The Decline of the American Empire ?
A very interesting trend - and one that we have certainly noticed and followed.
Does anyone in America care that the world is turning their backs on them?
Do Americans really believe the neo-fascist fantasy that we will bend to their will at every turn?
A very interesting trend - and one that we have certainly noticed and followed.
Does anyone in America care that the world is turning their backs on them?
Do Americans really believe the neo-fascist fantasy that we will bend to their will at every turn?
The end days are coming. And the countdown started some time ago ...
posted by Aeneas the Younger @ 5:35 am
18 Comments
18 Comments:
Aeneas:
This piece is riddled with flawed assumptions which tend to skew it towards a basically Americanist angle (despite its cosmetic critique of current American neo-colonial arrogance). Allow me to disembowel some of its question-begging inanities.
1) Kinsman says, "successful leadership by the world's sole superpower requires a favourable view of America in the eyes of others".
Interesting. His article's thesis contends that America's power is waning because it is losing the world's goodwill. The implication is that America's global power is not something self-generated (through its own economic or military strength) but something fundamentally dependent on the world's co-operation. Yet, he goes on to describe the U.S., blandly, as a "superpower", a term which negates his thesis: if America's real power depends on its global reputation and if that reputation is now in tatters, then America's status as a "superpower" is currently unstable, equivocal, and perhaps even neutralised, rather than an obvious given.
This is a serious logical error, one which the author commits, I think, because he fundamentally buys into U.S. hype about what American elites delusionally believe is their yet-undiminished global influence.
2)Kinsman says, "A widely disliked America obviously helps extremists and terrorists to mobilize support".
No, it doesn't. This view rests on the assumption that America is the world's only bastion against terrorism, and that being "nice" and pliable before its dominance is a crucial anti-terror technique.
Actually, it has been precisely during the post-WWII era (known, quite fallaciously, as the "American Century"), with American power and pro-American sentiment at their international heights, that global terror has reached proportions that American analysts themselves claim are pandemic. The evidence suggests that, indeed, the kind of amused, benign indifference to America that marked the pre-WWII era might be a more effective counter-terror technique than the affectionate attachment to the U.S. that Kinsman is advocating.
3) Kinsman quotes a book in order to describe the four "strands" of anti-Americanism. This childishly reductive taxonomy is based entirely on post-modern conditions and neglects the older and more deeply anthropological bases for what he would call "anti-Americanism". The extent to which American society has evolved in ways fundamentally antipathetic to the European tradition, for example, is not mentioned, though it is a painfully obvious (perhaps too obvious) explanation for what often puts Europe and Canada at odds with the U.S.
Instead, Kinsman relies on classic right-wing distortions and red herrings--describing critiques of America as the preserve of "Islamic radicals" and "Marxists", ignoring America's close friendships and working relationships with putative "anti-Americans" like the Afghan mujahedeen in the '80s, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Putin's Russia.
4) Kinsman says, "The [Iraq] war has done immense damage to America's once supreme image as the world's leading protagonist of human rights".
A problem: America never HAS had an "image as the world's leading protagonist of human rights". Kinsman is merely describing America's view of itself. In fact, America has always been viewed by the West as being what it always has been--a human-rights laggard at home and abroad, the tragic history of American race relations providing only the saddest relevant case study.
5) Kinsman says, "And there can be no other rational explanation for the answers to a Pew poll last spring that asked: "Which country do you think is the greatest threat to global safety?"
Here, he attempts to place blame for global suspicion of the U.S. exclusively upon the Iraq war, implying that the war is an unfortunate aberration which has tainted the U.S.'s formerly immaculate foreign-policy record and has soured our previously positive view of U.S. power.
