Joseph Nye, the chap who coined the term “soft power”, reiterates a point I’ve made from time to time in an op-ed at National Interest. Like it or not we’re stuck with the job of “indispensable nation” because nobody else wants the job:
Contrary to those who proclaim this the “Chinese century,†we have not entered a “post-American world.†Of course, the continuation of the American century will not look like the 20th century. Our share of the world economy will be less than it was in the middle of the past century, and the complexity represented by the rise of other countries—as well as the increased role of nonstate actors—will make it more difficult for anyone to wield influence and organize action. But no other country—including China—is about to replace us. Europe lacks unity; Russia is in decline; India and Brazil remain developing countries. Americans should stop talking and worrying about “decline,†a fear that mixes many different trends and leads to mistaken policy conclusions. Instead, we should face the fact that we will be the largest country and will have to lead for decades to come.
If only we would use our powers for good!
Actually, I think that we do but our government has much to answer for. When did the government stop being answerable to the people?
If no one else wants the job, then let the job go unfilled.
When? I believe it all went to hell when we began electing senators by a direct vote of the public instead of state senators.
this is supposed to be a Republic, not a democracy. The voting public is easily fooled. Senators are supposed to be selected by state senators to add a layer of sanity. But look where we are now. Elect a celebrity to rule tour life, good.
Shambler, having state legislators elect federal senators also, in theory at least, gave the individual _states_ representation. This they’d have a more direct say in federal affairs.
“Senators are supposed to be selected by state senators to add a layer of sanity. ”
Really? We turn to our local bought and paid for, often totally whacky, state politicians for sanity? You win the internets today.
Steve
When did the government stop being answerable to the people?
When the people allowed the government to disregard their concerns and interests. IMO, this has flagrantly increased during the last 7 years.
I’m sure Israel and every unpopular government in the Mideast for the past many decades agrees that America has used “its powers for good.”
Steve: This original arrangement was part of the compromise our founding fathers conceived, knowing that no system is perfect. They instituted these power sharing statutes to avoid direct democracy, which is lunacy, given how easily voters elect celebrities and flim flam artists with a good angle on how to read and ride public feelings to power for their own ends. Sorry to go on so long, Gray.
Gray– It was also set up with the idea that the House and Senate would jealously guard their own authority. That a balance based upon competing interests would exist between the Congress and the Executive branch. Between the states and the federal government. They didn’t really foresee that party affiliation would dominate everything.
The same public also elects their state representatives. I know some of them. I read about more of them. IMHO, state level reps are far crazier and much more likely to be corrupt than those at the national level. (Which kind of makes sense when you realize how little money it takes to influence most state level elections.) If they elect Senators there is zero likelihood we get better Senators. No matter who gets elected, they will cater to the special interests that got them into power.
Steve
Hmmm. My bet is the US is going to act as the World’s Number One Power for another thirty years or so, without much hindrance, but at some point other countries are going to be much more independent and much more willing to combine in opposition to US interests.
Suppose, to pick a not totally implausible example, all the developed world but the US (I’m including India and China here) decides in a UN resolution that a carbon tax should be imposed on nations which pollute at more than some given level, with the tax proceeds used to ameliorate the lot of nations inconvenienced by global warming. A happy possibility — as carefully defined, the only major offender might be the US, which is still officially in denial of Global Warming in 2050 or 2070 or whenever. That’s not going to bring on World War III and its not going to get the US to pay a hundred billion bucks per annum in fines either. It’s just going to be one of those things that make citizens in other countries frown a bit when the US is mentioned, let’s say. Also, we can get a dandy amount of recognition for being the country which stirred up the Middle East the most (aside from Israel, of course) and did the least to accept the resulting overflow in Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
And so on. So maybe the USA will still be running the world by midcentury, and maybe Americans will have reconciled to it or even come to enjoy their special status. But it’s easy to imagine circumstances where a whole lot of people are mumbling “Please stop!”
Let me go off on a bit of a tangent here. Currently we’ve got a world with about 7 billion people, on which one billion live in Africa. There are demographic projections that by the end of the century, the world population will be over 10 billion people — with about 5 billion of those people in Africa.
And I just don’t think the United States is going to do a great and wonderful job of aggressively policing a world which is half composed of Africans. Period. Full stop. Game over, man, game over! We will not do it well.
Far better to bail out while we can and trust that some African states will dominate the continent, or that China or India or the UN will provide police forces/peacekeeping troops as necessary.
Not to jump up and down and scream about racism, although, yeah, it is a thought that comes to mind, but even more after watching the US swimming through the sands of the Middle East for ever 25 years now, I’m pretty well convinced that dealing with alien cultures is not a US strength and our foreign policy needs to reflect that fact.
Over at Col. Lang’s site he has a post about Iraq and the Middle East:
“Iraq – an abomination of desolation”
It is good, but in the comments, there is a link to an article by the Philip Gordon, Coordinator for Middle East policy in the White House from 2013 until April of this year.
It’s Time to Rethink Syria
It is amazing that there are people who still cling to these delusions. The Right will claim the problem is not the delusions. They will claim the problem is President Obama. The US trained the Iraqi army for years, and they ran as soon as they had to actually fight. Apparently, it was the amount of training. According to the delusionists, only a few months of training is required for a fully trained army.
I could go on, but why bother? This delusion is not befriended by time either. Exposure to reality is not kind. It will expose the stench of the steaming turd to all.
Many theorists will encounter a choice between reality and theory. Beautiful theories that do not match reality are called fantasy, and they must be thrown onto the trash heap. It is not fun, but it must be done.
Here is the link ti the original post:
Iraq – an abomination of desolation
Here’s the conclusion of Pat’s post, cited above:
I agree. I probably think of “containment” a little differently than Pat does but otherwise I think that’s the best strategy.
There is one question I’d like to ask Pat sometime. Doesn’t the sort of radical violent jihadism we’ve seen for the last several decades break out every now and again in Sunni Islam and isn’t that due to the lack of a magisterium? In other words it’s a built-in feature. What are the implications of that?