American Empire

A Republic not an Empire?

What makes an Empire?

Control (direct or indirect)/dominance

Territorial control or influence?

Denial

We dont do empire Donald Rumsfeld

We dont seek empires. Were not imperialistic. We never have been. So said
Donald Rumsfeld in an interview on al-Jazeera in April 2003. Coming one
month in to the invasion of Iraq, the claim by the then US secretary of state was
met with snorts of derision from across the political spectrum. Later that year,
Noam Chomsky published Hegemony or Survival, which argued that the US has
pursued an Imperial Grand Strategy since 1945 in order to maintain global
economic dominance. Niall Fergusons 2004 Colossus: the Rise and Fall of the
American Empire also took issue with Rumsfelds disavowal of imperial
intentions. For Ferguson, America was in denial about having all the
characteristics of the biggest empire that has ever existed, but shirking the
responsibility that came with this was both unrealistic and counterproductive.
American exceptionalism, first explored by Alexis de Tocqueville, is nothing
new or controversial every president, including Barack Obama, has articulated
a version of it. Yet the suggestion that the United States behaves like an imperial
power is something that still causes great sensitivity in a country founded in
revolt against the British empire, and which has usually seen itself as a
champion of the independence and self-determination of small nations.
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/americans-abroad
An Empire that constructs our reality:
The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, The New York
Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to
George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove):
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based
community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge
from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the
world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when

1
we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality
judiciously, as you willwe'll act again, creating other new realities, which you
can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actorsand
you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Usually seen as negative (in terms of critique), with exception of a small
number of conservative scholars like Niall Ferguson who see the British and
American Empires as crucial to a civilised world.

Is it just a label or is it a theory?

Theories

Empire different from Hegemon; Superpower; Most powerful, Wealthiest etc.

Formal Empire legal control, often justified via a racial theory

Economic Empire J.A. Hobson; Lenin: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of

Capitalism

Frontier/Open Door Empire of the USA William Appleman Williams; Walter

LaFeber; Andreas Stephanson; Hardt and Negri.

Poor at explaining insularity; self-destructive political activities; military

behaviour

Empire of bases Chalmers Johnson.

Empire of liberty / exceptionalist empire

Anti-Empirical tradition in America (against standing armies and expansion).

Characteristics

1. Territory

Roman Empire: http://www.google.com.au/imgres?

q=roman+empire&num=10&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbnid=JIkC234k61-
yKM:&imgrefurl=http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/maptext_n2/roman_
emp.html&docid=51Onq5LfE8jA7M&imgurl=http://www.hyperhistory.com/on
line_n2/images_n2/roman_emp.gif&w=750&h=441&ei=JPAdUIPdG82ViQeX7
YCoDQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=345&vpy=401&dur=15&hovh=172&hovw=

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293&tx=171&ty=141&sig=103014131519973727028&page=1&tbnh=102&tbn
w=174&start=0&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:15,s:0,i:186&biw=1536&bih=670

British Empire:

http://www.google.com.au/imgres?
imgurl=http://abagond.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/map_of_the_british_empir
e_in_the_1920s.png&imgrefurl=http://abagond.wordpress.com/2006/06/10/briti
sh-
empire/&h=432&w=720&sz=424&tbnid=PK3ztSE5XdGy8M:&tbnh=73&tbnw
=122&prev=/search%3Fq%3DBritish%2BEmpire%2Bmaps%26tbm%3Disch
%26tbo
%3Du&zoom=1&q=British+Empire+maps&usg=__k7uG3M6PZD5lt3OBSCo
AedUmVDg=&docid=80jPWHflyGaCkM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TPEdUJOhBOyii
AfW5oCgBw&ved=0CGAQ9QEwAQ&dur=382

American Formal Empire: Continental expansion; Hawaii; Alaska (purchased

from USSR), Caribbean, Philippines; various Pacific Islands

2. Economics: trade, investment, plants

Continental Expansion

Open Door

Multinational Corporations

Wall Street goes global

Walmart, Apple, etc goes off-shore:

(Workers rights and Apple)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-
human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/30/apple-factories-china-
foxconn-audit