Even the slightly historically literate will know that in the West, and particularly in Canada, "anti-American" skepticism in its current form began almost immediately after the Second World War, as the U.S. began to build its global hegemony on a basis of nuclear blackmail. This skepticism reached two high-water marks, the first during the McCarthy era (which repelled most Canadians) and the second during the Vietnam War, an American moral disaster so repugnant to Canadians that it ushered in the longest and most intense era of sustained Canadian nationalism we have so far known (roughly from 1967 to 1977). To say that it is only the Iraq war that puts America at odds with the West is deeply obtuse.
There's more to say, but I'll leave it at that. It's fascinating how utterly wrong an apparently even-handed article can be, eh?
"Does anyone in America care that the world is turning their backs on them?"
nope, not a one of us.
(thumbs his nose)
KEvron
I can’t really add much to what Sir Isaac has written, most of which I’m totally in agreement with. I did think the article was a bit muddled and filled with a number of questionable assumptions. It’s difficult to generalize about these things, especially so here in Canada where most of us have direct experiences with America and Americans that influence each of us differently in terms of forming an impression. My wife, for example is an America-hater and always has been for as long as I’ve known her. It’s almost a visceral, irrational thing that defies explanation. She doesn’t like the people in general or the country as a whole. I rather like Americans for most part, but am deeply wary about their government, their foreign policy and their corporate “manifest destiny.”
If there’s one thing about America that I find offensive it’s their simultaneous combination of arrogance and staggering ignorance. I’ll give you an example. I was watching a program the other day where a bi-racial couple was being interviewed, apparently as part of a series discussing that topic. He was a high-level beltway insider who was white and his wife was black. Towards the end of the interview he said that while they still encounter some prejudice, the country has come a long way and then he said that their relationship is something that couldn’t happen anywhere else in the world. Hello…? Not in Canada? Not in the U.K.? Not in any number of other western countries? What a remarkably dumb thing to say. He was so proud tooting America’s horn about its being such an enlightened country, then he had to go and imply by sheer ignorance that other countries such as Canada, etc. weren’t. Apparently we don’t even register in their consciousness.
Gents & KEVron (;>)...
I agree that the Op-Ed is loogically-flawed, but at least it has dawned upon the writer that America' global profile is in serious trouble.
That he muddles the whole thing with a Classical Liberal and American Nationalist bias is I guess understandable, given that he went to Princeton University.
But WHY was this man Canadian Ambassador to the EU !
http://www.salzburgseminar.org/2005faculty.cfm?IDEvent=1026&IDBBS_People=119070
This is my point. The Author knows that the US is in trouble, but as a Canadian of a certain generation he is so co-opted by their Classical Liberal myths that he makes his flawed arguments.
And THIS is what passed for excellece in the Diplomatic Corps these days?
I wonder what Charles Ritchie would think ... ?
Aeneas:
Ritchie would think what most informed observers have already concluded--that Canada's foreign service, once the best in the world, has been in serious decline for two decades through the criminal neglect of its myopic, parochial, Fortress America-bound political masters. Sad.
Red:
* " My wife, for example is an America-hater and always has been for as long as I’ve known her."
Sounds like my kind of gal. I think we need to wife-swap, Red. Let's look around for a suitable venue to get friendly in, with a nice burnt-orange shag rug, macramé plant holders and a good fondue set.
Your story is sadly hilarious. If the guy were oriented towards an actual reality, he would have said the exact contrary--that America is one of the few places in the world where their kind of relationship is difficult to conduct. Likewise, Americans will say that they have the highest standard of living in the world. The place is surreal.
Of course, these are the people who force their kids to make a daily blood oath they're too young to even understand. Why expect rationality from them?
SIB:
"Daily Blood Oath."
Well done, Sir.
And a Good Point to boot.
Sir Isaac -- Interesting offer, but I’ll have to pass. My libido isn’t what it used to be. How about I just send her your way and you guys can have a threesome. Frankly, I’d rather enjoy the peace and quite... possibly take a long bath and read a book.
Red, what a romantic you are.
Very interesting article and nicely dissected by Sir Isaac.
