The role of the US in the world Follow

The romans turned inwards, to infighting and politics, and let the world run itself. There are very few romans anymore.
The french once dreamed of conquest. That dream died when they tried to tame the russian winter bear, and the british sent them running.
The great houses of England once ruled the seas. but the cost of maintaining a great navy grew burdensome, and as their fleet shrank, so did the influence of the british empire.
The Axis powers tried to steer the world through brutality and force, the likes of which the world has never before seen. The people of the world stood united against their vision, and out of that nuclear forge, the United States and The Soviet Union emerged as the two dominant powers on the planet.
The russians once dreamed of a land for the people, where hunger and uncertanty would disappear and the good of all would prevail. It died a slow death of madness, corruption and greed as those in power stole ever more from the helpless, and the people had fewer and fewer incentives to even make an effort. In the end they too, turned inward and largely abandoned the world stage.

Great empires rise and fall, and always sooner than they should in the end. It remains to be seen if the U.S. will do so as well. We hold the oceans. Our navy remains larger than the combined might of the rest of the world combined. Our control of nucelar power is unmatched by anyone. The skies are, for now anyways, ours. But there are signs that we to are turning inward. The conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, though necessary, has never been a popular cause once the initial push for the taliban wore off. and the people grow weary of it, despite the need to see it through to the end. We expected the world to see the possibility to at least stabilize the constant turmoil in the middle east, instead the world declared us highhanded and undiplomatic, and the leadership at the time made huge missteps in diplomacy. In truth, we were highhanded and undiplomaitc, but the rest of the world forgot that we are Americans, and politics or not that rejection troubled the American people. The firm rejection by countries who will later on be clamoring for our support in world conflicts led us to doubt ourselves for the first time since Vietnam. This time there was no great evil empire to focus on in the end. Maybe the world doesn't need us to police it, we thought in collective silence. Maybe we Are the evil empire now, and should withdraw from world conflicts. Maybe. Maybe. And uncertanty plagued us. Mistakes in the U.S. finance market began to reflect that troubled outset, and problems in the system that should not have been as bad as they were, snowballed and sent the Economy reeling. Suddenly, people became mindful of the soviet lesson again, and economic collapse seemed a real possibility for the first time since our founding. People panicked, and the economy withered more. Methods to curb the problem in many cases only made it worse for future generations, and at the same time caused all the financial troubles of the rest of the world to come to light all at once. A clensing fire of openness, if we can survive it, but economic crisis after crisis continue to trouble the entire planet where before they would have been inevitable, but likely one at a time, not all at once.

And so, weakened, with few strong allies and no real dark horse to galvenize the world against, we too turn inwards. No more space shuttle, it costs too much. No more military improvements, we're number 1 and no one will ever figure out how to neutralize our Maginot Line. We don't need to protect and defend the other countries from anything, they don't want our help, they'll be fine. Probably. We hope. And meanwhile, China launches its first large aircraft carrier, the rebuilt Varyag. And debuts their first stealth airplane, 4th generation, thrust vectoring fighter bomber. And launches new nuclear missile equipped submarines. And new classes of hypersonic anti aircraft carrier missiles, etc. They have better metal production, manufacturing capability, and resource generation capabilities than us. They have a space ICBM program that is now capable of hitting any country on the planet, as we are. They learned well from World War II and the Japanese rise, and defeat and have made an effort not to make the same mistakes. Their hardliners are in control, They mean to rule the pacific eventually, and we probably aren't going to do anything in time to stop them.

I don't think the decline of the United States is inevitable yet, but I do see us remaining weakened and vulnerable economically and militarially, unless certain things change. Relying on the ageing F-15 strike eagle fleet for defence is foolish. Predator drones are all well and good for ground attacks, but there is no drone on the planet yet that is ready to replace a fully trained, on the scene, not vulnerable to EMP human pilot, and capping the F-22 fleet at less than what is needed to even maintain partial coverage, on some sort of theory that an F-22 is magically going to always have a 20-1 combat advantage is laughable at best. Aircraft carriers may not always be the dominant combat ship on the planet, and by depriving ourselves again and again of heavy gun armed surface warships, we continue to have a huge potential hole in our defences if somone finds a way to effectifly neutralize air power or carriers (A powerfull enough Free electron laser antiaircraft battery destroying all incoming missiles and aircraft in a matter of seconds tied to a chinese nuclear power plant, for example) which is not out of the realm of possibility. Hell, we're researching the same technology ourselves, and yet the CG-X cruisers and the new destroyers keep getting cut in favor of glorified frigates.

Economically, its the same story. We are bleeding out slowly by spending ever growing amounts of money on stupid socialist programs, while we largely ignore critical infrastructure, Need to feed the poor? don't give them a check for doing nothing, put them to work building roads or smart grids, or windfarms. Company wants to avoid paying U.S. workers by moving their factories to mexico? Tarif the **** out of them. Fund research on those programs that can give the U.S. back its science leadership. If you have to do an economic stimulus, fund things the taxpayers get to keep, or give the money back to the taxpayers to encourage spending or savings. Either way we gain stability more than preventing bad companies from going under and making room for fresh, innovative startups. We need to take a really hard look at our recent past, from the years of success and see what we did right back then, and what we aren't doing now. We need something we can believe in again. We need a press that we can trust, who will actually tell us the truth, not some one sided partisan entertainment fiasco. We need leadership who is actually there because they believe in the cause and actually know what the hell they are doing some of the time.

If we fail to make that work, the U.S. might be the next entry on that list I started with, and I garuntee that the next people on the list aren't going to have the same motivations and ethics that we did, for better or worse.

