The Decline and Fall of the American Empire?
- Thread starter Edward Campbell
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The definitions are interesting (if rather abstract), the American Republic has some of the characteristics of Empire, but not really enough to carry the title. The true measure of past Empires was the ability to extract taxes or tributre from subsidiary states. These states might have their own "king" or sovereign, parliament, senate or tribal councel, but when the rubber met the road, they either payed taxes and tribute to the centre or an Imperial Procouncel made sure it was done (often with the backing of the occupying Imperial legions).
Corporations cannot take on the role of Empire, since they are creatures of the social, legal and economic system where they operate. Coke or Shell can only operate where they have an expectation that contracts can be signed and enforced; and in this era, they do not maintain their own standing armies to do the enforcement. (Even the East India Company was rather limited in that regard, since shareholders are reluctent to pay for standing armies when they could be getting profits and dividends). It should be an interesting observation that the modern corporation didn't come into existence until the growth of parliamentry democracy starting in the Elizabethan age, and the only true competitors in terms of size and influence to Western multi-national corporations are unweildy and inefficient State monopolies, which grow to these large sizes because the taxpayer is forced to shoulder the risk (Bombardier, anyone?)
America does get huge amounts of resources from the world, through the practice of buying things, and critics of the United States often focus on trade deficits as evidence of economic decline; rather the opposite of an Imperial system getting taxes and tribute from other nations. There is nothing to stop the United States from becoming an Empire (Democratic Empires have happened in the past, see Periclean Athens, the Res Publica Roma and the British Empire), using its military and commercial power to depose unfriendly regimes and setting up a permanent Procouncel to extract taxes to pay for the regime change and occupation, but I don't think anyone can argue that current or near term trands in American politics are pointing in that direction.
Corporations cannot take on the role of Empire, since they are creatures of the social, legal and economic system where they operate. Coke or Shell can only operate where they have an expectation that contracts can be signed and enforced; and in this era, they do not maintain their own standing armies to do the enforcement. (Even the East India Company was rather limited in that regard, since shareholders are reluctent to pay for standing armies when they could be getting profits and dividends). It should be an interesting observation that the modern corporation didn't come into existence until the growth of parliamentry democracy starting in the Elizabethan age, and the only true competitors in terms of size and influence to Western multi-national corporations are unweildy and inefficient State monopolies, which grow to these large sizes because the taxpayer is forced to shoulder the risk (Bombardier, anyone?)
America does get huge amounts of resources from the world, through the practice of buying things, and critics of the United States often focus on trade deficits as evidence of economic decline; rather the opposite of an Imperial system getting taxes and tribute from other nations. There is nothing to stop the United States from becoming an Empire (Democratic Empires have happened in the past, see Periclean Athens, the Res Publica Roma and the British Empire), using its military and commercial power to depose unfriendly regimes and setting up a permanent Procouncel to extract taxes to pay for the regime change and occupation, but I don't think anyone can argue that current or near term trands in American politics are pointing in that direction.
I'm not so sure it matters whether the US fits the definition of an "empire" or not. it's kind of an apple-and-oranges comparison, and i don't think there really is a meaningful historical precedent to the US's place in the world. the brits had a vast pool of unwilling subjects, and it cost them their shirts, while the us has a whole lot of influnce over (mainly) sometimes-willing democracies.
Anyway, the US is probably not declining in absolute terms, since it still has strong fundamentals (as well as a few very real problems, as mentioned in the article, like the twin deficits, etc). What is happening is that the US is gradually being eclipsed.
There's no way around the simple arithmetic that at least one of the two growing markets of 1bn+ population each will probably surpass the US economy sometime within the lifetime of people already born. even if these economies are operating at half their optimum efficiency. and that's not even counting the smaller big countries in SE Asia.
that's only the economic side of the equation, but the military balance will likely follow similar lines after the fact.
the only reason this should come as any sort of surprise is the fact we've had the better part of a century becoming accustomed to seeing our strategic rivals (the communist bloc) artificially preventing any possiblity of their own economic growth, and the non-aligned nations following suit.
Anyway, the US is probably not declining in absolute terms, since it still has strong fundamentals (as well as a few very real problems, as mentioned in the article, like the twin deficits, etc). What is happening is that the US is gradually being eclipsed.