Walmart

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/secrets/wmchina.html

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 3. Military empire: weapons, technology, bases

http://www.google.com.au/imgres?
imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/US_military_bas
es_in_the_world_2007.PNG&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_
military_bases_in_the_world_2007.PNG&h=625&w=1425&sz=19&tbnid=XtK
NkzhnV1u9fM:&tbnh=57&tbnw=129&prev=/search%3Fq%3DUS%2Bmilitary
%2Bbases%2Bworld%2Bwide%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo
%3Du&zoom=1&q=US+military+bases+world+wide&usg=__ME29lGYKMfY
8YX0EWH0nUngtpPU=&docid=T8cr4fRGP66uzM&sa=X&ei=k_QdULe6Bo
yIrAe77ICYDQ&ved=0CGkQ9QEwAg&dur=72

http://blog.timesunion.com/wagingpeace/files/2012/07/US-military-presence-
overseas1.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_deployments

(By country)

737 US bases (Johnson)

Ron Paul 900 bases in 130 countries (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-

meter/statements/2011/sep/14/ron-paul/ron-paul-says-us-has-military-
personnel-130-nation/

4. Culture (Movies, TV, Music, Food, Clothing) SOFT POWER

At the end of 2011: Subway had 33,749 restaurants worldwide, compared to

McDonalds 32,737.

US content on TV and at the Cinema

Clothing: Levi Jeans

What the World Thinks of this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/programmes/wtwta/poll/html/

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 5. Values (Ferguson: Civilisation)

Markets, Capitalism, Democracy, Rule of Law, Rights, Freedom,

Christianity???

6. McDonaldisation/Cocolonisation commercial culture (values)

7. Washington Consensus (ideas and economic rules)

IMF, World Bank, WTO

Globalisation

8. Imagination
Dominant model; set parameters of the possible, colonises our dreams of
the future

See Peter Careys American Dreams in The History of the Fat Man

I am suspicious of overusing the label Empire and not focusing enough on the
nature of Americas Global power. It is important to know the details and
character of American actions in the world in the areas of:

Economics, Institutions, Military, Political Power and Soft power

Declinist anxiety

a. Largest GDP but China will pass in next 10-20 years

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/12/save_date

b. Largest Military (no close rival but nuclear weapons even things up)
c. Largest cultural influence (Movie and elections)
d. Most powerful global leader? (Did the Iraq war and Bush undermine
this?)
e. Renewal in 1980s and 1990s when decline seemed possible: The report
of my death was an exaggeration Twain. However, different this time?

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End of the American Century? What was the American Century?

In 1941 editor of life magazine Henry Luce penned a famous essay called The
American Century http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6139.htm

Where he argued: ROLE:

In the field of national policy, the fundamental trouble with America has been,
and is, that whereas their nation became in the 20th Century the most powerful
and the most vital nation in the world, nevertheless Americans were unable to
accommodate themselves spiritually and practically to that fact. Hence they
have failed to play their part as a world power - a failure which has had
disastrous consequences for themselves and for all mankind. And the cure is
this: to accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most
powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the
world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by
such means as we see fit.

AMERICANISATION Once we cease to distract ourselves with lifeless

arguments about isolationism, we shall be amazed to discover that there is
already an immense American internationalism. American jazz, Hollywood
movies, American slang, American machines and patented products, are in fact
the only things that every community in the world, from Zanzibar to Hamburg,
recognizes in common. Blindly, unintentionally, accidentally and really in spite
of ourselves, we are already a world power in all the trivial ways - in very
human ways. But there is a great deal more than that. America is already the
intellectual, scientific and artistic capital of the world.

EXCEPTIONAL MISSION: Americans -Midwestern Americans - are today

the least provincial people in the world. They have travelled the most and they
know more about the world than the people of any other country. America's
worldwide experience in commerce is also far greater than most of us realize.
Most important of all, we have that indefinable, unmistakable sign of
leadership: prestige. And unlike the prestige of Rome or Genghis Khan or 19th
Century England, American prestige throughout the world is faith in the good
intentions as well as in the ultimate intelligence and ultimate strength of the
whole American people. We have lost some of that prestige in the last few years.