Or we could just invade Canukistan and take all their stuffs. Technically they started it.

The People's Republic of China may seem like an unstoppable threat in the future, but China throughout history is notorious for being an insular power. They also have large issues with corruption in almost every area. Ultimately, the PRC is quite fragile.

The hardliners in Beijing may aspire to project their power, and perhaps rule the pacific, but they'll be countered by those in power in Chongqing and Shanghai, who have a vastly different agenda.

As well, the Fifth Generation of Leaders will be coming to power in 2012 with Xi Jingping replacing Hu Jintao, so we'll wait and see how they change politics in China.

More along the lines of financial and corporate ones, generally opposed to seeking a Chinese hegemony.

I don't see how they're opposed to each other. They could be complimentary, even. Gunboat diplomacy and all that. The US itself has the threat of military force to thank for a lot of it's international commerce.

I was sort of with you until right here. You make it sound as if every person receiving food stamps or welfare or whatever is a deadbeat. It is as myopic as saying all gun owners are murderers or whatever bullsh*t idiot hard left people spout about guns. These social programs are there to help those stretched to the bone, not to provide a second, third or fourth job. But I do agree the government would be wise to have more programs building infrastructure.

Also

You know that is a load of ****. A steaming load of hyperbole, not even matured hyperbole at that. Cheap, 5 dollar hyperbole. The kind you find in a bin at wally-world or safeway.

Edited, Jun 5th 2011 5:24pm by decayed

It was on sale.

Like the $1 bins at entrance to Target. Just not as appealing, as Hello Kitty Shower Puff I got my grand daughter.

What ever happen to the 10% that the Military promise to cut last year? Eaten up by trying to police another Dictator. Bright side is we were asked and then gave command to NATO. Gives them something to do and jobs for bomb makers.

If America really wanted to lower our debt, we would get serious about health care regulation and have Medicare for All. Sure it would mean higher taxes, but then how many of us rather see everyone be responsible for keeping costs down because it would prevent even higher taxes. There is no going back to having to pay for routine heath care per visit, like before the Insurance companies try to get every one to buy into HMO's. Instead we could be like Canadians and know that we'll not have to go bankrupt if face with sudden major health crises.

One of China's largest fears is a modern Japanese build-up. If China makes one move too aggressively, Japan may rescind article 9 and begin re-militirization, and begin putting alot more of the annual budget towards the military. If Japan spent the same percentage as the United States, you'd be looking at 200+ billion dollars instead of the 60-70 billion spent now, most of that going towards the Navy and Air Force.

China knows that as long as Japan has a security treaty with America, they really can't expand into the Pacific. Not to mention Japan has close military ties with India as well.

It's in Chinas best interest that they not provoke anyone.

A bunch of NCO's away from the Soldiers, the fight and hands on experience to play politics in meetings after meetings of Staff Calls... yea.. I don't see that happening.

You are correct. We built them to project external power. You don't need aircraft carriers for defensive purposes. You have land bases for that. If someone already has large, well defended aircraft carriers, the only reason to build your own fleet of large aircraft carriers is if you intend to also project power, and intend to go up against other large aircraft carrier armed fleets. You do not need a large aircraft carrier unless you actually have the aircraft and weapons required to impose air superiority over an opponent. If you just need a status symbol or something to project power in a limited operational sphere around your own country you either build many smaller ones, or one really big one. Many really big ones shows a different intent entirely.

We took up the role of world defender and meddler when we unleashed the atom upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and for that we need a large fleet. The stakes were too high not to. As we know now, Stalin was an insane mass murderer on a scale to make the holocaust look like a minor event. Unapposed, he would have taken europe by force, and that would have given the soviet union the economic clout necessary to survive without breaking up. China would have been next, and that would have been an ... interesting event, though at the time China would not have survived. The soviets had almost as many ICBM's aimed at china as they had aimed at us during the cold war. From there, Australia, India and Japan, and the pacific. At that point they might have left us alone, to be their eternal outside force to fear for political expediancy, but I doubt it.

Are we perfect? Are our ideology and values better than what we oppose? Do we always have the moral high ground? No. And we never have, dispite what we tell ourselves in hindsight. But be that as it may, on average we can look back on all the things we have done, and say "we're usually the good guys in the end.". We lost some of that with our meddling in south america (though Paraguay totally deserved it...) and the way we handled vietnam and the middle east. But what we also lost was that sense of "We're Americans, We're in the right, be on our side or be our target" that made us strong.

Europe doesn't see China as a threat. Or if they do, they are far enough in debt to them at this point that they dare not say anything. Our traditional allies have relied too much upon us militarially, and have let their own forces dwindle. "Theres no one left to fight" they say. "Let the middle east problem take care of itself" and so on. Then at the first oppertunity, the go tearing off to overthrow Libya, which despite having a crazy clotheshorse for a dictator, was really the least of our, or europes problems. Egypts admittedly corrupt, but largely on our side regime topples, to be replaced by what? probably another Iran style Clerictopia in the end, and them with a fully working M1-A1 Abrahms main battle tank factory. All the while, we intervene, people complain. We don't intervene, people complain. We've become too sensative to oppinion, and unwilling or unable to make the hard decisions that we have in the past.

We're at a turning point in history. Do we lay down our sword and let the world go its merry way? Do we resume our previous role as defender of the peace? The policemen of the world? or do we simply sit back and let the situation stagnate. I don't know the answer. I wish I did.

It's this funny little thing called freedom. Who could've foreseen that others may want some.