Is the US running an empire?
Professor Manan Ahmed (Pakistani-American, now at Heidelberg) has an article about lack of expertise in the American empire: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksd....html#comments
The point about expertise or lack of it is interesting and worth discussing, but professor Manan (like most left-liberal academics) likes to use the term "empire" a lot...of course, some right-liberal academics use it too (Niall Ferguson?)..I wrote a comment about the usage of this term (you can see it at the above link) because I thought "empire" is not the best description of what the US does in the world today. Descriptions are maps of reality and are necessarily simplified and so on, but even as an oversimplified map, I thought this was not accurate. I dont think Obama wakes up every morning thinking about his far flung empire AS AN EMPIRE. But being a naive amateur, I am doing what I usually do in such circumstances, I am going to go ahead and ask: is "empire" a useful/good way to describe what the US does in the world?
Not the mechanical, the usage...
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Originally Posted by
carl
What has changed about the nature of transportation that makes containment not viable?
Ease of transnational movement, porosity of borders, lack of an 'Iron Curtain,' etc.
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Communications has been affected by the internet and sat com but it is just a matter of degree... You can't push a submarine or a container ship through a fiber optic cable.
No but you can get your message of revolt or whatever to a worldwide audience in seconds -- if you're flexible enough to do that; most large nation are too bureaucratic to be effective at that, 'movements' of all sorts tend to be quite good at it -- and thus at attracting adherents or supporters everywhere.
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Lack of resources makes a perimeter impracticable, not undesirable. But we don't man most of the perimeter. Countries that aren't enemies do. And to effectively man it, all the have to do is stay not enemies. That seems a less expensive way to do it.
A perimeter is undesirable because once established, it has to be maintained in some fashion. Maintenance entails costs of some sort and everything has a cost. Better to let it just fall into disuse.
Countries who are not enemies (and those who are enemies) shift and change. All countries cater to their perceived interest; they will support our 'perimeter" as long as it suits. As the the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines and the British discovered, 'friends' change...
A far better solution than a perimeter is the ability to respond to provocations with the proper instruments, political or military, rapidly and overwhelmingly locally to deter future provocations and that's, thankfully, where we at last seem to be headed. Long past time...
I think you are making too little of the U.S. trade deficit.
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Originally Posted by
Dayuhan
Again I have to wonder... where exactly does the US have economic influence and control, and if we have such influence and control, how come we aren't making money?
It’s too easy to make every Indian’s favorite joke here.http://goodcomics.comicbookresources...Magazine38.jpg
It’s harder to who figure out who the <we> is. The shareholders of Dell, Inc.? Me when I shop at Wal-Mart?
I take your point regarding the fact that the U.S. only seems to have so much direct control over things economic. It’s not like Commodore Perry is going to show up in Tianjin. But there is influence for sure. What would China’s economy look like if the U.S. Government decided the trade deficit needed to be “fixed” at the expense of imports from China? And why does the CPC get testy about devaluation of the dollar?