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But most of it is still there.

America decides the future of world economy; trade; shipping lanes First,
the economic. It is for America and for America alone to determine whether a
system of free economic enterprise - an economic order compatible with
freedom and progress - shall or shall not prevail in this century. We know
perfectly well that there is not the slightest chance of anything faintly
resembling a free economic system prevailing in this country if it prevails
nowhere else. What then does America have to decide?

Some few decisions are quite simple. For example: we have to decide whether
or not we shall have for ourselves and our friends freedom of the seas - the right
to go with our ships and our ocean-going airplanes where we wish, when we
wish and as we wish. The vision of America as the principal guarantor of the
freedom of the seas, the vision of Americas [sic] as the dynamic leader of world
trade, has within it the possibilities of such enormous human progress as to
stagger the imagination. Let us not be staggered by it. Let us rise to its
tremendous possibilities.
Our thinking of world trade today is on ridiculously small terms. For example,
we think of Asia as being worth only a few hundred millions a year to us.
Actually, in the decades to come Asia will be worth to us exactly zero - or else it
will be worth to us four, five, ten billions of dollars a year. And the latter are the
terms we must think in, or else confess a pitiful impotence. Closely akin to the
purely economic area and yet quite different from it, there is the picture of an
America which will send out through the world its technical and artistic skills.
Engineers, scientists, doctors, movie men, makers of entertainment, developers
of airlines, builders of roads, teachers, educators.

[MISSION FOR PEACE] Throughout the world, these skills, this training, this
leadership is needed and will be eagerly welcomed, if only we have the
imagination to see it and the sincerity and good will to create the world of the
20th Century. But now there is a third thing which our vision must immediately
be concerned with. We must undertake now to be the Good Samaritan of the
entire world. It is the manifest duty of this country to undertake to feed all the
people of the world who as a result of this worldwide collapse of civilization are
hungry and destitute - all of them, that is, whom we can from time to time reach
consistently with a very tough attitude toward all hostile governments.

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For every dollar we spend on armaments, we should spend at least a dime in a
gigantic effort to feed the world - and all the world should know that we have
dedicated ourselves to this task. Every farmer in America should be encouraged
to produce all the crops he can, and all that we cannot eat - and perhaps some
of us could eat less - should forthwith be dispatched to the four quarters of the
globe as a free gift, administered by a humanitarian army of Americans, to
every man, woman and child on this earth who is really hungry.

EXCEPTIONALISM and MISSION!: But all this is not enough. All this will
fail and none of it will happen unless our vision of America as a world power
includes a passionate devotion to great American ideals. We have some things in
this country which are infinitely precious and especially American - a love of
freedom, a feeling for the equality of opportunity, a tradition of self-reliance and
independence and also of co-operation. In addition to ideals and notions which
are especially American, we are the inheritors of all the great principles of
Western civilization - above all Justice, the love of Truth, the ideal of Charity.
The other day Herbert Hoover said that America was fast becoming the
sanctuary of the ideals of civilization.

For the moment it may be enough to be the sanctuary of these ideals. But not for
long. It now becomes our time to be the powerhouse from which the ideals
spread throughout the world and do their mysterious work of lifting the life of
mankind from the level of the beasts to what the Psalmist called a little lower
than the angels.

America as the dynamic center of ever-widening spheres of enterprise, America

as the training center of the skillful servants of mankind, America as the Good
Samaritan, really believing again that it is more blessed to give than to receive,
and America as the powerhouse of the ideals of Freedom and Justice - out of
these elements surely can be fashioned a vision of the 20th Century to which we
can and will devote ourselves in joy and gladness and vigor and enthusiasm.
Other nations can survive simply because they have endured so long
-sometimes with more and sometimes with less significance. But this nation,
conceived in adventure and dedicated to the progress of man - this nation cannot
truly endure unless there courses strongly through its veins from Maine to
California the blood of purposes and enterprise and high resolve. Throughout
the 17th Century and the 18th Century and the 19th Century, this continent

8
teemed with manifold projects and magnificent purposes. Above them all and
weaving them all together into the most exciting flag of all the world and of all
history was the triumphal purpose of freedom. It is in this spirit that all of us are
called, each to his own measure of capacity, and each in the widest horizon of
his vision, to create the first great American Century.

