Use It or Lose It?: How to Manage an Imperial Decline

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:



Use It or Lose It?
How to Manage an Imperial Decline
By Aziz Huq


Do empires end with a bang, a whimper, or the sibilant hiss of financial deflation?

We may be about to find out. Right now, in the midst of the financial whirlwind, it's been hard in the United States to see much past the moment. Yet the ongoing economic meltdown has raised a range of non-financial issues of great importance for our future. Uncertainty and anxiety about the prospects for global financial markets -- given the present liquidity crunch -- have left little space for serious consideration of issues of American global power and influence.

So let's start with the economic meltdown at hand -- but not end there -- and try to offer a modest initial assessment of how the crumbling U.S. economy might change America's global stance.

From its inception, the financial panic stemmed from, and also exposed, a form of imperial overstretch -- that of Wall Street's giant financial firms. For them, it took the form of highly leveraged positions grounded on fragile, poorly assessed collateralized debt. As John Grey recently observed in the British Guardian, however, the panic also uncovered another kind of imperial overstretch -- that of American geostrategic power, raising questions about how the gap between stressed political and military assets and Washington's global ambitions will be resolved.

It's important to clarify what's currently at stake globally. Otherwise, depending on one's druthers, this is a subject that tends to be either overblown or underplayed. Few in the mainstream media even countenance the possibility of catastrophic changes in the U.S. position in the world. On the other hand, some in that world are already ascribing seismic significance to what's happening, before the dust has even settled. As historian Andrew Bacevich cautions, the future has yet to be written and so neither outcome is -- as yet -- a foregone conclusion. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174990 (scroll down a bit once you access the page)

[Vincardog]

1. The answer is simple. Renounce the Imperialistic crap and survive or cling to it and die .

[Warpy]

2. Exactly.

People who adapt to changing circumstances will always fare better than people who cling to "standards" and what they used to have.

That doesn't mean your poverty can't be genteel. It just means you learn how to make do, mend, and do without.