Ensuring A New American Century

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Did we ever clear up the question of just why it was so important for USA to be the ultimate power in the universe?

 

Manifest destiny.

 

I would argue that your description of the 20th century is somewhat simplistic and ignores the difficulties and successes both Russia and the U.S. saw in the 19th centuries, which helped posture them for greater global success in the 20th century. Furthermore, your opening statement largely ignores the inherent advantages the U.S. possesses by virtue of geography--vast oceans that seperate it from its greatest competitors or aggressor states, generally close relationships with its closest neighbors (Mexico and Canada), vast resources (not just in terms of mineral resources but also in terms of things like arable land), vast territory relative to population, relatively mild climate through vast swathes of the country, and other benefits. These are significant strengths that are not going away any time soon. There are numerous other advantages the U.S. possesses--the U.S. has a very robust infrastructure (roads, airports, railroads, bridges, dams, ports, irrigation, etc) compared to most other states (especially many of the most populous and/or geographically large states on the globe, like Russia, which reportedly has hardly any infrastructure on the eastern 2/3 of its country) which grant the U.S. numerous benefits over other states in terms of maximizing the positive effects of trade, for instance. I don't mean to argue with your initial paragraph--only point out that a slightly different articulation of "how we got here" leads to a slightly different understanding of "where we might go." That is--if other countries can't overcome these advantages in the near future, even China, what actual decline in American hegemony are we talking about, exactly?

As you might deduce, I find notions of rapid and imminent American decline to be overexaggerated. But this is an interesting question and a popular question.

It is interesting that in your postulations regarding foreign policy, you do not (so far) really refer to anything outside of military power. My belief is that the U.S.'s foreign policy interests are currently better served through the application of what the policy wonks in DC want to call "soft power"--i.e., diplomatic pressure, encirclement of alliances, economic incentives, aid packages, etc. Especially if we pursue aggressive, long-term, imaginative solutions to things like Islamic extremism (using our military to "play whack-a-mole" across the globe doesn't seem to be doing much to arrest the influence of extremism, for instance).

Military power is extraordinarily expensive (both financially and politically) and I would argue, from recent experience, our national-level leadership largely lacks the experience, will, and nuance to utilize military power to its maximum capacity. I think this is linked to other things, like the fact few national-level politicians have military or even policy experience before they gain national influence, instead increasingly coming from essentially "political" backgrounds. It has not always been this way, but national demographics change, and it is reflected everywhere, including at the very top.

Furthermore, overseas fleets and bases, by their very nature, provide incentives for our allies to rely on the U.S. to defend their interests rather than using their own military or policy initiatives to defend themselves. While I fully grasp the advantages of overseas basing when it comes to projection of power (again, the U.S. enjoys massive advantages over, say, China and Russia when it comes to basing, transportation nodes and systems, power projection platforms, and depots across the globe), it is also expensive. It poses a clear danger in terms of entanglement.

It is easy for U.S. policy-makers to identify nearly everything that happens on the globe as somehow associated with U.S. national-level interests--especially because of our enormous amount of military, trade, and development-oriented alliances and agreements. Many things are in some way our interest, but a problem at our national level is that we lack clear goals, priorities, and appropriate resourcing for those goals and priorities (i.e., the essence of strategy). If everything is a priority, nothing is truely a priority. And our willingness to be distracted by the latest "crisis" is crippling to effective resolution of long-term policy initiatives.

Your last comment--"realistic expectations"--is all in the eye of the beholder, isn't it? For instance, the Bush administration really believed Iraq was going to be very different than it ended up being. And many many so-called experts were silent, and there were few dissenting voices, and none that were able to convince either the majority of the American people or the Bush administration themselves that they were wrong. Of course, now media, liberal, and academic types (especially the ones who had bad feelings in the pits of their stomachs in 2003 but didn't have the courage to say anything then) want to rewrite the past and argue that there was enormous, articulated, demonstrated opposition to the invasion of Iraq from the very beginning--but there really wasn't, not in February and March 2003. Some, but not much, and it wasn't influential. Not like it was later in 2003 and into 2004, when the buffoonery regarding WMD and intelligence came out, there were repeated missteps when it came to reconstruction, casualties rose, and Rumsfeld's arrogance, Bush's cluelessness, and Cindy Sheehan started battering the media every day.

More later...