What is exceptionalism?:

Exceptionalism of BIRTH, OPPORTUNITY, AND ROLE.

Language of Exceptionalism. Robert Bellah calls this part of Americas civic

religion.

What is American Exceptionalism?

Richard Hofstatder said of America it has been our fate as a nation not to have
ideologies, but to be one. Seymour Martin Lipset similarly argues there is an
ideology we can call Americanism.

As G. K. Chesterton put it: America is the only nation in the world that is
founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological
lucidity in the Declaration of Independence.

According to Samuel Huntington, It is possible to speak of a body of political

ideas that constitutes Americanism in a sense in which one can never speak of
Britishism, Frenchism, Germanism, or Japaneseism. Americanism in this
sense is comparable to other ideologies and religions. To reject the central ideas
of that doctrine is to be un-AmericanThis identification of nationality with
political Creed or values makes the United States virtually unique.

Samuel Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981),

Three forms of exceptionalist thinking:

1. Linked to the notion that America was born special because of the values
of its Puritan colonists, its Revolutionary beginnings, its founding
documents (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) and its
democratic institutions.
2. Frontier Exceptionalism: resources, opportunity for mobility, dynamic
innovators
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 3. Exceptionally bad: crime, racism, violence, poverty

The 1st notion of exceptionalism is the dominant one: the quote that best
illustrates this understanding of American exceptionalism is from the much
repeated sermon about America delivered by the Puritan John Winthrop in
1630: For we must consider that we shall be as a city on a hill. The eyes of all
people are upon us.

These words have often been taken to mean: we are a shining example and
others are looking to us for inspiration. As well as expressing his own belief in
the special character of the United States, President Roanld Reagan often drew
upon the canon of American Exceptionalism. In his campaign to revive
American self-confidence and the failing economy, Reagan evoked the spirit of
the American revolution by quoting Thomas Paine. Americans could make their
future whatever they wanted it to be, Reagan said, so long as they remembered:
We have it in our power to begin the world over again.1 He used flattering
passages from Alexis de Tocqueville to affirm the greatness of the US, such as
the Frenchmans description of America as a land of wonders.2 In November
1982, Reagan recalled that: One of the first challenges ever given any
American came from John Winthrop ... We shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes
of all people are upon us.3 The rhetoric of the United States as a city on a hill
was central to much of Reagans vision of the role the US should play in the
world. In his first Inaugural Address, he promised that the US will again be the
exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope for those who do not now have
freedom.4 Throughout his presidency, Reagan spoke of the US as being a
beacon to the world. It was an American responsibility to bring truth to light in
a world groping in the darkness of repression and lies.5 Reagan and his
speechwriters were encouraged to use such language by his National Security
1 Reagan, Address to the Nation on the Program for Economic Recovery, September 24, 1981, Public Papers, 1981, 836;
Reagan, Remarks at the Bicentennial Observance of the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia, October 19, 1981, Public Papers,
1981, 970.

2 Reagan, Remarks at a Luncheon of the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 15,
1981, Public Papers, 1981, 938.

3 Reagan, Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National League of Cities in Los Angeles, California, November 29,
1982, Public Papers, 1982, 1521.

4 Reagan, Inaugural Address, 1981, 3.

5 Reagan, Voice of America Remarks, 217.

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staff. For example, in a memo suggesting themes for the 1982 State of the
Union address, senior staff member Henry Nau advised the President to
proclaim that the objective of his administration was to make the US a city on
a hill, a proud reinvigorated American society, a bastion for the free world and
a beacon for those who still seek freedom and progress. The American people,
Nau suggested, would applaud such goals.6 Accepting Naus advice was not
difficult for Reagan, as he believed the US did provide an example the rest of
the world would do well to follow. (p.89)

Ive spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I dont know if I ever
quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall,
proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and
teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free
ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city
walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and
heart to get here. Thats how I saw it, and see it still. Farewell Address to the
Nation, January 11, 1989.