There's no way around the simple arithmetic that at least one of the two growing markets of 1bn+ population each will probably surpass the US economy sometime within the lifetime of people already born. even if these economies are operating at half their optimum efficiency. and that's not even counting the smaller big countries in SE Asia.
that's only the economic side of the equation, but the military balance will likely follow similar lines after the fact.
the only reason this should come as any sort of surprise is the fact we've had the better part of a century becoming accustomed to seeing our strategic rivals (the communist bloc) artificially preventing any possiblity of their own economic growth, and the non-aligned nations following suit.
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America can become an Empire if it decides to collect taxes from the nations that are being policed or liberated by her efforts (If you want "international law", someone is going to have to walk the beat, and that someone will want to be paid). An "American Legion" of foreigners serving under the Americna Flag would go a long way towards making this possible.
Failing these steps, American power will continue to grow, although more slowly in relative terms, due to the flexible social fabric of their society. Innovative ideas and people can continue to rise to the top, and pull lots of others with them. The major challenger in the mid century will probably be India, and not China, since India has embraced market capitalism and a large segment of Indian society has adopted the more open social constructs of the west, through education and exposure to Western practice. (In absolute terms, this is only a small fraction of the billion or so Indians, but the size of the cadre would probably outnumber the similar cadre of managers, enterpraners, engineers etc. in Canada). China's social and political fabric is much more rigid, and so I don't think they will achieve their full potential.
The only way to creat a rapid decline in American power is "Imperial Overstreach", and a series of destructive wars such as those the Spanish fought in the 1500s, the tow World Wars which drained the British Empire or the Cold War, which ate the economy of the Soviet Union. A war with China would probably be the only event on a big enough scale to count (only 10-12% of the US Armed Forces are engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, so there is still a lot of streach there), either a hot war or a long and grinding Cold War.
Failing these steps, American power will continue to grow, although more slowly in relative terms, due to the flexible social fabric of their society. Innovative ideas and people can continue to rise to the top, and pull lots of others with them. The major challenger in the mid century will probably be India, and not China, since India has embraced market capitalism and a large segment of Indian society has adopted the more open social constructs of the west, through education and exposure to Western practice. (In absolute terms, this is only a small fraction of the billion or so Indians, but the size of the cadre would probably outnumber the similar cadre of managers, enterpraners, engineers etc. in Canada). China's social and political fabric is much more rigid, and so I don't think they will achieve their full potential.
The only way to creat a rapid decline in American power is "Imperial Overstreach", and a series of destructive wars such as those the Spanish fought in the 1500s, the tow World Wars which drained the British Empire or the Cold War, which ate the economy of the Soviet Union. A war with China would probably be the only event on a big enough scale to count (only 10-12% of the US Armed Forces are engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, so there is still a lot of streach there), either a hot war or a long and grinding Cold War.
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Thought this might provide some interesting reading given the subject.
From the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics (I know dictionaries often come up short, but this one's pretty good most of the time):
" Deriving from the Latin term (imperator) for a supreme military and, later, political leader, empire came to mean a territorial realm over which exclusive authority was exercised by a single sovereign. Thus the preamble of the English Act of Appeals (1533) justified denial of the right of subjects of the Crown to appeal to courts outside the realm or territory of England on the ground (however dubious) 'that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and king'.
The term soon came to be applied to the much more loosely controlled and heterogeneous domains of princes such as the Hapsburg Emperor Charles V, even when his power was manifestly copmromised and limited in many places, and most of all in the so-called Holy Roman Empire from which he derived the title, by continuing privileges of the Church, lesser princes, cities, guilds, electors, and estates. Likewise, Queen Victoria adopted the style of Queen Empress in 1877 at precisely the moment when the addition of India and new African dependencies to her dominions led them to resemble the ramshackle constitutional amalgams of her Austrian and Russian cousins more than the older English ideal of a contiguous territory with a homogeneous population. Thereafter, 'empire' was generally taken to denote an extensive group of states, whether formed by colonization or conquest, subject to the authority of a metropolitan or imperial state, even when - as in France or the USSR - that dominant state became a republic lacking an emperor or empress at its head. In this later sense, well established by the early years of the twentieth century, empire became closely associate with 'imperialism'."