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Noam Chomsky has some good comments on that. A lot of people want to dismiss him as an overly esoteric quack, but I find much of his commentary illuminating.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/04/us-control-diminishing-own-world

 

DR: HAHAHA! You do not know how true that statement is

I don't have an enormous hate on for America. I lived and worked with a variety of Americans while in Japan, and many of them became lifelong friends. However, as the years have marched on, I have grown more and more hostile to the country. It has not lived up to its ideals*, and more importantly has demonstrated an utter lack of respect for other cultures and countries, and so I'm less of an Amerophile than I used to be.

*no one can live up to ideals all the time, I know that, but it always seems to me that some Americans just ignore these huge, flagrant violations while presuming to judge the rest of the world. Motes and beams . . . .

 

I'm not even certain if you are being serious at this point. At this point your language is very similar to that used by socialists and communists in the '50s and '60s, except you are attempting to apply it to democracy and republicanism.

The U.S., NATO, the African Union, the UN, China, etc, promise these things all the time. What would be different this time?

Africa has enormous problems. Its problems, in some ways, mirror the U.S.'s strengths (Africa, for instance, lacks wide-spread or effective infrastructure, a significant population [let alone a population with high capital], or a resource base lending itself to domestic development). Domestic issues within the African states dominate int'l discussion of what African states can do or not do, but in reality, the geography, resources, and even zoology of the continent are probably most responsible for degrading the ability of African states to become stable and/or sustainable states.

Immensely expensive. It will cost trillions, if not multiples of trillions, to actually physically colonize other worlds, and time-space-energy issues are extraordinarily problematic.

My personal suspicion is that we'll not be capable of colonizing other worlds until the 22nd or even 23rd century (this pre-supposes that at some point the governments of the world see space exploration as a useful enterprise again--which, currently, they do not).

Why would African states reject China (who is currently far more involved in resource extraction from Africa than we are, and which is profitable to the Africans) in favor of the U.S.? What can the U.S. do to win African elites to the side of the U.S. without infuriating Chinese, Russian, or European elites--whose relative goodwill, frankly, matters more to U.S. economic hegemony than the goodwill of African elites? Why would states who lie within ballistic missile range of China, not to mention fixed-wing aircraft range or aircraft-carrier range, reject China in favor of the U.S.? Not for propagandaistic or moralistic reasons. Perhaps for economic or even military incentives--but not only are China's markets larger than ours, they are closer (so the costs of business [i.e., transportation] are lower).

Is it a rise, or have they carved out a niche?

Possibly, but unlikely. Russia is the largest single exporter of oil and natural gas to the European Union--and many of the regional, ex-Pact allies of Russia are also energy suppliers. Would the U.S. kick Canada, Mexico, Saudia Arabia, or Venezuala in the teeth, for the purposes of political expediency? (These 4 states are the states from which the U.S. gets the majority of its oil [which we don't provide ourselves]). Heck no. The U.S has to keep the trains running, so to speak. And so do France, Germany, and the UK. Obviously, the U.S.'s allies in NATO and other organizations would not appreciate the U.S.'s interference in matters that would likely affect their costs as well as supply. Furthermore, U.S. decision-makers are well- ware that Russia has historically been obsessed with regional hegemony and the security of its borders (isn't this what the 2008 invasion of Georgia was all about?). Meddling with the ex-Soviet republics which ring Russia, without a very specific and limited objective in mind, is a recipe for overt conflict.

Note, so far, I haven't really spoken about Turkey. Turkey, as always, is an interesting state on the border between Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, with careful relationships to a variety of regional players, including the U.S. They have the potential to be extremely influential and powerful, as they have been in the past (i.e., Ottoman empire), but have been stuck, in the last century, playing a careful balancing game between numerous interests...

More later...

 

I know this was a small part of your post dogsoldier, but I just had to comment on it:

My first question is if you are asking about colonizing planets within our solar system, like Mars, or colonizing planets outside of our solar system.

I think the 22nd or even 23rd century is an extremely optimistic estimate for planets outside our solar system. I think we're talking about millenia. First of all, keep in mind that there is currently no available technology that exists that would allow the arrival at another planet outside our solar system in the span of a human life. Even if we had the means of traveling at 10% the speed of light - a speed that is a few thousand times higher than anything we've produced at this point - the nearest star system is still DECADES away.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume we figure out some way of travelling fast enough and far enough to make it a reasonable trip. Who is going to fund such a trip? That it's resource-intensive is obvious, but there's no return on investment here. If you build a ship to send to another solar system, you're going to spend all this time and resources, and then you'll never see it again. Who is going to pay for it? I hesitate in saying "never", because that's a really long time, but to assume these basic problems can be overcome in the span of a couple of centuries seems overly optimistic.

