It’s funny that the author on one hand acknowledges that the government sucks at everything it does, whether it’s education, infrastructure, or health insurance. He also acknowledges that the federal government has a tendency to constantly engage in costly foreign wars regardless of who happens to be in office. Yet his proposed solution is to give the government even more money and even more power.
Thus, ironically, the problem for both the right and the left is the same one- that governments today are too weak. The right needs an at least temporarily strong government to effect the dismantling of the state, whereas the left needs a strong government not merely to respond to the grinding conditions of the economic “recovery”, but to overturn previous policies, put in new protections and find some alternative to the current political and economic order. Dark enlightenment types and progressives are confronting the same frustration while having diametrically opposed goals. It is not so much that Washington is too powerful as it is that the power it has is embedded in a system, which, as Mark Leibovich portrays brilliantly, is feckless and corrupt.
The idea of using "temporary" power to effect the dismantling of structures of power was appealing to Sulla, too. Fortunately for him, he died before seeing Julius Caesar follow his precedent to establish Rome as an empire, and Caesar himself as emperor for life.
seems to me like subcultural-ideology (frankly puerile and overly simplistic) intended to set-up a more robust (still) unrepresented ideology summed up as "just do what the algoritm/computer system tells you to do". i.e. the super-king they want will speak to them through their phones.
The government doesn’t suck at everything it does, the problem is that people still believe that the government works for them. The wars objective is not to “win” but to create the need for the military infrastructure, same as the healthcare system primary objective is not healing people but to create the need for itself.
I think a good way to balance or engage better performance out of whoever is in office is to completely rid the federal tax. All people will pay their state tax, and the local/state government will be responsible to provide the federal government money out of the state pool. I think it will drastically change 1) how much the federal government can spend 2) What it gets spent on because the states would much rather keep that money pool to spend internally.
Endless wars would change. Infrastructure would be a larger discussion, etc...
An added benefit of getting rid of federal taxes in favor of state or local taxes is that taxes get less coercive the more decentralized your get.
It's very easy to move from one town to another if you don't like how the local government is running things. It's a hassle, but very possible to move from one state to another. However, moving from the U.S. to another country is incredibly difficult for most people.
it would definitely shift the power balance back to the states. As it is, a large portion of the power the federal government exhibits over the states is threatening to withhold money.
I recommend studying the current European Union then. This is pretty much the status quo over here. And yes, it ensures that the states have way more power. But make your own conclusions.
"Any single defeat can be attributed to particular and ad hoc circumstances, but America is unique among the world’s dominant powers of the past 500 years in its repeated failure to achieve military objectives over decades. Those failures are even more extraordinary because they occurred in the absence of a rising military rival and as America’s ability and willingness to produce and pay for the weapons needed for military supremacy remained undiminished."
Yes. That's extremely important. Vietnam was the US's first total loss, and the US hasn't had a successful outcome since then. The US blew the endgame in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and, most importantly, in Russia after the Cold War.
What went wrong?
After WWII, the US had confidence in its own system of government, and imposed it on Germany and Japan with a sizable occupation force. It worked.
The US underfunded the post-war period of round one in Afghanistan, after kicking the Soviets out. In Iraq, the occupation was botched. Paul Bremer is generally blamed for this.[1]
Blowing the aftermath of a war leads to big trouble. See: WWI.
This analysis is only partially correct, but it echoes what is the (mostly) prevailing wisdom of the last couple years about "what went wrong".
To start, we actually did have a success: Gulf War I. It was an overwhelming victory, with extensive enemy casualties and minimal allied losses. It's strategic significance was not what it did to the US position in the Middle East however, but rather what it did to the General Officer Corps after the fact. All of the Cold War battle drills had worked exactly as planned (giant tank battles in open terrain, with CAS on station to mop up any stragglers). If you think for a moment about the kind of conformation bias that proliferated after that, then not having much of a post-game in the following wars makes a little more sense.
Also, we didn't really impose "our" system of government on Germany and Japan, but rather grafted aspects of it onto their existing infrastructure, occupied them for a long time to ensure that those aspects were set in stone over a generation, and then essentially kicked them out of the nest when they were ready to fly in orbit around a US-led Bipolar world.
