How will America's Empire End?
All empires end. That is an indisputable fact. The only question is how they end.
The Soviet Empire fell apart without resistance, which was highly unusual.
The British Empire ended somewhat gracefully (with notable exceptions).
But generally, empires don't die in a dignified way.
By 1970, more than half of Portugal’s economic output was going toward wars of independence raging in Angola, Mozambique, and what was then Portuguese Guinea. They would all fall, their independence as much a liberation for Portugal proper as for the colonies.
But Portugal’s imperial implosion did not lead to its rebirth or any kind of social reconstruction. To this day, Portugal seems to be identified by its fallen greatness, once again a small rocky redoubt in Iberia.
Decades ago Paul Kennedy wrote a great book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. His main premise was that empires fall from military overstretch.
Last year the Pentagon made an important annoucement about the state of our Empire.
An extraordinary new Pentagon study has concluded that the U.S.-backed international order established after World War 2 is “fraying” and may even be “collapsing”, leading the United States to lose its position of “primacy” in world affairs.
The solution proposed to protect U.S. power in this new “post-primacy” environment is, however, more of the same: more surveillance, more propaganda (“strategic manipulation of perceptions”) and more military expansionism.
Empires are expensive. They can only be maintained through an efficient use of both carrot and stick.
The U.S. stopped using carrots decades ago.
Like a grade school bully, we only use sticks now.
Citizens across over 60 nations were asked: “Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?”
The US topped the list, with 24 percent of people believing America to be the biggest danger to peace. Pakistan came second, with 8 percent of the vote and was closely followed by China with 6 percent. Afghanistan, Iran, Israel and North Korea came in joint fourth place with 5 percent of the vote.
Interestingly, this poll was taken again three years later, but this time they rigged the poll.
However, on pages 23 and 24 of the pdf is shown the 30 countries that had been surveyed in this poll, in both 2013 and 2017, and most of these 30 nations were US allies; only Venezuela clearly was not. None of the 30 countries was an ally of either Russia or China (the other two countries offered as possibly being «a major threat»). And, yet, nonetheless, more respondents among the 30 sampled countries saw the US as «a major threat», than saw either Russia or China that way.
Even when rigging the poll by only asking our allies, people still see the U.S. as the greatest threat to world peace.
This does not bode well.
All empires die from within.
Naturally, corruption and empire go hand-in-hand. We are no exception.
Public pillaging of its citizens and extreme inequality are other characteristics of late-stage empires that we share.
I found this list of signs of late-stage empire, and a few other characteristics stood out.
6. Institutional memory and knowledge support "doing more of what worked in the past" even when it is clearly failing.8. Incompetence is rewarded and competence punished.
12. The feedback from those tasked with doing the real work of the Empire is ignored as Elites and vested interests dominate decision-making.
Number 6 reminds me of Wall Street, and their determination to repeat all the same mistakes that led to 2008.
Number 8 is The Rule in Washington today for both political parties.
Number 12 is self-explanatory.
So how will America's Empire actually end?
The empire will limp along, steadily losing influence until the dollar is dropped as the world’s reserve currency, plunging the United States into a crippling depression and instantly forcing a massive contraction of its military machine.
Short of a sudden and widespread popular revolt, which does not seem likely, the death spiral appears unstoppable, meaning the United States as we know it will no longer exist within a decade or, at most, two. The global vacuum we leave behind will be filled by China, already establishing itself as an economic and military juggernaut, or perhaps there will be a multipolar world carved up among Russia, China, India, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and a few other states.
...Empires in decay embrace an almost willful suicide. Blinded by their hubris and unable to face the reality of their diminishing power, they retreat into a fantasy world where hard and unpleasant facts no longer intrude. They replace diplomacy, multilateralism and politics with unilateral threats and the blunt instrument of war.
Our empire rests on the shaky pedestal of having the world's reserve currency.
Without the demand for dollars we could not afford our over-sized military to bludgeon all rivals.
Which is why the efforts of China, Russia and Iran to create a separate, parallel financial system, outside of U.S. control is such a threat.