Imperialism:
" Domination or control by one country or group of people over others, in ways assumed to be at the expense of the latter. Beyond this sweeping definition, there is much disagreement over the precise nature and the causes of imperialism, about what the clearest examples are, about its consequences, and therefore over the period which exemplifies it best.
The so-called new imperialism pertains to the imposition of colonial rule by European countries, especially the 'scramble for Africa', during the late nineteenth century. Many writers have construed imperialism in terms of what they believe were the motivating forces behind the territorial expansion. Among these, Hobson, Luxemburg, Bukharin, and especially Lenin focused on economic factors, such as the rational pursuit of new markets and sources of raw materials. The last named argued, in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), that imperialism is an economic necessity of the industrialized capitalist economies, seeking to offset the declining tendency of the rate of profit, by exporting capital in the pursuit of investment opportunities overseas. For Lenin, imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.
In a very different theory, Schumpeter (1919) defined imperialism as the non-rational and objectless disposition on the part of a state to unlimited forcible expansion. Imperialism is rooted in the psychology of the rulers and the effects of surviving pre-capitalist social structures, not the economic interests of nation or class. Yet other accounts view imperialism as an outgrowth of popular nationalism, a function of the need to underwrite the welfare state which helps pacify the working class (notably in Britian), a matter of personal adventurism, an application of Social Darwinism to struggles between races, a civilizing mission, and as simply one dimension of international rivalry for power and prestige. The latter in particular means that imperialism is potentially a feature of leading socialist as well as capitalist states.
...
The concept of 'informal imperialism' is said to render direct political control unnecessary, in the presence of other ways of exercising domination, for example through technological superiority or the free trade imperialism of a leading economic power, and cultural imperialism."
...
This imperialism without colonies was first characterized by Ghana's first President, Kwame Nkrumah... 'The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality, its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.' "
I wouldn't personally characterize America as a formal empire but I would put it under the "informal empire" by virtue of its "informally imperialist" (not so informal at times) posture and level of control over many countries.
Good point, though I disagree that "Imperial Overstretch" must have military overstretch as a facilitator (which I think you were getting at, though I may be wrong). I think political overstretch can do wonders where military overstretch may not be reached. By political overstretch I mean an extension and employment of power beyond what the system (international) and its actors can tolerate. I think military action can cause it, but not necessarily because that military action constitutes military over-extension but rather that the military action asserts power in such a way that, though the power is temporarily expanded, the problems it creates eventually cause a decline rather than an overall growth as their persistence is greater than that of the advantage gained. Combine that with the "balancing and bandwagoning" (an overly simplistic characterization but a relatively accurate one nonetheless, I think) tendencies of states and all that wonderful complex interdependence going around and I think I'd have to wager that American power is more likely to decline over the next few decades, especially with the growth and expansion of non-state actors like the EU, NAFTA, FTAA, East Asia bloc, etc.
From the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics (I know dictionaries often come up short, but this one's pretty good most of the time):
" Deriving from the Latin term (imperator) for a supreme military and, later, political leader, empire came to mean a territorial realm over which exclusive authority was exercised by a single sovereign. Thus the preamble of the English Act of Appeals (1533) justified denial of the right of subjects of the Crown to appeal to courts outside the realm or territory of England on the ground (however dubious) 'that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and king'.
The term soon came to be applied to the much more loosely controlled and heterogeneous domains of princes such as the Hapsburg Emperor Charles V, even when his power was manifestly copmromised and limited in many places, and most of all in the so-called Holy Roman Empire from which he derived the title, by continuing privileges of the Church, lesser princes, cities, guilds, electors, and estates. Likewise, Queen Victoria adopted the style of Queen Empress in 1877 at precisely the moment when the addition of India and new African dependencies to her dominions led them to resemble the ramshackle constitutional amalgams of her Austrian and Russian cousins more than the older English ideal of a contiguous territory with a homogeneous population. Thereafter, 'empire' was generally taken to denote an extensive group of states, whether formed by colonization or conquest, subject to the authority of a metropolitan or imperial state, even when - as in France or the USSR - that dominant state became a republic lacking an emperor or empress at its head. In this later sense, well established by the early years of the twentieth century, empire became closely associate with 'imperialism'."