Being English-born and raised the British Empire was and still is a cultural touchstone.
Once the USSR collapsed the US replaced the old British Empire as a global "hyperpower". It hasn't been an "even-swap" though--the practice of imperialism is significantly different in many essential details.
However there is much that is familiar--arrogance being perhaps the most obvious similarity.
But it is the sheer ignorance in the US that most amazes me.
The Brit Empire was built up over 400 years(the East India Company was chartered by Elizabeth the 1st) compared to the American "Empire" of basically 100 years.
The Brits had the advantage of time to learn something about their imperial holdings but the US has had modern commuications to establish their empire in a quarter of the time.
Britain still has its parochials and jingoists and whatnot and continues to fuck-around with ex-colonies when it really shouldn't but for the most part it pays heed to experience and local knowledge.
The US however still sits in splendid isolation.
The world moves exponentially faster and the US appears to have regressed. How far the US will fall I don't know but decline is definitely in the wind and it doesn't just have to do with Iraq--that's just the most obvious symptom.
SIB & RT:
We anti-Americans need to stick together ! LOL
All,
It has been my experience that no good comes from spending a lifetime constantly contemplating one's own navel.
Please forgive my unique description of American foreign policy.
PST:
Au Contraire. I think you are being too kind.
Turn your backs. Run and play.
We'll see you at dinnertime.
By the way, where's your food?
Oh, I'm sorry. Didn't you hear? America is tired of being exploited by nations who can't feed themselves.
Oh look, here comes Brazil with snacks for everyone.
Oops. I wonder who's submarines sank their freighters?
United States of Earth.
Get used to it.
"The end days are coming. And the countdown started some time ago."
Do dream on; it's all you have as a Canadian. Illusions.
Am I concerned about the "world turning its back on America"? If that's true, pius Aeneas, it's really a bigger problem for the world, not America.
To all of you who think Americans are so ignorant: I do love your ability to hold contradictory beliefs at the same time. However, don't you just admire us retards for building the world's richest and strongest nation?
Pius Aeneas, America obtained its global leadership by effort and will. It has been our goal from before the founding of our nation. World leadership doesn’t happen because you go around the world with cute little flags plastered to your backpacks announcing to the world who you are NOT. Is doesn’t happen by pretending to be nice so that everyone will like you. It doesn’t happen clinging to some romantic notion of royal empire. It is your time -- not America's -- that is over. (You do realize that, don’t you?) Her Britannic majesty has nothing to offer you. Your backbiting therefore comes across as the typical harping at the top dog and nothing more. Trust me on this: Your fantasies about your better way will leave you nothing but the taste of bitter ashes.
But buck up! If it won’t be you* who will replace the American hegemon, maybe it will be the Chi Comms … if they don’t implode first.
But thanks for all the good and kind words, pius Aeneas et alii. It is good to know that you have friends who, having so little to offer otherwise, feel so free to criticize. Americans never get tired of hearing this stuff. Your Queen must be proud.
_________
* And it won’t
Editor's note:
"Harping," pace your PM, should be "carping," pace your fishy complaints.
"Once the USSR collapsed the US replaced the old British Empire as a global 'hyperpower.'" -- 5th Estate
You garbled your history. 1. The US "replaced" Britain's role as leader of the Western world long before the collapse of the USSR. 2. Britain was never a "hyperpower" -- that is, uncontested global power -- in the way that the US is.
You should have said:
- "The US overtook Britain as a world power sometime between the end of the first world war and the beginning of the second. But (who knows?) maybe before.
- "Great Britain lost any claims to superpower status after WWII."
- "America became a hyper power after the collapse of the USSR."
- And finally, "I hate the US because of this."
Sir Isaac -- Interesting offer, but I’ll have to pass. My libido isn’t what it used to be. How about I just send her your way and you guys can have a threesome. Frankly, I’d rather enjoy the peace and quite... possibly take a long bath and read a book.
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