Thus, the difference with Iraq II and Afghanistan after the invasions is not that we "botched" it, but more so that the coordination mechanisms in place in societies like 1940s Germany and Japan didn't exist in Iraq and Afghanistan (I'll caveat this by saying this is much more true for Afghanistan than it is for Iraq. Iraq had a mostly modern economy, with functional hierarchies of government and civil service, but was very cultrually distant from the US in ways that set it apart from Germany and Japan). Meaning, it was just straight up easier to do these kinds of things in Germany and Japan, overwhelming victory aside. I don't think I need to go into a detailed history of Afghanistan to illustrate why.
The real "problem" is that we don't have a clear understanding of what the hell we should be using this military for anymore, after the Cold War ended.
No clear understanding and no willingness to accept the outcome created by ones actions. And thus invest the time, resources and political will to stay in those countries for multiple generations to ensure they have a chance at building up a modern democratic society.
The US has had plenty of moral lapses in its military adventures, but one suspects that the powers of the past 500 years would have been far more willing to obliterate entire nations without concern for civilians.
> The US has had plenty of moral lapses in its military adventures, but one suspects that the powers of the past 500 years would have been far more willing to obliterate entire nations without concern for civilians.
Simply not true. There was a reason why european wars were fought in the fields and not in cities/population centers in the past. Also, past powers tended to conquer nations/cities in order to subjugate the population for exploitation. After all, humans were valuable resources back then. It is very rare that a military/government/nation would simply choose to exterminate the inhabitants of a continent ( 100 or so native nations that were wiped out ) or set entire cities full of civilians ablaze ( dresden, tokyo ) and nuke two civilian cities ( hiroshima, nagasaki ).
Pretty much the US and our side kick britain are the only ones to be guilty of the first two. We are still the only ones guilty of the 3rd.
But precedents being set, your assertion is likely to be truer in the future. I suspect that in the next 500 years, powers would be more willing to obliterate entire nations without concern for civilians, especially if technology and automation make humans a less valuable commodity.
We helped impose a system of government in both nations after ww2, but neither is our system of government. They have a lot of similar parts, but it isn't our system of government.
> It worked.
The marshall plan worked in germany. As for japan, they didn't receive any marshall plan. It wasn't until the korean war that "it worked" for japan. But both germany and japan were major modern powers before ww2 so they would have reverted back to it if left to their devises. The US didn't create the success in germany or japan, the germans and japanese did that themselves.
> The US underfunded the post-war period of round one in Afghanistan, after kicking the Soviets out. In Iraq, the occupation was botched. Paul Bremer is generally blamed for this.[1]
No amount of funding was going to save afghanistan. The same goes for iraq. You need a nationalistic centralized power to stabilize and grow a nation - especially a war torn one. Something Germany and Japan had and aghanistan and iraq don't.
> Blowing the aftermath of a war leads to big trouble. See: WWI.
Aghanistan and Iraq wars are nothing like WW1. Nearly 40 million people died in WW1 and it involved all the great powers at the time. WW1 and WW2 are fairly unique went it comes to wars. Maybe vietnam or algeria are better comparisons, but even then, aghanistan and iraq are not even vietnam or algeria.
For the US, the iraq and afghan wars were more skirmishes than wars. The military casualties are 4,497 and 2,216 respectively.
To put this into perspective, quite a few cities in the US experienced more gun related homicides than the US military did in iraq or afghanistan. So nothing like ww1.
I'd say the US's first total loss was the Civil War. The North didn't really win. 100 years of Klan terror should be enough proof, not to mention the continuing rule of the South by landowning oligarchs who keep the place a festering corrupt shithole.
This wasn't even remotely what the Civil war was fought over. It was a struggle against the Federal government system from DC imposing themselves over states rights in the South. Also, you might get more reception for your ideas if you don't paint half the country as a "festering shithole". The majority of Americans don't live in the ivory towers of NYC and San Francisco.
The Soviets were kicked out by the Taliban. How could a democracy be started with them? How can you make the Iraqi fractions live together if there is oil money to be distributed? How do you conquer Russia if they have nuclear weapons and still plenty of tanks?
No, they weren't. The Taliban didn't exist until much later, the group that the Soviets were forced out by became the government and then later fragmented into a number of different factions. The Taliban was one of them, but so were many of the factions fighting against the Taliban.