Now for something like Mars, I think that foreseeable techonolgical advances within the next century would make it possible. But again, what financial incentive would there be to colonize Mars? I can't imagine there would be some type of resource on Mars that would be so valuable that it would outweigh the cost of retrieving it. There has to be a reason beyond "being able to do it" when you talk about living on another planet.

 

To give humankind a "plan B" option in case massive damage to our environment due to mega-natural disasters, nuclear fallout, aesteroid impact, etc... nuclear fallout being the most likely. IMO.

 

What is habitable about Mars aside from terra firma though? To actually make another world habitable for humans in terms of atmosphere et al (or will everybody be fitted with moon suits? If so, that will hamper soccer playing significantly) boggles the mind in terms of likely expenditures. My quick calculations put the figure at approximately 100 mega-tri-gazillion dollars -and that's just for start up costs.

 

Well, if we stick to the "foreseeable technology" spectrum, I'm thinking that we'd have something like bubble towns on Mars. You wouldn't have to change the atmosphere of the entire planet - just the parts that are in the bubble.

You could even place some type of mirror/light amplifier in orbit around the planet to heat up these bubble towns. (I have no idea what the average temperature on Mars is, but I'm guessing it's pretty damn cold.)

The main problem I'd have is that I don't see how it really represents a Plan B for any of the disasters that could occur on earth that Blades references. One thing that Mars seems to lack is arable land. I don't think you can grow food there. And if you are talking about making bubble farms.... well then you pretty much are talking about changing the entire atmosphere of the planet. I just don't see how you could make Mars self-suffucient. (Water isn't too big of a deal - there does appear to be quite a lot of water locked in the soil on Mars, although you'd never know it by looking at the surface.) It's just that I don't know how we'd feed any significant number of people over a great length of time.

I think it would take some getting used to - just being there for any length of time. At first, you'd feel superhuman, as the gravity on Mars is less than half what it is on earth. It's strong enough so that you're not bouncing around like on the Moon, but still weak enough that you'd be able to lift double the weight that you could on earth. Of course, within a few months you're muscles would atrophy, and you'd officially become a Martian - and watch out if you actually want to return to earth sometime after that.

 

A great opening to a great post, I did leave out a lot of factors leading up to America taking up the reigns of the Earth. I was primarily trying to focus on what America needs to do in the 21st century, as opposed to a detailed focus on historical American foreign policy or even on foreign policy at all. I went off on something of a tangent and lost the main focus of my post half-way through, which is never a good thing. You're absolutely right though, we have to look at our history in order to determine our future.

I think you're right here and I did somewhat overlooked the importance of "soft power." Soft power is absolutely important, however, is diplomatic pressure actually useful if you do not have the military and/or economic might to back it up? Otherwise you have no real means of acting on the pressure you are exerting, and the other nations of the world know it.

Military power is expensive, but can still be managed quite well into the budget. Also, the military is one of the very few things that the federal government actually should do. Though instead of compulsory military service, which would be costly, we could simply restrict the franchise for voting, running for office and being a member of the media to veterans. Another alternative would be to simply require all citizens exercise their fundamental right (and responsibility) to keep and bear arms. I agree with you in that those who are in leadership positions are not qualified to be making the policy decisions that they do.

Absolutely, this is a serious problem, our allies have become weak and entirely dependent on us. It is quite humorous, however, as European/Canadian socialists are always whining about how great their welfare state is and how America shouldn't have a military, yet the only reason they have their welfare state is because they do not have to pay for and provide their own defense. With Mutually Assured Destruction looming overhead, none of the major powers would dare risk a confrontation with the United States. I think the chances of a real war between China, Russia and the United States is virtually zero.

You make some interesting points here.

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There are numerous reasons for this.

Economics: Being a hegemon means the continuation and promotion of free trade. Left to their own devices, history has shown time and time again that nations almost always pursue nationalist economic policies. These nationalist economic policies promote strong economies within their sphere of influence, to the detriment of other countries. Having the largest GDP, most purchasing power and strongest economy of the free world, the United States, it's citizens and it's businesses benefit the greatest from these free trade arrangements. For better or worse, this also gives us the power to borrow from other states with fewer consequences.

