Analysis:
The 21st Century: Opus Four
That the neo-conservatives used a national tragedy to bring about change is unarguable. That their effort has been successful is beyond question: America today is a neo-conservative construct in many ways. The economy has been transformed through a diminishing presence of government in the social service of America at the same time it looms large in the domination of the agenda of nations. Even those places in the world that reject American leadership as it now poses cannot avoid the consequences of the new and aggressive manner in which the United States poses militarily.
In terms of economics, the progressive use of world capital markets in the service of American needs that exceed its revenues from domestic taxation have slowly and inexorably re-aligned the geography of interdependencies. China is the most striking example: although its long-standing policy of enforcing an undervaluation of its currency has, for more than a decade, drained liquidity from other nations, it has been only during the Bush Administration, which has run massive federal budget deficits, that the dollars being drained from the United States have found an open channel for return by providing the funds to finance those excesses of spending over revenues from taxation. Absent the magnet those Chinese reserves of dollars have in returning to America as lendable funds, and the impact of those domestic trade deficits would have been considerably less, particularly on the outflow of American jobs to overseas markets, although that process had been on-going for some years, simply because of the undervaluation of the yuan.
But while the neo-conservatives have been wildly successful in implementing their agenda, the long-term goals that agenda has been designed to promote are far less certain in outcome. In the first three parts of this series, the agenda was set forth, presenting it as a plan whose implementation literally forces the rest of the world to parallel American neo-conservative methods and policies or be left crippled by American dominance of global trade and the military might to enforce that dominance. Critical to the neo-conservative model is the United States military, which must fully and effectively cooperate. As noted in Part One, Part Two, and Part Three of this series, that key alliance between the policy implementers and the military enablers has gone so far as a full and comprehensive document at the Pentagon, reported by The Wall Street Journal, which sets forth the specifics of how the U.S. armed forces will participate in bringing about a 21st Century that achieves the neo-conservative objectives.
It is insufficient for those shocked or otherwise opposed to the neo-conservative plan for American empire to claim that it will not work merely because such long-range and detailed plans never do. The ambition of the plan, as set forth in the previous parts of this series, poses to reshape the world, the alliance structure of the United States, and the course of social, political, and economic development in virtually every nation-state on Earth. If such a plan goes awry for one reason or another, the failure will be more than a passing phase in future American history; it will, instead, be the beginning of a world entirely different from the one for which the neo-conservatives planned, as well different from the one planned by those opposed to the neo-conservatives. As the neo-conservative Francis Fukuyama described it, the "end of history" might well be nigh.
Twilight Scenarios
The documentation produced by the Project for the New American Century, and particularly the Pentagon document that specifies both domestic military and geo-political economic structures arising from the neo-conservative agenda, provides a sense of certainty about how events will proceed over the coming years and decades. Consequences will necessarily proceed from actions taken by the United States, and responses of both allies and adversaries will follow predictable, even inevitable, paths. While the documents do not address irrational responses by others, the sense of what constitutes rational response is narrow, and the consequences of any given response are well understood and always within the model's scope of readiness. It is in this way that the plan may have its deepest flaw: by setting a course that is already beyond rectification, consequences gain magnitude in ways that neither the political nor the military spheres of influence may be able to predict, much less manage while still maintaining the underlying goal of progressive American empire. What follows are examples of speculative scenarios that could derail empire while preventing a reasonable alternative course from being available.
Iran
The Middle East is, and has been throughout history, a powder keg of rival interests vying for geographic, religious, economic, and resource-control position. Over the millennia, small and giant armies have clashed in the cradle of civilization, empires have come, stayed for a while, and been driven out. The land is harsh, even as some of it is enormously valuable for its reserves of oil, and this resource will become even more worthy of violence as the world reserves of petroleum are depleted over the next half-century.