Imperialism:
" Domination or control by one country or group of people over others, in ways assumed to be at the expense of the latter. Beyond this sweeping definition, there is much disagreement over the precise nature and the causes of imperialism, about what the clearest examples are, about its consequences, and therefore over the period which exemplifies it best.
The so-called new imperialism pertains to the imposition of colonial rule by European countries, especially the 'scramble for Africa', during the late nineteenth century. Many writers have construed imperialism in terms of what they believe were the motivating forces behind the territorial expansion. Among these, Hobson, Luxemburg, Bukharin, and especially Lenin focused on economic factors, such as the rational pursuit of new markets and sources of raw materials. The last named argued, in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), that imperialism is an economic necessity of the industrialized capitalist economies, seeking to offset the declining tendency of the rate of profit, by exporting capital in the pursuit of investment opportunities overseas. For Lenin, imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.
In a very different theory, Schumpeter (1919) defined imperialism as the non-rational and objectless disposition on the part of a state to unlimited forcible expansion. Imperialism is rooted in the psychology of the rulers and the effects of surviving pre-capitalist social structures, not the economic interests of nation or class. Yet other accounts view imperialism as an outgrowth of popular nationalism, a function of the need to underwrite the welfare state which helps pacify the working class (notably in Britian), a matter of personal adventurism, an application of Social Darwinism to struggles between races, a civilizing mission, and as simply one dimension of international rivalry for power and prestige. The latter in particular means that imperialism is potentially a feature of leading socialist as well as capitalist states.
...
The concept of 'informal imperialism' is said to render direct political control unnecessary, in the presence of other ways of exercising domination, for example through technological superiority or the free trade imperialism of a leading economic power, and cultural imperialism."
...
This imperialism without colonies was first characterized by Ghana's first President, Kwame Nkrumah... 'The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality, its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.' "
I wouldn't personally characterize America as a formal empire but I would put it under the "informal empire" by virtue of its "informally imperialist" (not so informal at times) posture and level of control over many countries.
Good point, though I disagree that "Imperial Overstretch" must have military overstretch as a facilitator (which I think you were getting at, though I may be wrong). I think political overstretch can do wonders where military overstretch may not be reached. By political overstretch I mean an extension and employment of power beyond what the system (international) and its actors can tolerate. I think military action can cause it, but not necessarily because that military action constitutes military over-extension but rather that the military action asserts power in such a way that, though the power is temporarily expanded, the problems it creates eventually cause a decline rather than an overall growth as their persistence is greater than that of the advantage gained. Combine that with the "balancing and bandwagoning" (an overly simplistic characterization but a relatively accurate one nonetheless, I think) tendencies of states and all that wonderful complex interdependence going around and I think I'd have to wager that American power is more likely to decline over the next few decades, especially with the growth and expansion of non-state actors like the EU, NAFTA, FTAA, East Asia bloc, etc.
Brad Sallows
Army.ca Legend
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Just because I'm too lazy to read the thread, can someone recap all the foreign nations the US currently rules?
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Glorified Ape said:
The first such example was the Delian League, which was overtly the creature of Athens, and subject to the rule (and whims) of the Democratic Eklassia and Boule. No formal Emperor ever ruled the Delian League, but it was openly aknowledged to be an Empire even by the Athenians themselves (most translations of the Funeral Oration include Pericles' admission that Athens now had an Empire, and it would be more dangerous to let it go than continue to rule it).
I like this group of theories. The circumstances which led to the creation of Empires differed over time and space, and except for the end result, it is difficult to compare Rome with Spain in the 1500s, or Victorian England, or the USSR.
Imperial overstreach by military means is the only historical example that I know of. Either the Empire finds itself surrounded by enemies and engulfed in wars which drain the economic and social resources of the Empire (Rome, Spain and 20th Century British Empire), or they allow their military and social machinery to decay to the point that they are overrun by Barbarians (China, several times i.e. they no longer had the resources to hold onto their existing Empire), or they engage in wars of conquest, which eventually drain the economy and destroys the social fabric of the nation (Macedonia, 16th Century Sweden, 20th Century Germany, 20th Century Russia).
