiction to the idea of private property should not be allowed to destroy the greatest civilization ever known.
Definition of Empire
The Roman Empire was a different sort of creature than either the British Empire which is different from the American Empire. The spread of western technology, the English-intensive internet, the spread of democracy, the globalization of business, all are manifestations of “American memes” taking over or influencing world culture and behavior. The American Empire is different from the British and Roman in that the US does not run up the US flag.
The economic rise of the Asian Tigers, the strength of the EU, the new growth of the Indian Economy, and the importance of the Oil Exporting Countries all point to a phenomenon that is not an Empire but the spread of ideas.
Blurry Edges
The British feel that the dominance of the US is an extension of British memes over the world as a whole. The Westernization of South Korea, Taiwan and Japan is a profound change that will never be removed, the clock will not turn back. The stamp of US influence will not be removed even if the US were to be sent into outer space.
Nuclear Weapons
The invention and proliferation of true Weapons of Mass Destruction eliminates the possibility of true empire-on-empire warfare in the “Traditional” sense of all-out war. The need for survival tends to push the world closer to a world government. The recent drift in the US away from the UN has logically frightened a good portion of the world community. A world government would tend to stabilize and possibly stratify the existing status quo. An American dominated world government could last centuries.
Of course that’s the point, but that doesn’t mean they can always do it. “Ah canna change the laws o’ physics, Captain!” In Robert Heinlein’s sf novel, Friday, the whole world has been revolutionized by a new kind of storage battery called a “Shipstone,” after its inventor. One Shipstone, about the size of a refrigerator, can store enough energy to serve all the needs of a skyscraper for a year. This eliminates the need for power-transmission lines, and eliminates the inevitable wastage of power that is lost in transmission over such lines. Ask an engineer why something so obviously useful as the Shipstone has never been produced, and he or she will tell you that this is just a “black box” technology. Based on our current understanding of physics, there is not even a theoretical way such a thing could be made to work. Same with spaceships that go faster than light; spaceships that move around without expelling any reaction mass; anti-gravity fields; teleportation beams; etc., etc., etc.
Now, short of some fundamental breakthrough on the order of “cold fusion” or “zero-point energy,” there appears to be an upper limit to the amount of energy that can be stored in an electric battery that runs a car, and that is much less than the energy that can be stored in a tank of gasoline. Therefore, an electric car can work, but its range, the miles it can go without recharging/refueling, is much less than that of a gasoline-powered car. Gas/electric hybrid cars go part of the way to solving this problem, but they still depend on gasoline. It’s the same with hydrogen fuel cells, or ethanol, or any other alternative fuel that engineers now consider plausible: It can be made to work, but it cannot be made to work as well as gasoline. You will not get a car that runs as fast, with as long a range, and as cheaply as a gas-powered car does now. That doesn’t mean that the age of automotive transportation is about to come to an end, but it does mean that everything we try to adapt to new circumstances will put additional strains on the system. Sooner or later, we all will have to get used to driving less often for shorter distances; and industry will have to get used to paying much more to transport goods, and all that added expense will be passed along to the consumers. How can we pay for all that and run an empire at the same time?
