The Imperial retrenchemnt has started

[nadinbrzezinski]

WHAT? How can you say that? Well when both Barney Frank and Ron Paul start demanding that we cut down DOD budget... that is a market. And you can feel safe to... put this down on your calendar.

What Frank is asking for is... calling back troops back from the field, far and beyond US Borders...

The Empire is starting to fall.

What is that about the cost of maintaining the Empire being higher than we can afford? We are there now kiddies.

[Dark]

1. No, it's not. Troops and land aren't the only ways of forging an empire.

When we no longer control 1/3 to 1/2 the wealth on the planet (can't remember which fraction) then we'll talk about not being an empire.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. That's comming next

see China right now controls far more steel production than we do. I highly recommend people pick up a copy of Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of Empires and read it.

Mark your calendars though... this has started. And in the beginning will be slow. But when it is noticeable for most Americans, well people should ask Soviet Citizens how fast that was... the ride will definitely get bumpy

[Bitwit1234]

2. BUT you don't understand it is not keeping an empire being the

reason the republicans want to keep the war going. They want the defense contracts and all the stuff that goes with the war spending to go to their buddies.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. The American Empire is not about this war

really gelled up in 1945...

They did not try to keep that war going. In fact, they did not want it.

But the empire really started to form in 1898... a little historical perspective helps here.

[jwirr]

16. That book is the one that explains that it is the defense spending

that eventually pulls the empire down. That is how we suckered the USSR into bankrupting themselves but we did not learn the lesson. But we will and soon.

[Selatius]

21. The USSR had a smaller economy. They crumpled first because they were spending like we were.

At one point, defense spending in the USSR accounted for an astonishing 14% of the Soviet Union's GDP. Everything else fell as second priority. The US will approach those levels of spending soon if it already has not.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. Before Iraq\ Aftganistan our military accounts

for 41% of the budget... if we take into account our adventures in central Asia... it is anywhere from 51 to 55% of the budget.

We are at 14% easily, if not above.

There is more, our industrial capacity has crashed and migrated, lock stock and barrel to the Middle Kingdom.

Of course if you ask Americans it is that cute Foreign aid. less than 1%, that is most of the spending...

GRRR

[WCGreen]

28. I read that book in the early 90's....

It's actually called The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers...

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. I first read it in graduate school

and then in... the 1990s while hubby was stationed in Hawaii. Nothing funnier than having a talk about the book with a Navy Captain while waiting at Medical. He was surprised I tell you, that a Chief's wife was interested in such arcane subjects. Well until I pointed out to him that I held an MA in history...

It is always fun to work through stereotypes.

[WCGreen]

33. I love that as well...

I have the long hair and I go before the IRS and they underestimate me every time and every time I win...

[Bonobo]

3. Bingo.

Good call.

[mmonk]

4. I would like to think so.

But neither were keen on empire anyway.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. The People might not want to

but we ARE an empire and now the fall has started. Mark your calendar. I am serious... these calls don't come up too often.

[mmonk]

10. I do think it is just a matter of time.

And you are right, it doesn't come often. I just think it will take awhile as the first ones to call for it are ones that wanted it to be cut or drawn down to begin with.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. A few historians have looked at fall of Empire

go look for Fergunson's article on Foreign Affairs for the Spring Quarter... he said in our lifetime, I have said in ten years...

They are sudden... for most not paying attention. But the signposts have been there for a few years. This is just a critical one. I suspect this will happen in... ten years or less. And the end will not be pretty.

[mmonk]

14. I agree with you. I think most likely within 10 years.

We are doing a USSR redux. I get Foreign Affairs. I haven't read that yet. I think my spring quarter issue is still in the plastic.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Funny I bought it

falls within the research I am doing and the article intrigued me.

:hi:

He theorized in the 2050s range, I'd say very soon. And the USSR redux... well I have been doing on and off a near future US (successor states)... and the Republic of New Jerusalem is possible, and scary...

Let's say I foresee the rise of one or two theocratic states.

[Stinky The Clown]

7. Good to see critical thought is still soldiering on.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Some of us have been Cassandras on this

for a while... but to see that prophecy actually start to come to be... quite frankly is scary.

The consequences for the US will be interesting... best case scenario we just fall to second fiddle and actually survive this. Worst case scenario... we fall to many second fiddles... the USSR comes to mind, as well as Rome. That could be very painful at many levels.