Some of the factors you name such as free trade blocs are the pillars of American strength, and a return to mercentilism or destructive trade wars would undercut much of American financial and economic power. Others, like the EU and China, I feel are too static and rigid to be able to mount a long term challenge to American power. After all, even when Athens lost the flower of her fleet and army after the disasterous Sicilian expedition, they could still reorganize and fight against the Spartans and their allies for another decade, wheras Spartas defeat was total and irreversable after the Thebans marched through Lacedomea a few decades later. Similarly, the United States was able to engage with all cylenders durign the Reagan years and mount military, diplomatic and economic challenges to the USSR that the latter was finally unable to meet, collapsing and ending the Cold War with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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a_majoor said:
Good point - I don't think any one factor can account for it. Just as with (seemingly) everything else in human affairs, bivariate relationships are red herrings.
Maybe you should write for the Oxford... I could never really get into Greek lit much - too verbose.
But I think the situation now, with America, is different - the "informal imperialism" plays a big part in the distinction, I believe. The fact that overt control and presence aren't a requisite for empire anymore would change the factors which might bring about an erosion of the "empire". I think you're right that military action might be a prime mover, but not necessarily by way of military "overstretch". I think it may be possible that, while the military isn't "overstretched", the time and method of its employment may push the "empire" beyond what its political power can sustain. Not so much that the "colonies" would revolt, but rather that the level of control would decline by virtue of a lack of support, foreign and domestic. Since the "empire" is informal, it's more reliant on consent for its survival and thus spin and politicking are more essential. At the same time, by virtue of the "empire's" reliance on economies, governments, and organizations outside its purview, its erosion might be brought about by a decline in support from these actors too, which are even harder to influence and control since they're not under the "informal" umbrella.
I think you're right insofar as they certainly started out as pillars of strength but I think they're becoming a mixed blessing. Just as they allowed a greater flow of trade between countries, and thus a greater level of dependency on America by such countries, they worked the same vice-versa. I think this is especially true of bodies such as the WTO which bind the US as much as aid it. Regional economic bodies like the EU are going to become the standard, methinks, and while they may open alot of doors and "widen the frames", they also turn a region of atomistic actors into a conglomerate which is more independent in its ability to form policy and exert pressure, possibly contrary to US interests.
lol.. I vaguely reading about that sometime... Thucydides or Aeschylus or something. I don't disagree on your evaluation of the EU and China presently, but I think it's still far too early to write them off. I think the seed's already been planted and as the EU and China develop, the US is going to decline in its "empire". I'm not necessarily saying it's a zero-sum affair, but it gets closer to one the greater the disparity between US policy and external interests.
I don't disagree, but I think the situation between the US and the present actors is quite different. Not only does the US do a great deal of trade with China and the EU but they're not nearly (at least where the EU is concerned) as idealistically conflicting. Nor is the "battlefield" as clearcut as it was during the Cold War, especially with international arbitrators like the WTO acting as third-party intercession along established lines which can serve either party's interests, depending on the circumstances. The US/EU steel disagreement stands out as a prime example, in my mind. The EU's threatened targeting of US products originating in states supportive of Bush in a bid to see him lose the election (and his backing-down in the face of such consequences as well as the WTO's ruling) is a good example of how regional conglomeration, free trade, and international NGO's like the WTO can comprise an erosion of US power.
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Iraq and Afghanistan kind of spring to mind. Maybe you've heard of them?
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Sorry, do you mean Canada is one of the countries currently ruled by the US? Or that Canada is one of the countries participating in the US led occupation of Afghanistan?
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The article below belongs in this thread. I think the article is fair commentary. It is not an unsubstantiated personal attack on the Globe and Mail author referenced in the main body of the article. It is not libellous nor slanderous. The article does cause one to wonder, though, what is the agenda of the Globe and Mail, and has the Anti-American vitriol in Canadian printed media increased lately and to what end? What is the objective with the sort of works described?
The piece is worth finding on the Web, for it reads as an unintentionally hilarious satire of the claptrap one might hear from a poli-sci freshman babbling about her seminar course on Noam Chomsky.