Defense: Perhaps the most obvious benefit of hegemony is the ability to defend not only America and it's allies, but also our interests abroad. Without the projection of military might, the world would cease to be an American-world, as economic power would wither away as countries returned to nationalistic economic policies. The world would also be less free, meaning that America would be more susceptible to attack, not only through conventional means, but through anti-American ideologies as well.

Ideological Promotion: The United States exports it's ideals to the world, promoting freedom and other American values to foreign countries. This also helps prevent American ideals from being subverted by over by foreign ideologies. The democratic peace theory dictates that countries that share the same values, such as democratic values, are less likely to go to war. In addition, this assures that the human race as a whole will forever be a free and prosperous, gun-loving and democratic people. By influencing other countries to adopt American ideals, we are also creating a world that freely trades with the United States.

As you can see, this all goes back to free trade and economics.

 

Well, I don't exactly mean that. I kinda overstated it, probably. I just mean, many of our national-level leaders in past decades and centuries had a variety of, often, quite substantial experience doing a variety of things, whether in business, branches of state and local government, working within other levels of government bureaucracy, the military, academia, think-tanks, overseeing unions, leading groups that do analysis or hard domestic or foreign policy efforts for the President, etc. For example, Ronald Reagon oversaw the SAG before he became Governor of California, and Teddy Roosevelt served as the NYC Police Commissioner and the Secretary of the Navy before he became the VP. There are, of course, notable examples of individuals who were enormously successful despite a relative lack of experience (Abraham Lincoln, for instance, and the "golden boy" JFK) and there are examples of individuals with lots of experience who may not have really done anything on the job or who really botched it--though often due to factors outside of their control (Rumsfeld, maybe, or Powell, in George W. Bush's tenure?).

The reality is that these individuals at the nat'l level have the qualifications to make the decisions they do because the American people and the Constitution say they do. But it seems to me there is a growing phenonmenon of people who get these jobs at the nat'l level largely because they have been "good soldiers" in their respective parties (it has been frequently stated in the nat'l media, for instance, that John Kerry felt he deserved the State job because of the service he'd given the party as well as the Obama administration specifically) and because they've been successful, relatively uncontroversial politicians, rather than people who have substantive experience, are particularly effective and/or imaginative, or possess knowledge of the variety of factors involved.

 

Wow - so all of this is founded on the premise that USA is more awesome than any other country in the world and we would all be better off if we were all more like USA?

That's one American stereotype ticked off right away.

 

I haven’t been around for awhile, so I have some catching up to do. For now, however, I would just like to mention that if people want an understanding of why much of the world hates America, the attitudes presented in this thread by the OP would be a good place to start.

 

Ah yes, you hate us so much that you beg us to protect you, send you aid, trade with you and uphold the international institutions that you so happily enjoy. All the while you immigrate to my country in mass to become exactly like me.

 

Not to forget that you are so humble too!

 

Just to clarify, I’m from Canada, and have no intention of immigrating to the US. I don’t hate the USA. However, when people basically propose plans for world domination (regardless of how goofy those plans actually are), it shouldn’t come as a big surprise when the rest of the world doesn’t react as enthusiastically as you might have hoped.

 

At no point in the last 50 years has Canada "begged" the US for protection, and I'm pretty sure that we haven't received any aid from the US either -- we are aid providers, just like you folks. In addition, of course we want to trade with the USA -- we share one of the longest borders on the planet, it'd be pretty ****ing stupid if we didn't trade with you.

As for immigration, there isn't near as much immigration from Canada down south as you think. In fact, I'm seeing a lot of Americans coming up here, truth to tell. So, and I say this as nicely as possible, get over yourself. Watch what the Newsroom had to say about your opinion:

 

It's deja vu all over again....

AD you're awefully willing to insult and degrade our enemies and allies while building the military and requiring a gun in every home. By all means, enlist and become a member of the military; serve in war zones and put a quarter on a headstone.

Or perhaps apply for a police academy and serve your community. Enjoy going to every domestic dispute knowing for a fact the house has a gun.

 

Wouldn't it be more interesting and appropriate for all involved if one actually debated the content of Arctic Diashi's posts, rather than ad hominem attacks on his nationality as well as the content of American society?