From the beginnings of America through the Cold War and beyond, Americans
talk about themselves as having a special mission and being a chosen people.
We get this sense in these oft-quoted near liturgical passages.

In 1776 Thomas Paine wrote of his adopted home: We have it in our power to
begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present hath not happened
since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand.
(Paine, Common Sense).

Herman Melville was to similarly write in 1850:

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people the Israel of our time; we bear
the ark of the liberties of the world. God has predestined, mankind expects,
great things from our race; and the great things we feel in our souls. The rest of
the nations must soon be in our rear. We are pioneers of the world; the advance
guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things, to break a path into the
New World that is ours.
On the question of what an American is and how they differ from Europeans, J.
Hector St. Jean de Crvecoeur wrote in 1792 that an American was this new
man who, upon leaving behind all his ancient prejudices and manners,

6 Memo, Henry R. Nau to Allen Lenz, December 3, 1981, folder SP 230-82 044142 [2 of 2], box SP 230 Begin SP 230-82
057187, White House Office of Records Management (WHORM) Subject File SP (Speeches), RRL.

11
receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the government
he obeys, and the new rank he holds.
J. Hector St. Jean de Crvecoeur, American Farmer, 1792.

These lofty hopes and the sense of charting a path for all of humanity set
America up to be knocked down, in what Australians call the tall poppy
syndrome (America being the said tall poppy we all want to see cut down).

The grander ones self-pronouncement, the more likely one will attract
detractors. Further, such grand aims make it more likely that ones actions will
fail to match up to ones rhetoric. As a result cries of hypocrisy will be
commonplace.

This pattern is all too apparent with reactions to the US. The charge of
hypocrisy becomes louder and more widespread once America takes a more
overt role in world affairs. Woodrow Wilson claimed that Americas entry into
WWI was necessary because:

The world must be made safe for democracy and his want to establish a
League of Nation was in many regards widely popular. However, it has been
Americas inability to deliver on the hope that it arouses that lands it in trouble.

At the extreme end of this overpromising is George W. Bushs Second Inaugural

Address claim that:

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of
democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the
ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world January 20, 2005

The former senior U.S. trade negotiator Clyde Prestowitz has written of
contemporary Americans implicit belief that every human being is a potential
American and that his or her present cultural affiliations are an unfortunate but
reversible accident [similar to an imperial Chinese or Roman attitude]
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 Clyde Prestowitz, Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of
Good Intentions (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 42. (p232)

In a poll from 1999, 72 percent of adult Americans declared that they were
proud of their country. In the country with the next highest score, Britain, the
figure was 53 percent; in France, it was 35 percent. These figures are long
standing: these figures were very similar to from those observed fifteen years
earlier, in the mid-1980s (75 percent, 54 percent and 35 percent respectively).
Six in ten Americans in 2003 believed that our culture is superior to others,
compared against every stereotype of the snobby French to only three in ten
French people. (pp19- 20)

From Antol Lieven, America Right or Wrong, Oxford University Press, 2004
[patriotism part of American exceptionalism]

America is a place, a country , a people, but also an idea. It is the idea of a

nation founded on a set of universal valuesself-evident truthsthat come not
from blood, or soil, or skin color, or wealthbut from the fact of our common
humanity. It is the idea of a nation bound together not by territory or religion or
ethnicity but by a self-conscious commitment to shared values, for ourselves
and for all peoples.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, The idea that is America, New York, Basic Books,
2007

Exceptionalism/Universalism/Idealism/Utopianism/Nationalism:

The belief that the essence of American nationality lies in dedication to

universal principles is constantly at war with the idea that Americanism belongs
exclusively to the American people and must be defended against alien
influences rather than shared with mankind.

Walter Russell Mead, The Jacksonian Tradition, The National Interest,

no.58, Winter 1999/2000.