Yet, there it was in the Globe and Mail. The above paragraph in particular explains part of the problem with many Canadian journalists lately, and one must now seriously start asking whether or not we as a society should continue to subsidize (with our tax dollars universities and colleges) which graduate people who produce the material that Jonathan Kay writes about in this editorial.
PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2005.09.14
EDITION: National
SECTION: Editorials
PAGE: A16
COLUMN: Jonathan Kay
BYLINE: Jonathan Kay
SOURCE: National Post
ILLUSTRATION: Black & White Photo: Front page of Saturday's Globe and MailFocus section
NOTE: [email protected]
WORD COUNT: 956
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A moment of shame for The Globe and Mail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Saturday, The Globe and Mail published "The flagging empire," a mammoth, 5,300-word essay devoted to the theme that America is a racist, bankrupt, war-mongering hellhole, sliding inexorably toward "oligarchic totalitarianism."
The piece is worth finding on the Web, for it reads as an unintentionally hilarious satire of the claptrap one might hear from a poli-sci freshman babbling about her seminar course on Noam Chomsky. The author, Paul William Roberts, careens breathlessly from U.S. Constitutional history to the Middle East to Asian geopolitics -- the whole dizzying trajectory bound together by nothing more than a generalized contempt for the United States. To the extent he adds anything to the likes of Chomsky and other hard-left America-bashers, it is a sickening schadenfreude at the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.
Why should such a hateful specimen be featured on the front page of the newspaper's Saturday Focus section? For the same reason anti-Americanism flourishes everywhere in Canada: It permits Canadians to feel superior. And in this regard, no one puts the case better than Roberts. Canada, he writes, stands "among the few that have managed to achieve anything approaching democracy's ideals for a peaceful egalitarian society." America, by contrast, is a nation in "the death throes of republicanism."
What is more amazing than the sheer hatefulness of Roberts' tone, however, is how many obvious mistakes he got past the Globe's editors. Some examples:
Roberts: "It is safe to say that relocating more than a million people, along with the loss of the nation's largest port, and the other economic consequences from Hurricane Katrina will bankrupt the United States. Or would, if anyone dared to call in the country's debts ... No other [nation] has ever racked up such a tab."
Actually, the best estimates suggest the cost of Hurricane Katrina will be minimal in comparison to the size of the U.S. economy -- a few day's worth of the country's US$11-trillion-plus annual GDP -- which explains why U.S. stock markets actually rose substantially between the time Katrina hit and the time Roberts' article appeared.
As for that aside about America's tab, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is less than Europe's, and less than America's own post-Second World War average.
Roberts: "Shahid Javed Burki, former vice-president of the World Bank's China Department and a former Pakistani finance minister, forecasts that China will probably have enough purchasing power to surpass the United States as the world's largest economy this year."
An amazing claim, given that even the most generous measure available shows China's economy to be US$4-trillion dollars smaller than America's. The explanation is that Burki never said what Roberts claimed he'd said. What he stated is that China's economy might overtake that of the the United States in 20 years.
Roberts on the real reason America waged the Iraq war: "Before the invasion of Iraq, OPEC apparently was considering whether to start trading in dual currencies, and some economists believe that an announcement like this would send the value of a dollar falling by up to 40%. By gaining control of the Iraqi oil fields -- the world's second richest after Saudi Arabia -- the United States has effectively prevented an assault on the dollar."
Forty percent. Wow. That would mean the Canadian dollar would actually be worth more than the greenback overnight -- an astonishing result. So you'd think the Globe's editors would check the source.
I did. And I found out the identity of the "economists" Roberts consulted.
Turns out the 40% figure originates with a "personal research project" posted on the Internet by an American health-care worker named William Clark. Among Clark's many astounding claims is that "the effect of an OPEC switch to the Euro would be [that] the dollar would crash anywhere from 20-40%." Clark's source? "An astute and anonymous friend." This friend, apparently, has morphed into what Roberts calls "some economists."
It goes on. Roberts: "The Bush administration used the September, 2001, attacks as an excuse to pursue its thwarted plan for a pipeline taking oil from the Caspian through Afghanistan to the Pakistani port of Karachi."
