The Bubble of Empire
It's been popped …
by
Justin Raimondo
by Justin Raimondo
DIGG THIS
 The
idea that the United States is the global
hegemon, that we have first
dibs on the title of world policemen – indeed, our entire
post-WWII foreign policy – is nothing but a delusion. That is one
of the chief lessons of the recent economic downturn, one that,
unfortunately, the incoming administration has yet to face up to
– and the pundits (ensconced as they are in the culture of hubris)
have yet
to realize.
Delusions die
hard. This
poor woman – faced with the dire prospect of having to sell the
Palm Beach cottage, and, omigod, lay off Yolanda, the thrice weekly
cleaning lady – is just beginning to wake up, albeit with great
reluctance. Along with these
people, she will live in a world of reduced expectations. Our
rulers, however, show every sign of inflexibility in the face of
the need to change.
 For
decades, we've been living inside a bubble, here at the epicenter
of the imperial metropolis, protected from the dire fate of the
rest of the world's peoples – who live in poverty,
tyranny,
and worse
– by the productive and political capital amassed by our intrepid
ancestors, who built the world's most successful (and freest) constitutional
republic, and, because of that were able to create an enormous amount
of wealth. Both are gone, now, and yet we are still acting as if
they're intact, like an amputee who feels pain in an arm that no
longer is attached to his shoulder.
For example,
the New York Times reports
that President-elect Barack Obama is already backpedaling on his
pledge to get our troops out of Iraq in sixteen months – yet how
does he imagine we'll have the means to keep them there even that
long? The Times tells us that "the officials made clear
that the withdrawal of all combat forces under the generals' recommendations
would not come until some time after May 2010, Mr. Obama's target."
But by that time the Chinese will have long since stopped lending
us the money to pay for it all.
President Obama
is pledged
to launch an Afghan "surge" that will dwarf our continuing
efforts in Iraq – but how will we pay for it? He and his surrogates
pontificate on the need to "reconstruct" Afghanistan,
when he'll be hard-pressed to reconstruct the economy in the wake
of a devastating deflation.
Read
the rest of the article
December
20, 2008
Justin
Raimondo [send him mail]
is editorial director of Antiwar.com
and is the author of An
Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming
the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.
Copyright
© 2008 Antiwar.com
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