The Decline of the American Empire

[kliljedahl]

By GABRIEL KOLKO
December 17, 2005
Defeated in Iraq, Bankrupt at Home, Despised Around the Globe (And That's Just the Good News)

The dilemma the US has had for a half-century is that the priorities it must impose on its budget and its imperial plans have never guided its actual behavior and action. It has always believed, as well it should, that Europe and its control would determine the future of world power. But it has fought in Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq--the so-called "Third World" in general--where the stakes of power were much smaller.

The American priorities were specific, focused on individual nations, but they also set the United States the task of guiding or controlling the entire world--which is a very big place and has proven time and again to be far beyond American resources and imperial power. In most of those places in the Third World where the US massively employed its power directly it has lost, and its military might has been ineffective. The US's local proxies have been corrupt and venal in most nations where it has relied upon them. The cost, both in financial terms and in the eventual alienation of the American public, has been monumental.

The Pentagon developed strategic airpower and nuclear weapons with the USSR as its primary target, and equipped itself to fight a massive land war in Eastern Europe. Arms makers much preferred this expensive approach, and they remain very powerful voices in shaping US foreign and budgetary policy.

But the Soviet enemy no longer exists. The US dilemma, and it is a fundamental contradiction, is that its expensive military power is largely useless as an instrument of foreign policy. It lost the war in Vietnam, and while it managed to overthrow popular regimes in Brazil, Chile, and elsewhere in Latin America, its military power is useless in dealing with the effects of larger social and political problems--and Latin America, the Middle East, and East Asia are more independent of American-control than ever.

Strategically, also, the US is far worse off in the oil-rich Middle East because it made every mistake possible.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. One would think that this is exactly what the Neo-Cons had as their

goals....since they did it so well and so efficiently.