This 9/11-era conspiracy theory would have been easy for Globe editors to debunk, since all you'd have to do is investigate whether any U.S. company had actually built the sort of pipeline Roberts describes. (Four years after the Taliban's demise, there have been elections -- but alas, no such pipeline.)
Roberts on U.S. State Department policy planner George Kennan: "Only five countries, [Kennan] stated confidently, could ever pose [a serious threat to the United States]: Britain, Germany, Japan, Israel and Russia ... The five-enemies theory is said to be one reason for the Pentagon's shape."
Problem: The Pentagon was dedicated in 1943. The State of Israel didn't come into being until 1948. Where Roberts came up with this bizarre whopper I have no idea. It reads like something out of a modern-day Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
I could go on: The U.S. population is about 300 million, not 200 million, as Roberts writes. George Washington was not the U.S. president at the time he signed the U.S. Constitution. The term "al-Qaeda" does not refer to "a database kept by the CIA." And I don't even know where to begin with such ludicrous statements as, "the only successful wars [the American Empire] has ever waged are the ones against the environment and its own people."
What does that even mean?
But is there really any sense in parsing Roberts' feverish ramblings? To the extent this essay had any motive, it was not to make a logical point through facts and arguments, but to stir up atavistic hatred for America.
What a wasted mind is Roberts'. And what a disgrace to the Globe and Mail that its editors let this hateful, error-littered screed stain the newspaper's otherwise respectable pages.
The piece is worth finding on the Web, for it reads as an unintentionally hilarious satire of the claptrap one might hear from a poli-sci freshman babbling about her seminar course on Noam Chomsky.
Yet, there it was in the Globe and Mail. The above paragraph in particular explains part of the problem with many Canadian journalists lately, and one must now seriously start asking whether or not we as a society should continue to subsidize (with our tax dollars universities and colleges) which graduate people who produce the material that Jonathan Kay writes about in this editorial.
PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2005.09.14
EDITION: National
SECTION: Editorials
PAGE: A16
COLUMN: Jonathan Kay
BYLINE: Jonathan Kay
SOURCE: National Post
ILLUSTRATION: Black & White Photo: Front page of Saturday's Globe and MailFocus section
NOTE: [email protected]
WORD COUNT: 956
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A moment of shame for The Globe and Mail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Saturday, The Globe and Mail published "The flagging empire," a mammoth, 5,300-word essay devoted to the theme that America is a racist, bankrupt, war-mongering hellhole, sliding inexorably toward "oligarchic totalitarianism."
The piece is worth finding on the Web, for it reads as an unintentionally hilarious satire of the claptrap one might hear from a poli-sci freshman babbling about her seminar course on Noam Chomsky. The author, Paul William Roberts, careens breathlessly from U.S. Constitutional history to the Middle East to Asian geopolitics -- the whole dizzying trajectory bound together by nothing more than a generalized contempt for the United States. To the extent he adds anything to the likes of Chomsky and other hard-left America-bashers, it is a sickening schadenfreude at the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.
Why should such a hateful specimen be featured on the front page of the newspaper's Saturday Focus section? For the same reason anti-Americanism flourishes everywhere in Canada: It permits Canadians to feel superior. And in this regard, no one puts the case better than Roberts. Canada, he writes, stands "among the few that have managed to achieve anything approaching democracy's ideals for a peaceful egalitarian society." America, by contrast, is a nation in "the death throes of republicanism."
What is more amazing than the sheer hatefulness of Roberts' tone, however, is how many obvious mistakes he got past the Globe's editors. Some examples:
Roberts: "It is safe to say that relocating more than a million people, along with the loss of the nation's largest port, and the other economic consequences from Hurricane Katrina will bankrupt the United States. Or would, if anyone dared to call in the country's debts ... No other [nation] has ever racked up such a tab."
Actually, the best estimates suggest the cost of Hurricane Katrina will be minimal in comparison to the size of the U.S. economy -- a few day's worth of the country's US$11-trillion-plus annual GDP -- which explains why U.S. stock markets actually rose substantially between the time Katrina hit and the time Roberts' article appeared.
As for that aside about America's tab, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is less than Europe's, and less than America's own post-Second World War average.