Iran is in the later stages of becoming a nuclear state, the third in the region to seriously attempt this transformation. Israel came first, with a successful, secret program that has now yielded a respectable stockpile, the very existence of which the Jewish State denies even as every country on Earth knows better. The second nation to attempt to build nuclear weapons was Iraq, starting in the 1970s. That country's program ended when Israel obliterated its production facilities in an aerial bombing raid at the beginning of the 1980s. The third country is Iran, which learned from the destruction of the Iraqi Osirak facility to conduct its program in hardened, underground bunkers that can withstand even a robust aerial assault with sophisticated, highly destructive, conventional weapons.
Even as the United States postures with a hint of military threat, all eyes are on Israel to destroy the facility. Even the Europeans, trying as they are to broker a means by which Iran can provide verifiable assurance that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, knows at this stage that nothing short of a bombing raid can stop the Iranians from becoming an openly declared nuclear state, one with its own ambitions of empire, considerable leverage through its oil reserves, and a far-from-fledgling capability in intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
Unfortunately, Israel may not have the conventional weaponry to destroy the Iranian facility and thereby set Iran's nuclear ambitions back for the foreseeable future. In fact, despite the United States propaganda about its own conventional, so-called "bunker-buster" bombs, highly effective generations of such weapons—models that could go deep enough and deliver enough kinetic energy to massively breach Iran's underground complex—are probably not in the arsenal at this time.
That leaves Israel with only one viable option if it wants to ensure the destruction of the Iranian nuclear program. Although Israel can certainly use conventional weapons to deliver massive damage to surface and even much sub-surface infrastructure at the Iranian nuclear weapons production site, to deliver the program-stopping blow, it would have far higher probability of success by using at least one warhead from its own nuclear arsenal.
Should this happen, Israel would earn the condemnation of a grateful world, even as it sustained attacks from a humiliated but militarily rather capable Iran. Fortunately, Iran has few friends, although it has a considerable number of dependents for its oil, and the price shocks in global petroleum markets would far exceed any lasting military conflagration. The United States, Europe, and China have all been harmed economically by recent surges in oil prices, and these were not even comparable in real dollars to the sky-high levels oil attained in the last Arab oil embargo of the early 1970s. With national economies as fragile as they are right now, the price shocks resulting from Iran striking out economically would be devastating; and the American economy would be spared none of the recession-inducing damage, as both businesses and consumers, unable to rapidly re-assemble expenditures away from fossil fuel-dependent lifestyles and production methods, withered under the staggering oil prices.
China
China is not ruled by stupid men. Its saber-rattling at Taiwan is largely for both domestic consumption and for longer-term positioning with respect to influence in world affairs. Should Taiwan declare its independence, however, China would be presented with the problem of having to follow through with military action consistent with its belligerent words. Although no one knows for sure, Taiwan is part of a nuclear axis that encompasses Israel and other nuclear states, and China would attack Taiwan at the risk of profound destruction visited upon its own cities. This would be especially true if China were to use its overwhelming forces against Taiwan, the classic scenario in which an outgunned nation uses its ultimate force. This possibility leads to the interesting scenario of China choosing, instead of a massive assault, to institute a military blockade of Taiwan.
While the United States for several generations has posed as an ally of the break-away island, its political and economic support of Taiwan has waned in favor of closer ties with the mainland. As the neo-conservatives see it, this is entirely consistent with long-term interests of the United States in the 21st Century, in that the relationship between America and the People's Republic of China will grow into a military alliance that parallels the deep economic alliance the two huge nations already have.
This would, however, run at odds with some hard-line interests in the United States that would see China's attempt to strangle Taiwan as a revival of the Cold War, with a Communist state trying to wreck a democracy. Few in the United States care in any event, and Taiwan's openly committed allies around the world are few. And that puts Taiwan essentially in the same position it would have been in had China attacked with the full force of its military.
