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?
That’s more or less what Chris Harman said
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Originally Posted by
Dayuhan
Again I think the problem is being misconstrued. It's not so much that wealth is being transferred, it's more that imaginary wealth is being exposed as imaginary. If you look at the great losses of "wealth" that occurred in, say, the stock market crash in 2000/2001 and the recent real estate crash, you see pretty quickly that most of the "wealth" that was "lost" never really existed in the first place, other than through consensual delusion.
in his book Zombie capitalism: global crisis and the relevance of Marx. You don’t to know anything about Marx to come to that conclusion, but coming to it via Marx doesn’t make it wrong, either.
Too early to tell; or Are my tea leaves green?
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Originally Posted by
carl
What you are talking about are networks of agents and saboteurs. Those have been around since the beginning of time...Look at American migration to Texas. That resulted in Mexico losing the state. So again, no. Nothing fundamental has changed.
Nothing fundamental has changed. However, the capability to organize efforts in both those aspects in this era has changed. As could the numbers of such folks and the effects they can try to achieve. That coupled with the decreased power of States and the societal softening changes worldwide introduced in the last 50 years so provide some opportunities for others and some significant restraints on our actions -- some domestic political -- which never before existed.
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The question isn't if a strategic arrangement, maintaining a far perimeter, can become obsolete and not be worth the cost...
This may turn out to be a game changer on the order of ocean going ships...I don't think it will make navies or the importance of freedom of navigation for big ships less important.
Others agree with you. Many do not, I don't. We'll see.
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What failure? Most of our fights have been on the periphery.
The failures which demonstrate the flaws in the theory in the current era. Those include the failure to react properly against the Embassy seizure in Tehran, all the foolishness and waste in Lebanon, all the other probes and provocations from the ME to which we reacted poorly or not at all, the flaws of Desert Storm, diddling around in Somalia, even Libya -- all flawed, all misapplications of force which due to poor execution exposed weaknesses in our capabilities that invite further failures.
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After 9-11 we moved out quick to the periphery as best we could figure it. I think the driving force in many American actions has been to preserve the advantage that primitive technology and distance gave us for the first 120 years or so of our existence. That being that all those wars happened over there, not over here... We had to fight on the periphery of over there to keep the wars from coming here.
We can agree on that.
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The internet wows the young and the beltway people but it hasn't had the effect that motorized long range ships have had on the strategic calculus of the world.
We can also agree on that.
However, a lesser effect is not no effect. Put simply, opponents have capabilities and flexibility they did not have before and we do not have all the capabilities and freedom of action that we once possessed. The world has changed -- is still changing -- and we are behind the curve.
Where we disagree is on the utility today of trying to keep things out on the periphery. In my view that Internet and the speed of today's movement versus that of even 50 years ago negate the advantages of a far perimeter in an era where we have become far larger -- and a wealthier, more juicy target -- more clumsy, far more domestically politically polarized and for many reasons considerably less flexible in our abilities to react...
Ponder overextension (LINK)..
Yet again we agree to disagree. Ain't that different...
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Originally Posted by
carl
We'll have to disagree on this.You want capability look at the old Comintern. Those guys had capability and not a twitter account among them.
Very familiar with them. Hopefully you noted that the bulk of their true successes, many of which still bedevil us, were in the areas of Agitprop and Intel ops; their actual military successes were virtually nil. ;)
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All the places you mentioned are out on the periphery. They may have been failures of execution but they were failures of execution on the periphery, where we can afford them...There was no failure to keep stuff out on the periphery. All those things are still in a state of flux, out on the periphery.
Can we afford them? As even you go on to note, most are still in a state of flux and that periphery affects us significantly (among many other things like Afghanistan, see TSA and the costs of added 'security' to our economy...)
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9-11 is the glaring exception and we moved lickety-split to try and push that threat back out.
Uh huh. How we doing on that? Lickety split is rarely the best way to handle threats.
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It is always a competition between what we can do and what they can do and how fast both can do it.
Picture Joe wearing 90 pounds of stuff leaving his air conditioned billet in an air conditioned MRAP after a breakfast of SOS and Eggs in the air conditioned DFAC and then picture his Afghan opponent with maybe 20 pounds of stuff and a rice ball for breakfast. No freon. Who's going to be the most agile...
Picture a US intel Analyst who picks up a good intercept and tries to get some action on it but the Chain of Command has other priorities - versus his Afghan counterpart who has no chain, just a direct boss. Who's going to be the most agile.
That carries all the way to the top. There is no competition on speed and their speed far outweighs our "what we can do"...
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The far perimeter in my view is still important because the things that move and apply real power are still the physical things, the ships and organized bodies of men.
Really? Would it were so. We're going broke fighting shadows out on the periphery...
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Keeping them on the other side of the oceans is still a matter of holding, with the help of friends, that far perimeter. The internet and immigration don't affect those things so much.
We can disagree on all that. Same old story -- don't fight the other guy on his turf using his rules...
The Rules are the real problem and the costs do not help.
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Originally Posted by
carl
Where did "actual military successes" come from?
Here:"The far perimeter in my view is still important because the things that move and apply real power are still the physical things, the ships and organized bodies of men."
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I would answer, can we afford not to keep them on the periphery? That cost of keeping them on the periphery is significant but not fatal, or even close to fatal. The costs of letting them get close would I judge be far greater.
Perhaps. Much depends on who 'they' are -- and how we respond to them. As I keep unsuccessfully trying to show, the situation and the 'rules' have changed. You don't appear to think so, I do so we're unlikely to agree and that's okay.
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TSA is not on the periphery. It is security theatre staged right here.
Obviously. It's also quite expensive security theater in more ways than the cost of the service. The impact on US productivity is real and as unnecessary as is periphery theater. That's not a slam; there's a place for periphery line holding but as a general rule, the result is not worth the expense. One size fits all seldom is effective be it airport screening or line monitoring / holding.
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Well, so far we haven't had another 9-11. That may change in the next 5 minutes, but up to now it has worked out pretty good in that respect.
We'll never know how other options might have accomplished the same thing...
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What does that have to do with the comment that prompted it? What does this have to do with strategy of maintaining a far perimeter? It has a lot to do with a less than proficient military though.
Can't believe you missed the connection. It has to with just that, the proficiency thing -- but not just the military, that too -- rather the entire spectrum of action and responses. Our total government lack of flexibility and more importantly our self imposed restraints will be consistently out run or circumvented by those who are more adept and less concerned with rules.
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Beats the hell out of fighting him on our turf, which is the whole point of maintaining the far perimeter.
Or we could lure him to turf or time of our choosing where our rules work not to his advantage but to ours... ;)