Roberts: "Shahid Javed Burki, former vice-president of the World Bank's China Department and a former Pakistani finance minister, forecasts that China will probably have enough purchasing power to surpass the United States as the world's largest economy this year."
An amazing claim, given that even the most generous measure available shows China's economy to be US$4-trillion dollars smaller than America's. The explanation is that Burki never said what Roberts claimed he'd said. What he stated is that China's economy might overtake that of the the United States in 20 years.
Roberts on the real reason America waged the Iraq war: "Before the invasion of Iraq, OPEC apparently was considering whether to start trading in dual currencies, and some economists believe that an announcement like this would send the value of a dollar falling by up to 40%. By gaining control of the Iraqi oil fields -- the world's second richest after Saudi Arabia -- the United States has effectively prevented an assault on the dollar."
Forty percent. Wow. That would mean the Canadian dollar would actually be worth more than the greenback overnight -- an astonishing result. So you'd think the Globe's editors would check the source.
I did. And I found out the identity of the "economists" Roberts consulted.
Turns out the 40% figure originates with a "personal research project" posted on the Internet by an American health-care worker named William Clark. Among Clark's many astounding claims is that "the effect of an OPEC switch to the Euro would be [that] the dollar would crash anywhere from 20-40%." Clark's source? "An astute and anonymous friend." This friend, apparently, has morphed into what Roberts calls "some economists."
It goes on. Roberts: "The Bush administration used the September, 2001, attacks as an excuse to pursue its thwarted plan for a pipeline taking oil from the Caspian through Afghanistan to the Pakistani port of Karachi."
This 9/11-era conspiracy theory would have been easy for Globe editors to debunk, since all you'd have to do is investigate whether any U.S. company had actually built the sort of pipeline Roberts describes. (Four years after the Taliban's demise, there have been elections -- but alas, no such pipeline.)
Roberts on U.S. State Department policy planner George Kennan: "Only five countries, [Kennan] stated confidently, could ever pose [a serious threat to the United States]: Britain, Germany, Japan, Israel and Russia ... The five-enemies theory is said to be one reason for the Pentagon's shape."
Problem: The Pentagon was dedicated in 1943. The State of Israel didn't come into being until 1948. Where Roberts came up with this bizarre whopper I have no idea. It reads like something out of a modern-day Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
I could go on: The U.S. population is about 300 million, not 200 million, as Roberts writes. George Washington was not the U.S. president at the time he signed the U.S. Constitution. The term "al-Qaeda" does not refer to "a database kept by the CIA." And I don't even know where to begin with such ludicrous statements as, "the only successful wars [the American Empire] has ever waged are the ones against the environment and its own people."
What does that even mean?
But is there really any sense in parsing Roberts' feverish ramblings? To the extent this essay had any motive, it was not to make a logical point through facts and arguments, but to stir up atavistic hatred for America.
What a wasted mind is Roberts'. And what a disgrace to the Globe and Mail that its editors let this hateful, error-littered screed stain the newspaper's otherwise respectable pages.
- Reaction score
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- Points
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Sherwood:
Commenting on US Supreme Court Justices and US Federal appointees is the only outlet we have. We can't influence our own federal appointments or selection of Justices. Apparently we're too civilized to be that democratic.
Cheers.
Commenting on US Supreme Court Justices and US Federal appointees is the only outlet we have. We can't influence our own federal appointments or selection of Justices. Apparently we're too civilized to be that democratic.
Cheers.
Brad Sallows
Army.ca Legend
- Reaction score
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>Iraq and Afghanistan kind of spring to mind. Maybe you've heard of them?
The US rules those nations? It is to laugh. How much tribute in oil, money, and opium did the US extract last year?
The US rules those nations? It is to laugh. How much tribute in oil, money, and opium did the US extract last year?
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S_Baker said:
We can't all be fanatically insular and autocentric.
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oh, please :Glorified Ape said:
You're brighter than that. Please, tell me you don't suffer from Jan Brady Syndrome.
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I never said I wasn't insular and autocentric, just not fanatically so. 
Btw.. please clarify: "Jan Brady syndrome".
Btw.. please clarify: "Jan Brady syndrome".
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