The Taliban got their weapons and training from the US, all funded by the Saudis, orchestrated by a congressman [1] and oil heiress from Texas. The history is well known at this point.
> How could a democracy be started with them?
Democracy was probably never a goal in the effort, certainly not for the Saudis, and not for the Taliban or the US either. Weakening the USSR through bloodshed and drain of resources.
American pride won't save this country from long-term trends. Before any meaningful change can be made, the "we're the best" attitude has to go. Sometime in the next 2 decades China is gonna put a man on Mars before the US, I can't wait to see the shocked faces
I share frustration with many of the issues that the author discusses. But I disagree completely with his thesis. I am profoundly optimistic about our future.
The individual liberties provided by the Constitution empower each of us to speak our minds, share ideas, and start/join movements. We have the power to elect our representatives, and have an independent judiciary to push back against corruption. The average quality of life here is higher than in almost any other place on Earth, and no other country can compare to ours in terms of diversity of thought, culture, and ethnicity.
Look, I understand that there are real, serious problems with our institutions and our economy. The beautiful thing about the United States though is that our political system allows for solutions to be discussed, proposed, and adopted. The biggest threats I see to the United States are not unique to us: climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, and global unrest/poverty.
> no other country can compare to ours in terms of diversity of thought
So long as your thought is within culturally accepted norms. Otherwise, American companies will happily chase you completely off the internet, sometimes with the force of American law (it’s frankly scarier when they do it without being forced by law).
I hear talk of the end of the American empire often, but I see issues like healthcare and education as superfluous in the face of a few underlying trends that provide the basis for another American century.
Healthcare reform is something we already have the levers to execute through government policy, and I believe it will happen during the next financial crisis along with entitlement reform.
On the other hand, there are certain trends that there are no obvious ways to reverse, namely demographic decline, geographic dominance, and technological innovation.
When you consider the decline of America in the face of China, for example, consider that China faces a far more serious demographic issue, and as Russia teaches us, it is almost impossible to grow economically during such a period. America's birth rate, however, is 1.8 births per woman with immigration putting the country into a healthy range.
Geographically, American is set up between the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic. If global warming does hit the arctic hard, we will have access to the arctic ocean via Alaska, whereas China and other regional super powers will not. In terms of energy, raw resources, and land America is also looking at self sufficiency for the next century to come.
Technologically, America draws on the best universities in the world, with cities that have external economies of scale so large that they will be hard to displace (ie SV, NYC, Boston). Not to mention we have an engrained culture that affirms those who experiment and forgives those who fail. In the technological sense I think America will succeed also.
Instead of looking at this as the end of America, I think people need to recognize that we face extraordinary problems, which we can overcome. In my own opinion, I think the highest order offence against the American people is American business co-opting the government, and as soon as we work this out, we will have a better ability to overcome issues of healthcare, education, etc.
Yet another cold, miserable, accurate report on the state of affairs. They're always 90% about the problems, 10% on what we could do, only if.
We need leadership committed to picking something that needs doing and then doing it. Stat. Two teams pulling in opposite directions aren't moving the ball. Without a third? It's over.
> ...the prevalence of poor health [in America] is on par with the former Soviet-bloc states of Central and Eastern Europe
This claim seems tough to believe, but I suppose part of it does depend on what you classify as 'poor health'. If anyone knows sources that back up this claim, I'd be interested to read them.
This is a well written article, covering a lot of the issues currently facing the country. It's something I think about occasionally, and the opinion I think I've eventually come to is that while it's nice to think of ourselves as the top in the world in many aspects, it's okay to contract a bit and let the empire shrink back. He often compares to Europe and China, who are in different stages of what might be the naturally progression of global powers. Europe had its world supreme phase, with several nations being eligible for best in the world at different points. Post-WWII, they (for one reason or another) scaled back and now have the high quality of living we see today. China is where the US was 50 years ago, with rapid, grandiose projects and economic success. But eventually those structures will crumble as they are in the US and they will be where we are now.
I'm not sure what will happen. I think standards will continue to slip while politicians play more into more into the "America #1" card until it finally isn't feasible to do so. I don't think there will be a glorious revolution or anything, more like economic downturn changing the political layout slowly, causing even the giant corporate actors to go bust. Eventually America will scale back until it reaches the equilibrium that Europe is closer to reaching.