Interestingly, less than a day after Trump insulted Pakistan, they also joined the non-dollar financial block.
The petrodollar is still King for now, but the rest of the world might think twice about loaning us their savings after the next time we bail out Wall Street when they crash the economy again.
What will that look like?
For the majority of Americans, the 2020s will likely be remembered as a demoralizing decade of rising prices, stagnant wages, and fading international competitiveness. After years of swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant lands, in 2030 the U.S. dollar eventually loses its special status as the world’s dominant reserve currency.Suddenly, there are punitive price increases for American imports ranging from clothing to computers. And the costs for all overseas activity surges as well, making travel for both tourists and troops prohibitive. Unable to pay for swelling deficits by selling now-devalued Treasury notes abroad, Washington is finally forced to slash its bloated military budget. Under pressure at home and abroad, its forces begin to pull back from hundreds of overseas bases to a continental perimeter. Such a desperate move, however, comes too late.
Faced with a fading superpower incapable of paying its bills, China, India, Iran, Russia, and other powers provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.
We've been running massive trade deficits since the 1980's. It was never sustainable.
When the collapse finally comes, the ruling elites will default on every promise (yes, that means Social Security) and try to steal everything not nailed down (watch out 401k). Some sort of unrest will be inevitable.
The good news is that our empire is built upon bases, not colonies. So dismantling the empire can happen quickly.
Comments
This country, as a whole
needs the wakeup call that is coming. It will be painful but I and many I know will welcome the return to some form of sanity.
Still interested in what dishes can be made with the rich.
Thanks gjohn.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
I disagree.
The USA has never been an empire in the classical sense of the term.
Has it extended it's power? Yes. Has it subjucated other sovereign nations to colonization, yeah maybe a little bit. Has it f'd with other countries (CIA, Assassination, political disruption) Yep. There was that whole WWII thing. The Brits held an Empire around the globe where the sun never set on their "holdings" The Ruskies were no better and actually acquired other countries (USSR).
Having a military base in a country is not Empire. One could argue we are there because "they" want us there. (See Military budgets by country in comparison to US). There is of course no reason at this point in history for us to have bases in 160 countries. Unless of course their leadership wants US there and the $$ it brings to their oligarchies.
So yeah we suck.
But we have not and are not now an Empire, IMHO.
Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!
Firesign Theater
Stop the War!
By any reasonable definition
We are UNQUESTIONABLY an empire.
Only by defining the word so strictly that you must totally ignore the motivations, purpose and objectives of an empire can you deny we are an empire.
We disagree on termonolgy
Adventurism and spurious exploits and projection of power do not an Empire make.
It is land and countries and subjects of colonization.
Not just being the lone Super Power left, though others around the world may disagree with that assessment based on the behavior an actions on the world stage.
Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!
Firesign Theater
Stop the War!
Definitions
one
two
three
four
None of these definitions have the word "colony" or "colonial" in them.
We don't have a traditional colonial empire. We have an empire of imperialism, which the British pioneered in Africa.
I should mention that Puerto Rico and Guam are essentially modern colonies.
@EdMass
Doesn't barging into other people's countries to overthrow other people's governments and replace them with 'Empire' puppets count? How about invasions, occupations or other military engagements of one sort or another in (I think now?) 40% of the countries in the world? with military bases in (I think now?) most of the countries of the world, threatening/bombing/starving out the people of other countries with 'sanctions' in an effort to get them subservient to the billionaires/corporate interests of their own country, who want to steal the resources of everyone else? If Reich sounds closer than Empire to you, you could be right...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
@EdMassland and countries and
The U.S. has those. It just uses corporations as middlemen, instead of doing things directly. The U.S. is the East India Company v3.0. We're what the UK empire might have transformed into.
I would like to see
how many countries we are in without invitation.
By definition the u.s. is an empire. And we have a butt-load of other territories that bend to our governments desire.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Here y'a go
There is no "definition" because the "definition" does not apply.
