IMP Book- After the Empire -Emmanuel Todd [View All]

[RainDog]

Emmanuel Todd is a French philosopher and political writer who calls himself an empiracist. He wrote a book predicting the fall of the Soviet Union in 1976, published as After The Fall in English in 1979.

His latest book, After The Empire, is his look at the United States itself, and in relation to the rest of the world.

I think this is an important book. It was published in French in 2002, and is now available through Columbia University Press.

Here is an exerpt from the preface:

"...I come to the task of writing the preface for the American edition with mixed feelings. I must here address Americans on the subject of the decline of their own country, and I do not see how a normal human being could take pleasure in telling other normal human beings that their country is ill, that it has made foolish strategic choices, and that they, as Americans, must prepare for a reduction of their power and, most likely, of their standard of living.

...I was widely labeled "anticommunist" (after publication of The Final Fall), just as, following the publication of After The Empire, I was often (but not always) labeled "anti-American." The motive for writing this book...(was) my exasperation ...In the fall of 2002 I had the feeling that the world was about to repeat the same mistake with regard to the United States that it made during the 1970s with the Soviet Union: reading an expansion in military
activity as a sign of increasing power when in fact it serves to mask a decline.

...it must be said that the events of the past year have largely confirmed the book's main idea as well as its general prognosis concerning America's altered relation to the rest of the world. One could even say that the process outlined in the book has accelerated, as though the Bush administration were methodically pursuing a program to undermine the legitimacy of the United States abroad and destroy the American strategic system. The United States, which until very recently played an important role in building international order, appears more and more clearly to be contributing to disorder throughout the world.

The war against Iraq represents a decisive stage in this recent transformation. After the Empire's thesis about the significance of America's "theatrical micromilitarism" was all too well illustrated by the aggressive preemptive strike of the world's leading military power against a military midget---an underdeveloped country of twenty-four million inhabitants exhausted by a decade-long economic embargo. The theatrical media coverage of this war, including the U.S. military's close surveillance of how the war was "playing" back home and around the world, must not blind us to a fundamental reality: the size of the opponent chosen by the United States is the true indicator of its current power. Attacking the weak is hardly a convincing proof of one's own strength. On the contrary, and in direct confirmation of the central thesis of this book, the United States is pretending to remain the world's indispenable superpower by attacking insignificant adversaries. But this America-- a militaristic, agitated, uncertain, anxious country projecting its own disorder around the globe-- is hardly the "indespensable nation" it claims to be and is certainly not what the rest of the world really needs now.

...The war aggravated the global economic crisis that has been mismanaged by the world's central power. The American economy itself is increasingly perceived as an unfathomable mystery. One no longer has any clear idea which U.S. companies are totally genuine. One no longer knows how this economy works or what effect interest rates approaching zero will have on its various components. The economic anxiety among America's ruling class is almost palpable. Daily changes in the level of the dollar are followed nervously in the press. No one is sure if the American economy will be able to aborb the shock of the war in Iraq that, even though small in strictly military terms, is proving to be a serious economic burden since the "allies" no longer want to pay a share of the costs as they did during the first Gulf War. The domestic and foreign deficits of the United States are skyrocketing. Indeed leaders around the world are wondering more and more if the central regulating power of the world economy is not heading toward a sheer abandonment of the basic rules of capitalist reasoning.

...At the present time, however, the principal failure of the United States is ideological and diplomatic...(after the war on Iraq)..The subsequent fall in legitimacy has been flagrant; however, even before trying to sell the world on the virtues of preemptive war, the American strategic system had begun to fall apart.

...The blindness of America's media and diplomatic elite during (the demonstrations across Europe and the world against the invasion of Iraq) was extreme.

(and Todd says has served to unite Europe, which will emerge as a stronger power as America declines...)

and more.