If Taiwan does, indeed, have nuclear weapons, it will undoubtedly lay waste to Hong Kong, thereby crippling not just the financial nerve center of China, but arguably one of the critical nodes of global financial trade. While a bit of justice might be seen in the annihilation of the personal banking system of China's corrupt gerontocracy, the consequences on the world's financial markets would be staggering and would touch deep into the pockets of the United States, which has become wholly and almost irrevocably dependent upon the free-flowing loans from China to finance a significant portion of its year-over-year deficits that are funding the neo-conservative transformation of both America and the world outside of America. In that way, then, a small country like Taiwan, either by deliberate calculation or foolhardy bravado, could throttle the money wellspring of the neo-conservative agenda.
But if Taiwan were the only problem that could arise from Chinese ambitions, there would be little to worry about, since a rough stalemate may very well continue for years between the giant and its rebellious province. Perhaps more troubling has been the recent escalation of rhetoric between China and Japan, the heated words coming mostly from China, which is using the pretext of admittedly awful, but nevertheless long-ago, offenses against it by Japan to make for some political mileage at home and some further political leverage at the United Nations. China has no desire to see Japan end up securing a potential new seat at the U.N. Security Council, and it also does not want recent, tentative moves toward re-militarization in Japan to become too serious. However, Japan has considerable economic power, and China could end up suffering severe punishment should Japan elect to quiet the Communist state down with a lesson in how years of China’s printing extraordinary excesses of yuan to peg its exchange rate could come back to haunt it.
If Japan so chose, it could put China in a terrible position from which a military option might appear viable. The United States would then be in an awkward position: under the neo-conservatives, the U.S. has demonstrated consistent inability to achieve diplomatic solutions to crises; thus, it would be forced either to do nothing or to resort once again to its military. In the latter circumstance, it would have to choose between an old, reliable ally in Japan and a new, powerful ally in China. Either option would be highly undesirable. While the United States simply cannot function without the financial help of China, neither can it afford to abandon Japan, which provides no small percentage of the funds that both the public and private sectors in this country borrow every year.
Hence, a stable, if unfriendly, situation between China and Japan will depend upon forces beyond the United States, but the success of those stabilizing interests will impact the American economy to an untold magnitude.
Economic Collapse and a Military Coup
Disturbingly, several years ago a fictional piece about a coup d'état by the United States armed forces was written by a military officer, and that work earned an award conferred by other military personnel. That such a concept would be openly offered by a standing military officer is troubling in and of itself, given the high value placed upon loyalty to civilian commanders by the U.S. military. That the story was honored by other armed forces personnel is of even greater concern; but it comports with other surprising signs of erosion of fealty to civilian command. The 2004 Presidential Election saw a decidedly strong, anti-Bush Administration stance taken on occasion by the Army Times, an unofficial publication widely read by both rank-and-file as well as higher military personnel.
Even though some fringe groups on both the Right and the Left have long warned of an impending military take-over of the U.S. government, among people better grounded in reality, that prospect is far-fetched to the extent of being unimaginable: it has never happened before; in fact, it has never come even close to happening before; therefore, it will never happen.
But the world is different, now. The United States is in the precarious position of running massive federal budget deficits that are funded by a continuing flow of capital that is earned by foreign interests through their imports to the United States. On the surface, this use of foreign investment can be blamed on the low savings rate of Americans, but that is a simplistic and worthless perspective. Essentially, by purchase low-priced imports, Americans actually are saving money, and that money is being deposited in the foreign reserves of other nations, which then—like any bank—lend a sizeable proportion of those funds to borrowers, in this case the federal government of the United States. In lieu of interest on these savings accounts, Americans are realizing compensation through the lower prices they pay for the imports they purchase. They reclaim the principal in these accounts by living in a situation of permanent leverage, both as households and as a nation.
This is how a banking system works, but it does so through heavy, sustained, and highly effective regulation by a central bank, which oversees the solvency and integrity of each and every member bank in the system. On the global scale, no such regulatory mechanism exists either to regulate or to coordinate, so the global system is left to the geographically limited management of nation-states, the weak oversight of such bodies as the G-8, and—most importantly—to the self-interests for profitability and survival of the member central banks in the system.