Perhaps a society as diverse and as bitterly divided culturally as America, with

its diversity continually increased both by immigration and by the creative and
destructive surges of capitalist change, cannot in fact live without strong
common myths and the strong civic nationalism which depends on them.(p59)

13
 From Antol Lieven, America Right or Wrong, Oxford University Press,
2004

Theories of Decline:

Josef Joffe: myth. Been here before.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/books/review/the-myth-of-americas-
decline-by-josef-joffe.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140508/josef-joffe/the-myth-of-
americas-decline-politics-economics-and-a-half-centu

1950s: Russians are coming October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully
launched Sputnik I. Beach-ball satellite; Laika the dog; Yuri Gagarin: On 12
April 1961, aboard the Vostok 3KA-3 (Vostok 1), Gagarin became both the first
human to travel into space, and the first to orbit the earth.

Superior science; missile gap; great production machine under command

economy; Cuban missile crisis 1962.

1960s: Social unravelling

1970s: Malaise confidence, post-Vietnam, environmental/resource limits,

end of Gold Standard, stagflation. 1971 end of US Dollars to Gold exchange
system.

1980s: Japanese

1990s and early 2000s: rare period with declinist anxiety

Now: The Chinese

Gideon Rachman, Jan 2001. Foreign Policy. Think again: American Decline
This time its for real was the argument.

Iraq

Fiscal Problems

China

Around the time a spike in publications:

14
The spectre of decline has long haunted America. This long misplaced
narrative (Kennedy, 1987; Edelman, 2010; Fallows, 2010) is now, with the rise
of China, becoming a reality, at least in relative terms (Cox, 2007; Quinn, 2011;
Rachman, 2011; Walt, 2011; Kupchan, 2012). The most commonplace
explanations for Americas relative decline and Chinas rise are divergent
economic growth rates and the loss of American resources, lives and standing in
Afghanistan and Iraq. However, for other analysts the diminishing of Americas
power globally has strong domestic roots: Packer (2011) blames inequality,
Zakaria (2013) the political system, and Luce (2012) falling educational
standards amongst an array of other domestic problems. The president of the
influential Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass brought all of these
concerns together succinctly in his recent book Foreign Policy Begins at Home
(2013). Another discernible, although underdeveloped, jeremiad zeroes in on the
American people with the idea that Americans never effectively adjusted to the
post-Cold War world of globalisation but instead took a holiday from history
(Will, 2001).

The tutorials next week

Patrick Smith

Between Myth and History

Myth: Exceptionalist mission; Henry Luces American Century is OVER. The

Dream is over; now America living Historical in the world of reality. Did 9/11
bring this about as Tom Narin called America just another country after 9/11
(https://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-911/article_183.jsp

AND this excellent piece: http://harpers.org/archive/2002/09/a-year-later/

Over-reaction to 9/11 ended the illusion of exceptionalism in Smiths view.

Simple essay but opens up a number of questions.

Adam Quinns essay provides a lot of background detail and understanding.

Read it.

Packer, in the footsteps of Don Dos Passos USA trilogy. Inequality greatest
cause of American decline. Packer sees America in a long decline which the
Iraq stress test made apparent.

15
Contrast 1978 to today. Few of us would want to go back to 1978 without the
computers, The internet, limits and regulations, lack of options and restriction,
pessimism. But people were more equal; American politics was more civil and
bipartisan; jobs more secure (more dead end).

Excellent contrast

What ails America today? A broken contract. The end of Consensus. Working
wages and elite order for a degree of fairness. Corporatism. (IS HE
OVERSTATING THINGS?).

Organised Money

PACs set up and have influence. Peirson and Hacker book.

Parties decrease in power leads to Reagan, Obama, Warren

Political dysfunction in Washington DC.

Inequality becomes okay again. Inequality undermines American democracy

and vitality?

Robert Kagan: BEWARE!

Back to the myth of decline. Decline talk is dangerous because America has an
important role to play in the world. America still most important nation in world
in Kagans view so needs to play that Henry Luce role of at least increasing
world order.

Kagan never tires of invoking Munich and how the failure of the Great Powers
to act led to conflict.

American economic and military decline overstated in Kagans view.

His views are dangerous. He was one of the chief advocates for America
invading Iraq. His neoconservative outlook tends to believe America has greater
power to deal with problems than is the reality. However, his views are
influential because the Americans have a very strong desire not to be seen as
SOFT or PASSIVE; as seen by the wont to DO SOMETHING in Syria or Libya
or the Ukraine etc etc etc.

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