Readit News
https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/searle20131202
History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
Endless wars would change. Infrastructure would be a larger discussion, etc...
It's very easy to move from one town to another if you don't like how the local government is running things. It's a hassle, but very possible to move from one state to another. However, moving from the U.S. to another country is incredibly difficult for most people.
Yes. That's extremely important. Vietnam was the US's first total loss, and the US hasn't had a successful outcome since then. The US blew the endgame in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and, most importantly, in Russia after the Cold War.
What went wrong?
After WWII, the US had confidence in its own system of government, and imposed it on Germany and Japan with a sizable occupation force. It worked.
The US underfunded the post-war period of round one in Afghanistan, after kicking the Soviets out. In Iraq, the occupation was botched. Paul Bremer is generally blamed for this.[1]
Blowing the aftermath of a war leads to big trouble. See: WWI.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bremer#Criticism_and_cont...
I don't think the real objective is to win any war. Instead, it has been to ever-expand the defense budget. Given this, it has been a success.
To start, we actually did have a success: Gulf War I. It was an overwhelming victory, with extensive enemy casualties and minimal allied losses. It's strategic significance was not what it did to the US position in the Middle East however, but rather what it did to the General Officer Corps after the fact. All of the Cold War battle drills had worked exactly as planned (giant tank battles in open terrain, with CAS on station to mop up any stragglers). If you think for a moment about the kind of conformation bias that proliferated after that, then not having much of a post-game in the following wars makes a little more sense.
Also, we didn't really impose "our" system of government on Germany and Japan, but rather grafted aspects of it onto their existing infrastructure, occupied them for a long time to ensure that those aspects were set in stone over a generation, and then essentially kicked them out of the nest when they were ready to fly in orbit around a US-led Bipolar world.
Thus, the difference with Iraq II and Afghanistan after the invasions is not that we "botched" it, but more so that the coordination mechanisms in place in societies like 1940s Germany and Japan didn't exist in Iraq and Afghanistan (I'll caveat this by saying this is much more true for Afghanistan than it is for Iraq. Iraq had a mostly modern economy, with functional hierarchies of government and civil service, but was very cultrually distant from the US in ways that set it apart from Germany and Japan). Meaning, it was just straight up easier to do these kinds of things in Germany and Japan, overwhelming victory aside. I don't think I need to go into a detailed history of Afghanistan to illustrate why.
The real "problem" is that we don't have a clear understanding of what the hell we should be using this military for anymore, after the Cold War ended.
Simply not true. There was a reason why european wars were fought in the fields and not in cities/population centers in the past. Also, past powers tended to conquer nations/cities in order to subjugate the population for exploitation. After all, humans were valuable resources back then. It is very rare that a military/government/nation would simply choose to exterminate the inhabitants of a continent ( 100 or so native nations that were wiped out ) or set entire cities full of civilians ablaze ( dresden, tokyo ) and nuke two civilian cities ( hiroshima, nagasaki ).
Pretty much the US and our side kick britain are the only ones to be guilty of the first two. We are still the only ones guilty of the 3rd.
But precedents being set, your assertion is likely to be truer in the future. I suspect that in the next 500 years, powers would be more willing to obliterate entire nations without concern for civilians, especially if technology and automation make humans a less valuable commodity.
Neither Germany or Japan's governments are modeled after the US system of government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_system#/media/Fi...
We helped impose a system of government in both nations after ww2, but neither is our system of government. They have a lot of similar parts, but it isn't our system of government.
> It worked.
The marshall plan worked in germany. As for japan, they didn't receive any marshall plan. It wasn't until the korean war that "it worked" for japan. But both germany and japan were major modern powers before ww2 so they would have reverted back to it if left to their devises. The US didn't create the success in germany or japan, the germans and japanese did that themselves.
> The US underfunded the post-war period of round one in Afghanistan, after kicking the Soviets out. In Iraq, the occupation was botched. Paul Bremer is generally blamed for this.[1]
No amount of funding was going to save afghanistan. The same goes for iraq. You need a nationalistic centralized power to stabilize and grow a nation - especially a war torn one. Something Germany and Japan had and aghanistan and iraq don't.