If this enormously complex structure were unable to manage a destabilizing crisis like one of those summarized above, the U.S. economy would rapidly feel the effects; and to say that they would be dire would be an understatement of grand magnitude. The inability of the United States to secure its borrowing needs at a series of Treasury auctions is unlikely: the Treasury will simply continue as it has recently in forcing the debt instruments off into private hands to handle as they can; but that means of raising capital has its limits, anyway; and if the world capital markets are simply incapable of or unwilling to provide all of the money the government needs, the system will break. The federal government will be forced to slash its budget to an extent that even the neo-conservatives could not abide because of the political backlash against them. The only temporary out they would have is if the Federal Reserve were to start printing money far in excess of the real growth rate of the economy, but this would induce a swift hyperinflation, since the past four years of excess money supply growth has already begun to show up in rising price levels. Boxed in by economic events uncontrollable and by what could turn into wholesale loss of confidence in and possibly rebellious actions by certain political and activist segments within American society, the United States military might have to step in to restore order.
The problematic part of this scenario is not the coup, itself, but the fact that the Pentagon is fully engrossed in the neo-conservative plan for American empire. That would mean the temporary take-over would be marked by something less than unanimity in the domestic military posture, for on one side would be that faction of the military dedicated to operationalizing global plans of neo-conservatism, and on the other side would be the faction that seeks a return to a far more traditional, if less ambitious, American political/military culture. And even though the Pentagon's neo-conservative hawks would rule the day in the short-run, a smooth transition back to civilian control of government would be less than assured as schisms within the armed forces could begin to emerge and disrupt a monolithic posture that would be critical to social stabilization and swift re-establishment of constitutional bindings.
One way or the other, though, the neo-conservative agenda would be ruined as the world's nations unraveled from each other into alliances that did not include the politically crippled and militarily pre-occupied pretender to empire in the United States.
Epilogue
The United States might well be the great empire of the 21st Century. Naysayers and doomsday merchants notwithstanding, the neo-conservative project for the new American century could work, and it could work according to plan. As the United States shifts away from a social services society with emphasis on the production of consumer goods and toward a global power society with emphasis on the production of military/industrial goods, the other nation-states of the Earth could very well assume their roles properly, with Europe following suit to engage a friendly but contentious arms race, with China fully allying itself with the United States to carve up the world into de facto economic colonies, and with none of the minor players having the resources or the wherewithal to commit some grave miscalculation based upon a self-interest that would cause collapse of the world economy and that of the United States.
Twilight scenarios could be just as improbable in reality as they appear in print; and the outcomes of the neo-conservative plans could be just as favorable in reality as they are presented in print.
It remains for the reader, then, to decide which way to believe the future will turn and in so deciding, find comfort or fear in contemplating what lies ahead.
In the gathering night of Empire, the Dark Wraith has spoken.
Go to The 21st Century Opus 1 Opus 2 Opus 3 Opus 4
Published 4/25/2005 02:53:00 AM
<< 20 Comments Total
Good morning, Dark Wraith.
It remains for the reader, then, to decide which way to believe the future will turn and in so deciding, find comfort or fear in contemplating what lies ahead.
You know what I think.
It's likely long past the time when any homegrown twilight scenarios would be anything more than the distant twinkling of a fading star, but one must carry on trying nonetheless. Or maybe that's just my Baggins complex talking.
Shakespeare's Sister plows onward.
NeoCon Crusher tips his hat to Dark Wraith.
I for one cast my lots against the Neo-Cons for the simple reason they seem willing to sacrifice the economic livilyhood and freedom of at least 2 if not 3 generations of Americans.
Their plan may work and GW Bush's great-great grandson in 2050 as leader of the new global empire could tell the members of the global American State "See, My great grand father and his pal Dick Cheney said it was best for America, and look where we are today....." "We all had to make a few sacrifices...no big deal..."
I think NeoCons have left something out of their equation while calculating their odds and global dominance; The American Citizens.
Ofcourse, one could argue that the NeoCons have considerd the American Citizenry and decided they will be easiest to control with less freedom and rule with religious undertones.
