The Blogfather writes:
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: The administration’s pathetic, dithering response to the Arab uprisings has been both cynical and naive.
I think what we’re seeing is a sort of John Birmingham-lite scenario. In Birmingham’s page-turner books Without Warning and After America, the mysterious disappearance of most of the United States causes all sorts of economic and security chaos to unfold, once America is no longer there to keep the lid on things.
AdvertisementWhether deliberately or accidentally, the Obama Administration has substantially reduced the United States’ military and economic leverage over the past couple of years. The result is that we’re seeing a lot of stuff bust loose. America hasn’t vanished. We’ve just become, as Hitchens says, about as important as Switzerland.
18 Doughty Street is no longer on the Interwebs, but was sort of the Tory prototype for PJTV. I wrote a profile of the pioneering British Internet TV channel for Tech Central Station in mid-2007. In those early days of video, when just getting a video on YouTube seemed like a major accomplishment, they really seemed to put all the pieces together to create a virtual TV network; sadly it couldn’t sustain itself, however.
Back in 2007, 18 Doughty Street did a video that asked viewers to imagine “A World without America” — not knowing at the time how quickly our stature and presence would be diminished. At one point, the narrator intones, “A world without America would be a world without Israel” — which I imagine lots of people would listen to and think, “Ah–a twofer!”*
Fortunately, it’s still up at YouTube; click here to watch:
embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube Direkt
* Speaking of twofers…
Han Solo: You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake, well, this could be it, sweetheart.
If Azar Gat is right that history is built on contingencies, then there is nothing inevitable about it. Our decisions, today, decide the path we take towards the future, but that path has many things in it that we do not put there, like geography or existing cultures to take two extremes. How we utilize the resources we have (and seek new ones) and then apply our domestic and foreign policy to them is driven in part by our culture, in part by geography, in part by where societies are and together we must take these in to create our approach to the world.
President Obama has done much to critically weaken US resource utilization and creates societal pressure by that and by economic choices to inflate the dollar which has ramifications far beyond the US. Our past choices for who we ally with based on resources and contingent political history plays its role in this, as well, although at a more subtle level. In attempting to change US society via external pressures, the populist backlash is not one that heads towards the Left in the US but the Right. America’s demographics, background, history, and resource utilization are very different than that of, say, Greece, France, Egypt or China. The ideas that America has spread of personal accountability and liberty are a background theme that one Administration can try to drown out via economic and political ploys, but do not address the long-standing cultural stance supporting them.
If Mr. Hitchens sees problems in our foreign policy stances today, then the question must be asked: which of these are driven by what level of contingent factors. There is no assurance that our domestic and foreign policy will change before 2012, and if what we see is far out of the norm for the US stance on its cultural, geographic and resource heritage, then this will be seen as a set of changes brought about by unlikely circumstances. With that said if there is a pending change in course for the US in 2012, then the course it will take is determined by where we are, as a people and Nation, and then setting a path to where we want to go that may NOT align with the way we used to deal with the world. The contingent factors of demographics, resource utilization, and cultural exectations in the US will have major ramifications in a shift to a different course post-2012 that may not please Mr. Hitchens, either.
America has traditionally taken a more ‘hands-off’ approach to the world pre-20th century and that may come back post-20th century to the point where only US trade is guaranteed by our armed forces, and we will deal with terrorists and pirates in a more summary fashion than was politically expedient in the 20th century. A change in how we view labor policy, tax policy and government regulations will also change US competativeness in the world and may shift that back to a pre-20th century formulation with a few bits of 20th century policy still attached. Thus the ‘inevitability’ of the US becoming the second or third largest economy in the world is only contingent upon all factors staying the same… they don’t. Coming into the 20th century China was the second largest economy then coming into the 21st they are the second largest economy and until they change, as a culture, to allow more personal liberty and freedom, that will restrain China from being ‘unleashed’: demographics drive destiny to a large degree, but so does culture.
What we see, today, is a horrific mess brought upon us by the dying system of Nation State interaction that is more typical of the world pre-20th century than in the 20th century, itself. That does not bode well for the world, and yet the US did very, very well in the late 19th century and with our adaptations to modern viewpoints on personal liberty and freedom, we have the foundations for doing well in the future. If, of course, we survive to get there…
A world without America is exactly the same thing as the United States losing faith in it’s Constitution. The world is in flames because the elites think we shouldn’t push the First Amendment on Muslim states before doing business or granting 30,000 visas to their youth. The world is in flames because we’d rather cuddle regimes that whisper sweet nothings in our ears than force them to follow Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution granting THEIR people the right to vote out the tax man every two years before we grant them loans for American products. The world is in flames because we have lost America all on our own!
“At one point, the narrator intones, ‘A world without America would be a world without Israel’ — which I imagine lots of people would listen to and think, ‘Ah–a twofer!’*”
Sometimes I wish those people could have that “It’s a Wonderful Life” view of what the world would be like if their wants and wishes were granted… despite what they, and the rest of the world, really needs! I am not even sure that would work, leaving them still doubting… wanting another miracle, more proof.
Time to rethink foreign investments, and vacations.
at the youtube site, 5 to 4 against the video
guess the world would vote us off the island if given the chance, just for spite