Bases Wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_bases
Way too many. Maybe you can figure out the answer to your ? given the data.
Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!
Firesign Theater
Stop the War!
Impossible.
There is and will never be a list of countries we have troops or private contractors in illegally.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
All those numbers are available, I'm sure. Here's one.
The US Special Forces were deployed on missions in 134 separate countries in 2016. We don't have the 2017 numbers yet.
We are in Syria illegally, which is an act of war against a sovereign nation.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176300/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_the_comm...
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
I find it amusing that anybody would consider an
invitation from a corrupted/bribed/coerced government to carry some sort of weight with respect to whether "we" are acting as an empire or not. It is, indeed, a classic technique for executing an imperial grab. How many of our "invitations" were just the local PTB accepting Corleoneesque offers that could not be refused?
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Seriously.
Anyway, half the time they fly as civilians and Fed Ex delivers their "luggage." It's all very polite, to a point. But by then, they're off to the next vacation destination.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
Your denial reminds me of the arguments
that factory workers in the early industrial revolution were not slaves. While technically true, these arguments ignored the fact that these workers faced an existence that was every bit as bad, and in some ways perhaps worse than slavery.
The US is effectively an empire, even if we don't manage the pension schemes of the colonies.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
@dervish
Aren't the US PTB known to threaten/attack/sanction other countries precisely because their governments want to use their own resources for the public good and assure them of things like pensions, universal health-care and education, rather than for the further enrichment of The Right People/Corporations?
So perhaps the US PTB do manage to destroy such as pensions, or at least redirect the public funding into more... pro-corporate areas?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
america certainly has an empire, beginning no later
than the Spanish American war, which was promulgated by a political faction who explicitly identified themselves as imperialists.
empires have always had two classes of client/colony: those under the explicit political control of the metropole (typically via a viceroy of some sort -- usually, a "governor-general" in the British Empire and/or Commonwealth), and those that were tributary to the metropole (which is to say, paying economic tribute, but ostensibly independent politically). the thing is, of course, the latter category were rarely politically independent in practice -- the rulers ruled because the imperial power allowed them to rule. there may have been no de jure scheme by which the imperial power exercised political control, but the reality was that the imperial power controlled those countries in every political dimension that mattered to the imperial power.
i do not see the virtue in trying to classify the american empire as something other than that, something other than what it is -- a system within which nominally independent governments do what "we" tell them to do. the "we" in that context might be the official government of the US, or it might be our fascistic corporate overlords (a la the British East India company).
In any case, you are clearly mistaken by any reasonable definition of empire -- what, if not imperial colonies, are Guam and Samoa and Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands etc etc etc: all of the chunks of turf spread out over the globe where the US federal government is both the de facto and de jure ultimate authority?
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
A classical definition of empire
no longer satisfies the reality of post WW2 America. Chalmers Johnson in his “blowback trilogy” defined the extent of the American empire in excruciating detail. ‘Sorrows of Empire’ is a masterpiece worth reading for anyone who wants to understand why the US is indeed an empire unequalled in human history. His books were based on late ‘90s through the mid ‘00s. It is far more extensive now.
Having a life long interest in the military prepared me to expect some of what he described but far from all. I was shocked at how our activities had expanded since I was an officer from 1973 through 1984. I follow this stuff but I had no idea how far reaching was our coercive influence.
Then I got the biggest shock in the last couple hundred pages. He described how the empire functioned in the economic realm. There is where real power is being brought to bear. Rome would have blushed at the thought.
I think it is impossible to read his work that lasted right up to his death without accepting that the US is an empire in every functional way imaginable.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
I hope we decline like Spain,
slowly and methodically. I fear that our decline may be unique though, if some crazed zealot in government decides to take the world down with him, it could certainly happen. We don't need any Samsons.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Spain's decline wasn't pretty
It committed some horrible atrocities in it's decline.
Of course!