I personally believe in the True American Spirit and feel that The People will rise up against the NeoCons if they keep pusing as hard as they are. Especially as more Americans feel it in their pocket books.
The propect of a military take over of the United States is frightening if only for the simple fact that the Ordinary United States citiznes simply cannot compete with that kind of fire power.
I think too that after a while as our infrastructure continues to crumble and traffic gets worse people will demand public works projects that will also create jobs rather than all this overseas military spending.
Morning, all.
Thanks, Dark Wraith, for a very thought provoking and informative series of posts.
There is one possible flaw that I can see in the NeoCon blueprint for World hegemony, and it is a flaw that I think is shared by many, if not all the plans now being hatched in capitals around the globe. They assume that our current paradigm of a rapidly expanding, globalized economy is sustainable, and that giant military/industrial complexes will remain affordable as the 21st century plays itself out.
As oil continues to become more expensive, and as environmental factors such as global warming take their toll, the 21st century is likely to become a chaotic free for all, as peoples around the world battle to maintain their way of life in the face of expensive energy and shrinking resources. Under such circumstances, long range planning and strategy ultimately become futile, as nations are dragged into a tactical knife fight over resources, and are required to spend their energies finding new ways to reorganize their own economies.
The energy crisis and resource crunch are just as impossible to derail as the NeoCon plans now being set in motion, and it will be interesting to see what happens as these two unstoppable forces clash. My own feeling is that the NeoCon machinations are ultimately doomed to failure, and that their only significant result will be to exacerbate the energy and resources crises.
Disturbingly, several years ago a fictional piece about a coup d'état by the United States armed forces was written by a military officer...
My brain has gone momentarily blank as to what book or article you are referencing. Can you share any details?
Good morning, Mr. Goat. I'm glad you asked. I initially posted the article without the link to that story. I noticed the problem a few hours ago and re-posted the article with the link included.
The author, by the way, I believe was a deputy JAG at the time he wrote the piece. What has become of him since then, I don't know.
One way or the other, it's a sort of creepy piece, given that it is written through the narrative of a condemned man.
The Dark Wraith likes grim literature (but gets a bit weirded out when it involves military coups and executions).
The Dark Wraith wrote:
"Absent the magnet those Chinese reserves of dollars have in returning to America as lendable funds, and the impact of those domestic trade deficits would have been considerably less, particularly on the outflow of American jobs to overseas markets, although that process had been on-going for some years, simply because of the undervaluation of the yuan."
This sentence is tremendously unclear, incorrect, and difficult to understand.
When using "absent" as a conjunction in an introductory clause, the subsequent clause should not start with another conjunction like "and." The use of the past perfect tense in "that process had been on-going for some years..." is most commonly associated with a perfective point-in-time verb: in other words, something had been happening at the time that something else happened. In this long, convoluted, difficult and glaringly incorrect sentence, you manage to use several different tenses and moods (you should stick to one temporal point of view by using one tense).
I really like the substance of what you have to say and am requesting that you be more careful with your self-editing. In most instances, such careless writing doesn't affect the reader's ability to suss out what the author means; but in the sentence I quote above your meaning is very difficult to ascertain.
Here is what I think you may have meant:
"If those Chinese reserves of dollars had not returned to America as lendable funds, the impact of those domestic trade deficits would have been considerably less, particularly on the outflow of Amercian jobs to overseas markets. (It is important to note, nonetheless, that American job loss to China has been ongoing for several years, simply because of the undervaluation of the yuan.)"
I look forward to your writing and hope that you will be more clear in your grammatical constructions.
I thought grammar died out about 20 years ago...Do they even still teach it in school?
dveej, you might be a dying breed. Especially now that it is acceptable for the MSM to say stuff like "Fo schizzle ma bizzle" and "Can I get a what-what and a shout out to..." or "yo dog check your bling today..." or when the anchorman refers to a reporter in the field as "my peeps"....