[mmonk]

27. The way to make it less painful is to choose the British path instead

of the Soviet collapse, so to speak. The British realized they were stretched and started withdrawals. It will be interesting to see if we wise up in time. So far, I'm not depending on wisdom to rule out.

[Subdivisions]

32. WTF?

You mean those of us who've been warning of this for so long and were chastised and ridiculed are finally being vidicated?

Cassandras indeed.

Have you heard of peak oil? Lots of Cassandras there too.

[jwirr]

12. It would be interesting to get Chalmers Johnson's take on the situation

today. He warned us.

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. Link for the rest (I had to go look)

and I had the honor of listening to him as a graduate student

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

[jwirr]

19. Thank you.

[Bigmack]

17. Until lots of people in government....

and the general population read his trilogy.... we are fucked!

Blowback

Sorrows of Empire

Dismantling the Empire

Problem is... there's lots of words... lots of ideas...

"Hey... who's Dancing With the Fucking Stars this week."

Shit!

[mmonk]

22. I have the last two of the trilogy (absent Blowback). I believe the last

one was called Nemesis. Very enlightening.

[Odin2005]

18. K&R

[DavidDvorkin]

20. Recessional

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Kipling.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. Exactly and it will not be easy

[kenny blankenship]

24. Germania... is not all that and a bag of chips

We shall be safe in Gaul and our other possessions.

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. Is that Julius Caesar?

And quite aproppo too.

[kenny blankenship]

29. I don't know if anyone said that *precisely*

It could be a quote - a loose quote - of somebody. Lots of people could have said that, but I am not a big history buff so I can't swear to it. If it's a verbatim for anybody it would probably be Julius Caesar's heir, Augustus. Augustus was still Emperor in the year 9 CE when something of great significance happened for Rome. Some dude with the ironic title of Roman Governor of Germany, who was personally protected with 3 legions, was attacked in a forest only about 30 km east of the Rhine River, and he and his command of 20,000 were wiped out by tribesmen, previously believed to be docile and incapable of organized resistance. They were wiped out basically to the last man and their imperial standards were captured. If this could happen just the other side of the Rhine, what hope did Rome have of pacifying these savages all the way east to the Elbe? Roman rule of Germania was proved to be a fiction in the year 9 C.E.

In consequence, Emperor Augustus tried to lay down an enduring policy that the Rhine River should always be a border to the Roman empire. Germans were just barbarians that had to be let alone. Maybe Augustus said something like "Germania is not all that...We never even really wanted it that much. Germans suck. They do donuts in their own front yards while drunk in their ugly BMWs. They eat sausages and fart at the table and pass out in church. They just suck and would just be a perpetual boat anchor of backwardness and barbarism around our necks. Let us ignore them!" Indeed it is highly likely that he said things of this nature to disparage and disavow the whole project of conquering Germany as something only a stupid person would want to do because they were stupid. When faced with defeat at impossible tasks, individuals and peoples tend to deny that the task was important, or that success at it was really desirable, or that failure was so bad.

Augustus' successors would follow his policy of leaving Germany alone sporadically, sometimes trying to chisel pieces of Germany off one by one, but mostly honoring it and pushing their European conquests east along the lower Danube to the Black Sea, with a little time out to capture Britain. By the time of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, it was considered settled policy to just build walls at the frontiers to keep the barbarians like the Germans out, rather than to build roads into their wilderness to bring them in. The empire was as big as it was going to get. However, leaving Germany unconquered would come back to haunt Rome later on, as we all know. One could perhaps argue that they should have left off trying to expand the empire so far into Asia and should have done whatever it took to deal with the German hordes who even in their disorganized way, represented a much nearer threat. Or one could argue the other way, that committing absolutely to subduing the German tribes would have resulted in the dissolution of the Empire sooner rather than later.

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. It sounded to my ear like Shakespeare

but then again, you are right, it would have been Augustus.

Reality is that Rome in the end lost as the economic transfer took oh 200 years to go to the East. The silver and gold in coins moved progressively east, and Rome lost technology. You could say it was deindustrialized... and if that sounds familiar...

As I wish I told professors of mine, no History does not repeat itself every step of the way, but history has definite echoes.

We are living through one of them... all empires come to an end.

[quaker bill]

34. About 30 years overdue

Barney Frank and Ron Paul? Next you will be talking Bernie Sanders.

Wake me up when Boehner starts talking cuts. He is willing to cut every other thing, but defense, I doubt it.