> Blowing the aftermath of a war leads to big trouble. See: WWI.
Aghanistan and Iraq wars are nothing like WW1. Nearly 40 million people died in WW1 and it involved all the great powers at the time. WW1 and WW2 are fairly unique went it comes to wars. Maybe vietnam or algeria are better comparisons, but even then, aghanistan and iraq are not even vietnam or algeria.
For the US, the iraq and afghan wars were more skirmishes than wars. The military casualties are 4,497 and 2,216 respectively.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualt...
To put this into perspective, quite a few cities in the US experienced more gun related homicides than the US military did in iraq or afghanistan. So nothing like ww1.
No, they weren't. The Taliban didn't exist until much later, the group that the Soviets were forced out by became the government and then later fragmented into a number of different factions. The Taliban was one of them, but so were many of the factions fighting against the Taliban.
The Taliban got their weapons and training from the US, all funded by the Saudis, orchestrated by a congressman [1] and oil heiress from Texas. The history is well known at this point.
> How could a democracy be started with them?
Democracy was probably never a goal in the effort, certainly not for the Saudis, and not for the Taliban or the US either. Weakening the USSR through bloodshed and drain of resources.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson_(Texas_politi...
The US spent $133 billion on nation building, just in Afghanistan alone. $3,800 for every man, woman and child.
Whatever went wrong in Afghanistan, it wasn't from lack of money.
Deleted Comment
I’ll be shocked when the American president sends her daughter to study in China, or when the British monarchy starts exiling to China.
The individual liberties provided by the Constitution empower each of us to speak our minds, share ideas, and start/join movements. We have the power to elect our representatives, and have an independent judiciary to push back against corruption. The average quality of life here is higher than in almost any other place on Earth, and no other country can compare to ours in terms of diversity of thought, culture, and ethnicity.
Look, I understand that there are real, serious problems with our institutions and our economy. The beautiful thing about the United States though is that our political system allows for solutions to be discussed, proposed, and adopted. The biggest threats I see to the United States are not unique to us: climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, and global unrest/poverty.
So long as your thought is within culturally accepted norms. Otherwise, American companies will happily chase you completely off the internet, sometimes with the force of American law (it’s frankly scarier when they do it without being forced by law).
Healthcare reform is something we already have the levers to execute through government policy, and I believe it will happen during the next financial crisis along with entitlement reform.
On the other hand, there are certain trends that there are no obvious ways to reverse, namely demographic decline, geographic dominance, and technological innovation.
When you consider the decline of America in the face of China, for example, consider that China faces a far more serious demographic issue, and as Russia teaches us, it is almost impossible to grow economically during such a period. America's birth rate, however, is 1.8 births per woman with immigration putting the country into a healthy range.
Geographically, American is set up between the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic. If global warming does hit the arctic hard, we will have access to the arctic ocean via Alaska, whereas China and other regional super powers will not. In terms of energy, raw resources, and land America is also looking at self sufficiency for the next century to come.
Technologically, America draws on the best universities in the world, with cities that have external economies of scale so large that they will be hard to displace (ie SV, NYC, Boston). Not to mention we have an engrained culture that affirms those who experiment and forgives those who fail. In the technological sense I think America will succeed also.
Instead of looking at this as the end of America, I think people need to recognize that we face extraordinary problems, which we can overcome. In my own opinion, I think the highest order offence against the American people is American business co-opting the government, and as soon as we work this out, we will have a better ability to overcome issues of healthcare, education, etc.
We need leadership committed to picking something that needs doing and then doing it. Stat. Two teams pulling in opposite directions aren't moving the ball. Without a third? It's over.
This claim seems tough to believe, but I suppose part of it does depend on what you classify as 'poor health'. If anyone knows sources that back up this claim, I'd be interested to read them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_quality_o...
I'm not sure what will happen. I think standards will continue to slip while politicians play more into more into the "America #1" card until it finally isn't feasible to do so. I don't think there will be a glorious revolution or anything, more like economic downturn changing the political layout slowly, causing even the giant corporate actors to go bust. Eventually America will scale back until it reaches the equilibrium that Europe is closer to reaching.