No sir, I don't think they care too much about grammar and proper English. Since the MSM is geared toward a mass market, I think it is fair to say that the majority of America could care less what proper grammar is...they probably have never even heard of grammar.\
I forgot the rules of grammar around the 9th grade I think. We didn't even revisit them in college.
I still "feel" what the Dark Wraith was trying to lay down...and that is all that matters right?
Is grammar still important to anyone?
I read articles in MSM newspapers and magazines that are full of broken english.....I hardly notice anymore.
Good afternoon, dveej. If you have followed my blog, you might note that, as is the case with many print and online publications, several revisions of articles are posted as errors are found and corrected. The final copy often is one that is nearing sunset on the blog so that the archive stands as the final document.
Now, the word "absent" was not being used as a conjunction; it was being used as a second person, present tense verb: "Absent the magnet those Chinese reserves of dollars have in returning to America as lendable funds..."
The flaw had nothing to do with building a point-in-time "perfective," per se; the flaw was in building an overwraught adverbal clause where a compound propositional phrase would have sufficed:
"In the absence of the magnet created for those ex-patriated dollars by massive federal deficits, the impact of the domestic trade deficits would have been considerably less."
That is much clearer, and it avoids the overused abomination of parenthetical statements, which are so much literary Hamburger Helper, unnecessarily extending content within a sentence beyond the bounds available through devices like non-restrictive adjective clauses.
Thank you for visiting, and I certainly hope to see more of your commentaries here.
The Dark Wraith must now go to class.
Good afternoon, dveej.
In time, no doubt, the Dark Wraith will respond directly to your request, and I do not want to trample on his toes by addressing your critique of his grammar.
I would, however, like to note that the tenor of your post is quite curious, as was your decision to post your thoughts within this comment thread (as opposed to, say, emailing the Wraith directly). Grammar, as you are no doubt aware being an expert in said topic, serves several purposes, one of which is to assure clarity of communication, as you suggested. Another reason to utilize proper grammar is to demonstrate that one is well-mannered; good grammar is often identified as a show of respect, and, one might even say, politeness.
These concepts, however, seem to have escaped your notice, as you have chosen to take a rather snide and superior attitude with someone who does us all a great service in taking the time to share important ideas for consideration and discussion. Perhaps you are not, in fact, the grammarian you hope we would recognize you to be. My mother, who spent her life as an English instructor, taught me that grammar is not simply about speaking and writing well, but about speaking and writing with the proper respect your listener or reader deserves.
Shakespeare's Sister assigns dveej to write "I will not attempt to impress by being a snide little prick" 100 times on the chalkboard.
Shakespeare's Sister is right. I should have emailed the Wraith. My apologies.
Thanks for the updated link; I would not have figured that one out.
Mr. Shakes's comment reminds me of the brief discussion he & I had when he posted the Rolling Stone article about the coming of oil production decline and its implications upon American society. I have not read the New American Century work, but conclude from what I read here that they most likely assume that what has occurred prior in American society can be more or less perpetuated as needed with regards to resources.
That remains to be seen.
The other thing that bothers me most, and makes me wonder whether their ideas are really that tenable (even if they are plausible) is what all that does to Americans' concept of their society and their country.
Do we really want to be Rome redux?
I don't. I read the comment by Green Knight (I think?) about Strass's belief that we had to abandon Western Civilization, but how many Americans beyond the fundamentalists will agree to this?
(I know, a coup d'etat, or even an endless series of fixed elections and this question is moot, but absent that I don't believe it is.)
Now more than ever I can see why Ike warned us against allowing the creation of a permanent military-industrial complex!
- oddjob
What if one doesn't want to be part of an empire? An American Empire as you have portrayed it is the very antithesis of what this country was once about. What a poorly constructed sentence; I'm writing from the heart and not the head.
And to imagine, I gave up drugs and alcohol for this...
And to imagine, I gave up drugs and alcohol for this...
Perhaps that's why the Soviets never did?
- oddjob
Dear Dark Wraith,
Please don't think I'm dense, I just have never before tried to wrap my brain around these type of issues...
