Why, why, oh, why would we want an empire? First, we're not likely to remain the world's sole "superpower" for all that much longer -- China has both the people and the resources to overtake us both militarily and economically in the long run, and Europe has the people and resources to overtake us economically in the medium term, if not the will to do so militarily. Second, we have neither the ability nor the political will to project our military power in an imperial way until the end of time. I don't deny that we are playing an imperial role on the world stage ... but I would suggest that, looking at how things have gone and what we've been doing the past few years, we've been floundering about for nearly a decade to find some way to be both secure and to remove ourselves from the imperial role. (Note to The Shrub: tearing up every single international agreement negotiated over the past 30 years is, perhaps, not the best way to do so.) Unfortunately, the US history has been as a rising Great Power, and then, just as the Great Power world collapsed under the back-to-back assaults of the World Wars, one of two Superpowers. We've spent so much time looking for ways in that we haven't got a clue how to get out.
Incidentally, if this is the Pax Americana, it's not much of a peace. Brushfire wars in the Balkans flaring up every few years, a putative ally and its dependent population at war in the Middle East, former adversaries Russia and China aligning themselves, Africa sailing along in gory ignorance ... this is peace? This is imperial power?
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
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12/19/2001: vive la france
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12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
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12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!