Mantus

Well here is something from a website I discovered a while back called Billmon. A well made point and with style. Tell me what you guys think.


Politician Speaks Truth, Press Outraged

A political gaffe, they say, is when a candidate accidentally tells the truth. I don't know about the accidental part, but Howard Dean seems to have met the latter test when he mentioned the disagreeable truth that empires -- even red, white and blue ones -- don't last forever.

But it's Time's story, so I'll let them tell it:

Two weeks ago, while campaigning at a Stonyfield yogurt factory in New Hampshire, the would-be Commander-in-Chief suggested that America should be planning for a time when it is not the world's greatest superpower: "We have to take a different approach [to diplomacy]. We won't always have the strongest military."

Such comments could come back to haunt Dean. If there is a central political reality in post-9/11 America, it is this: Voters won't be willing to listen to a candidate's ideas on the economy or any other domestic issue unless they are first convinced that he or she is a credible, competent guardian of national security.

Now "credible, competent guardian of national security" is actually Timese for "a president ready to bomb countries back into the Stone Age on a semi-regular basis."

Which is roughly similar to the Rumsfeldian definition of diplomacy: "a threat or ultimatum backed by the use of overwhelming military force."

By those standards, Governor Dean does seem to have violated the modern media rule of thumb: Anyone who has any hesitations about starting wars in the Middle East is automatically unfit to be president.

Of course, I don't literally know what Dean literally said -- Time isn't known for its careful and contextual use of quotations.

But if the governor was trying to say that imperial overstretch usually brings imperial ruin, and that excessive reliance on military power tends to be self-defeating over time, then he's definitely on the right side of the history, if not the Washington punditocracy.

Op cit.: Machiavelli's The Prince; Clausewitz's On War, Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly, Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

And here is a very interesting article that points out some of the ominous parallels between the neocon conception of national security and the policies pursued -- with disastrous results -- by Kaiser Wilhelm's German Empire.

In the Kaiser's case, obsession with military strength overwhelmed diplomacy (in the non-Rumsfeldian sense). This turned allies into enemies, creating a fear of encirclement -- and an even greater obsession with military strength.

In the end, national strategy became the servant of military power, instead of the other way around -- a condition Newt Gingrich apparently would like to replicate here. Empires may die, but stupid ideas are immortal.

However, Governor Dean seemed to have the British, not the German example in mind: a slow, lingering death, rather than a quick, if painful, suicide.

The idea that the American empire might die a natural death isn't an easy thing to face. It's too much like reflecting on our own deaths. We're conditioned psychologically to avoid such thoughts, which can induce an almost overwhelming sense of existential despair -- much like watching Fox News.

But there it is: Empires don't last forever. And if you've been keeping up with not-so-current events, you may have noticed that their shelf lives keep getting shorter and shorter:

- Rome: 700 years, give or take

- Ottoman: 500 years, ditto

- Spanish: 300 years

- British: 200 years

- German: 100 years

- Soviet: 70 years

If you think about how those empires died, you'll see immediately that we could do a whole lot worse than the British, who managed to liquidate theirs quickly, relatively peacefully and with a minimum of hard feelings.

The Brits, however, had a lot of experience in the empire business, and a healthy appreciation for the art of diplomacy. They also didn't have Newt Gingrich.

Shrewd diplomacy also allowed the Brits to build their empire on the cheap. So did a 100-year head start in the Industrial Revolution. But once the other European powers (and us) caught up, the going got a lot tougher; the economic burden a lot heavier.

We've only beginning to face the long-term economic consequences of our own imperial project. Will 21st century Americans be any more willing to pay those costs than 20th century Brits? How many wars will they be willing to fight? How many countries will they need to "pacify"? If the British experience is any guide, there will be plenty of both.

And if America gets tired of carrying those burdens? Well, the problem with being an empire in decline is the same problem with being a fading movie star: On the way down you have to deal with all the people you pissed off on the way up. Somehow I'm guessing our imperialists won't handle it as well as the British did.

If you want an idea of what that could mean down the road, check out this piece on the op-ed page of today's Wall Street Journal:

Euro Shield

With the Cold War behind us, the key question of international politics, as seen by the French political and administrative elite, is this: Now that there is no military threat to Europe from the Soviet Union, or anyone else, how to contain the US?

In this logic, the euro must become an alternative, or co-reserve currency alongside the dollar. This would deprive the US of its "soft power" and, to an appreciable extent, of its free ride in the world economy.

After all, the special international role of the dollar permits the US to run staggering trade deficits and to escape the balance of payments discipline that holds all other nations in check. This, it is believed, boosts America's ability to finance military and political power beyond its real means.

A primary goal of French and European foreign policy is therefore to shift portions of the foreign-exchange reserves of the world into euros.

I would submit that this isn't the kind of national security challenge that can be handled by sending in the 4th Armored Division. And America is going to be facing a lot more of them as the century goes on.

Maybe it's because he's a doctor, and more comfortable with the harsh realities of aging and death than the rest of us. Or maybe it was just a juicy sound bite for the New Hampshire anti-war vote that backfired onto the pages of Time magazine.

But either way, Governor Dean seems to have grasped a rather important point about protecting national security in an age when military hegemony is likely to prove very expensive, very fleeting, or both. The media are the ones with their heads in the sand, not Dean.

Actually, I'd say the media has its collective head wedged firmly in another dark place -- the same one so many of its stories seem to emerge from.

But I'm trying to clean up my act.

Posted by billmon at April 29, 2003