“it has been only during the Bush Administration, which has run massive federal budget deficits, that the dollars being drained from the United States have found an open channel for return by providing the funds to finance those excesses of spending over revenues from taxation.
This creates the picture in my mind that the dollars flow from us to China because of our trade deficit, and then back to us in the form of a loan from China as their govt buys our T-bills.
This sounds to me like a particularly evil circle game, that leaves the United States – (the govt, the people, what?) OWNED by China. So, if they decide to ruin us, (and I note that they have never repudiated the idea that they would like to export communism by force) - who ends up paying off the T-bills?? - > the US govt is already broke, that’s why they are borrowing. If the govt is broke, and we are forced to pay off the T-bills so that the world doesn’t stop lending to us so that we can continue to hold the world in the grip of our military so that we can continue to consume more than our share…..[watch the smoke rise from sb_gypsy’s ears] That sounds like the end of life as we enjoy it. In fact, it sounds alot like North Korea
~
"In the absence of the magnet created for those ex-patriated dollars by massive federal deficits, the impact of the domestic trade deficits would have been considerably less."
~
particularly on the outflow of American jobs to overseas markets, although that process had been on-going for some years, simply because of the undervaluation of the yuan.”
You are saying that if the US had not been borrowing as much as we are to make ends meet domestically – and to finance the military-, we would not have lost so many jobs overseas. I don’t get that.
The way I saw it happen: The Corporations, when they switched from [their customers being the entities that buy their product], to [their customers being the entities who buy their stock], used outsourcing as a way to cut payroll, thus seeming to save money on paper. They also gave up an enormous equity of training and employee loyalty, and discarded excellence in corp culture and systems. All to break and eliminate the unions, and lower the standard of living of the middle class; so that we can all be wage slaves. (my hubby works @ pratt&whitney and I hear about this issue all the time.) I would think that this motive would trump anything else, and the deficit spending be only the cream on their strawberries.
On the surface, this use of foreign investment can be blamed on the low savings rate of Americans, but that is a simplistic and worthless perspective. Essentially, by purchase[ing] low-priced imports, Americans actually are saving money, and that money is being deposited in the foreign reserves of other nations, which then—like any bank—lend a sizeable proportion of those funds to borrowers, in this case the federal government of the United States. In lieu of interest on these savings accounts, Americans are realizing compensation through the lower prices they pay for the imports they purchase. They reclaim the principal in these accounts by living in a situation of permanent leverage, both as households and as a nation.
At the ultimate cost of selling our children’s future to China? You can’t tell me that this bill will not come due sometime. Could they bring us down without collapsing the world economy? Only if they replace the dollar as the premier currency. I read somewhere, (and I don’t know if it’s true) that Murdoch of the clear channel has a chineese wife, and is in the process of moving his headquarters to China, near her relatives.
As the United States shifts away from a social services society with emphasis on the production of consumer goods and toward a global power society with emphasis on the production of military/industrial goods, the other nation-states of the Earth could very well assume their roles properly, with Europe following suit to engage a friendly but contentious arms race, with China fully allying itself with the United States to carve up the world into de facto economic colonies, and with none of the minor players having the resources or the wherewithal to commit some grave miscalculation based upon a self-interest that would cause collapse of the world economy and that of the United States.
So, what if Europe refuses to go along with this military buildup, thereby strengthening their civilian economy, while we choke in our own red ink? I see Europe right now preparing another mars mission, unveiling the airbus, and leading the world in green technology. They would not throw that away for a bunch of tanks?! Would they?
. . . . and China pulls the plug.
--SB_Gypsy
oops, sorry all, i couldn't make the italics work..
Good afternoon, SB Gypsy.
I must take your questions in some degree of measure because going through all of them in one responding comment would take up the better part of the book that I'll probably write about this someday.
