The Fate of Empires?
Posted by Harry Haller |
For some time I have argued that, unless decisive events liberated the United States from involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, it might suffer the same fate as the former Soviet Union, whose resources were so depleted after years of engagement with the Afghans that its government collapsed. Apparently John Gray, in a scathing essay for The Observer, concurs:
The fate of empires is very often sealed by the interaction of war and debt. That was true of the British Empire, whose finances deteriorated from the First World War onwards, and of the Soviet Union. Defeat in Afghanistan and the economic burden of trying to respond to Reagan’s technically flawed but politically extremely effective Star Wars programme were vital factors in triggering the Soviet collapse. Despite its insistent exceptionalism, America is no different. The Iraq War and the credit bubble have fatally undermined America’s economic primacy. The US will continue to be the world’s largest economy for a while longer, but it will be the new rising powers that, once the crisis is over, buy up what remains intact in the wreckage of America’s financial system.
On the way into work this morning I had a simple thought: “Isn’t it time to circle the wagons?”
By circling the wagons I mean, do we bring all our assets home? If this is the beginning of some end (and I’m not sure that it is) shouldn’t we stop spending money abroad, shouldn’t we stop building and maintaining our American Empire?
Just a not-so-well-thought-out thought that popped in my head.