To your last point, the neo-conservative model holds that Europe will be forced to enter the United States/China arms race out of sheer necessity. As I had pointed out in an earlier installment of The 21st Century, Europe is nowhere near energy independence, and it won't be for a long time to come. Even more important, though, is that, as the price of fossil fuel rises, so too will the prices of the alternatives to it. This is how markets work. Hence, even if Europe were to come to the conclusion, for example that it would be cost-effective to go to a Manhattan Project approach to nuclear fusion (terribly expensive from a research and development angle, anyway), the energy eventually so generated would rise in response to the rising cost of the old, substitute technologies of energy production that utilize petroleum and other hydrocarbon-based fuels.
Europe, then, cannot afford to let the Americans and the Chinese carve up the world: the sources of petroleum would be under the care, custody, and control of profit-maximizing economic adversaries; and far more widely, the trade routes for all manner of raw materials would be under the same care, custody, and control. No nation-state can long endure and prosper when the trade routes of the world are out of its hands. This was the whole point of the massive adventurism European nations did in the late Middle Ages and throughout the Renaissance: trade routes and the control of them were the top priority.
Perhaps you saw the movie last year, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. That British ship—as well as every other ship of every flag on the high seas and the coastal waters of the world—was there to create and sustain open channels of shipping so that trade could continue unabated.
The Germans before and during World War II spent enormous capital maintaining a fleet of submarines that did nothing more than sink hundreds and hundreds of merchant marine vessels, all to the end of choking off Great Britain and, to a lesser extent, the United States from free and open exchange of goods.
The Europeans would not for long be happy, peace-loving, and particularly open to treaties for access to trade routes. Far more cost effective for them would be to return to their old ways: use overwhelming military force to keep trade routes open and the sources of raw materials available.
This is the neo-con theory. The scary part is that it is logical. The frightening part is that our side of this future is already well underway. It is, then, not a matter of whether or not the Europeans will join the game, but rather a matter of when they will do so. The last thing the Europeans want to hear is that one awful word coming from our side of the Atlantic: "CHECKMATE."
The Dark Wraith has spoken, if only with regret about this degraded future.
It remains for the reader, then, to decide which way to believe the future will turn and in so deciding, find comfort or fear in contemplating what lies ahead.
Thanks for pushing the fear, buddy.
I was talking to a bush fan who was momentarily pissed about bush not signing something to save Terri Schiavo from being allowed to die. He's all grateful that we're over in the Middle Eastern countries of Afghanistan and Iraq. He says that this is making USA much safer by killing the terrorists overseas.
It was politely (ok ok, not really politely) suggested to him that he is still at an age that the military would probably be happy to take him. He could sign up as a weekend warrior. The recruiters could assure him that he would not be sent anywhere.
I am just shocked that he will not sign up because he's afraid they WOULD send him overseas to actually fight the good fight.
Yes, Old White Lady, I have run into my share of sunshine soldiers, as well. The rah-rah lasts just about as long as the boom-boom is well away from their cowardly backsides.
Perhaps Mr. Bush, himself, wouldn't be so gung-ho on the war du jour idea if, instead of zooming around Texas in his little fighter jet, he'd taken a couple of missions over North Vietnam, where he could have seen those "white telephone poles" zipping up the sky to blast his plane into fragments.
He might even have become a religious man at a much earlier time in his life, too. I knew more than one rather unreligious young man who, upon having his first experience with a round exploding a couple of inches from his face or his testicles, exclaimed, "JEEEZUS CHRIST!"
The Dark Wraith always likes to see men find God in small places.
I very much enjoyed your analysis of the neo-con interpretation and implementation of the 21st century. We live in interesting times.
My coin toss lands on this rim:
The Grand Scheme of the Arrogantly Sneering Straussites (ASS) should work if luck be adequately on their side. Chaos has a mind -- or absence thereof -- of its own.
BUT... if, in their conquring of military space and global trade routes and client state merger-acquisitions, they don't put sufficient energy into engineering that most critical domestic necessity -- adequate alternative energy -- theirs will be just so many tanks and jets stuck where they ran out of gas.
The chaos of a global entropic collapse will be so great that victory will likely go to those best conditioned by decades of scarcity to live without spoils.