But it declined better than many/most. We won't get the cushioned fall that the UK got. I find a lot of parallels between Spain and the US, although the Spanish empire was more resiliant and likely lasted much longer than ours will.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
I'm not sure that Spain's imperial decline was
in any way particularly worse than its zenith. Ultimately, that's the question I think we're facing. Will the US Empire go down in a psychopathic rage, fighting to destroy everything it cannot possess?
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Or a decline like Russia's is better than most.
That's the most modern example of a fallen Empire. They cooperated with gathering the nuclear arms stored in various parts of the former Empire. The worse part for them was abruptly transitioning to a market economy. It was a bad time especially because commodity prices and oil prices were depressed. They had to repurpose factories from weapons to consumer goods. At that time, Russia was highly literate, top of the world in scientists. But they needed more variety going from a planned economy to a free-for-all marketplace. Their lifespan numbers plunged.
However, ten years later, they were okay. Twenty years later they were back, not all the way but impressive. They had to weather the global economic crises just the eveyone else, but they pulled through with a pretty strong middle class.
I think that was only possible because they were out from under the terrible burden of Empire.
The point is, a failed Empire doesn't have to resist with a hail of gunfire, or sabotage the rest of the world.It still has a lot of advantages if it accepts the situation and refocuses on becoming fit.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
We absolutely won't fall in a way similar to the USSR
Everything is different here, from the ground up. Our oligarchs will be kicking and screaming on the way down, and there won't be a large class of people enabling the fall. That was a great case of fairly peaceful transition, but I fear we can't do it here.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
It will end badly
Most empires do. It's only a question of how badly wil it end and when.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
re: Demise of the Soviet Empire
"The Soviet Empire fell apart without resistance "
My impression is that it went bankrupt from escalating military spending, trying to keep up with the USSA spending.
Gee "bankrupt from escalating military spending, why does that have a familiar ring?? Oh wait...
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
The many trillions the corrupted Pentagon has lost, stolen, etc
Exactly right
Deficits don't matter and neither do markets as long as
we select winners and losers regardless of whether or not
they are winners......surely they all are losers.
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
Mistake? Really?
Those weren't mistakes, they were deliberate actions taken by the CEOs that were watching the bubbles in many areas going higher than they should have. This cycle of mistakes happen every few decades. The actions taken by the Clinton and Bush administrations were done deliberately.
This country has gone through many of these mistakes.
A leftist is someone with morally correct politics. A liberal is someone who wants to feel morally correct w/o ever putting themselves at odds with power or costing themselves opportunities or experiencing the uncomfortable emotions that truth causes.
Okay. Squabbling up above over the definition of Empire.
That's funny, you guys.
Anyway, End of Empire is just about all I write about. Which is why I stopped posting essays here over the past six or eight months. Too disruptive and crazy sounding. The US Empire is in active collapse right now. It's hard to see in real time, and the indicators are counter-intuitive, but there will come a brief snap, when everything changes, lasting 72 hours at most. Then, we adjust.
I am absolutely certain that it will be nothing like historian Alfred McCoy’s describes in gjohsit's essay. McCoy knows his stuff — but he is hopelessly marked and dated by his experiences. The haunted character Kurtz from Heart of Darkness comes to mind. Too many nasty interactions with the CIA have frozen him in a dark time. I don't believe he can feel the future in his blood and brain and has not metabolized the implications of the profound changes that occur daily.
Yes, Empires have failed before. Some fall hard, some just drift. But no Empire has fallen with cell phones or 21st century medicine or high-speed travel. None have fallen in an era of spectacular communications, instant and visual. None have stood atop the accumulated knowledge that this one does. None have had the tremendous resources. This one is not going to be a film noir dystopia. Besides, we already have that going on right now, and we've normalized it.
I don't know where McCoy gets that 2030 date, either. The process will be full blown before 2020. That's an election where the people will have a real choice. Well, I should say, the people will know exactly what they need in a President, but he or she might or might not be on the ticket. Here's the deal:
A moment will come when the US must pay for its excess imports (trade deficits) with an agreeded upon currency other than US Dollars. In that moment, the American people are in a position to live as well as folks in any advanced nation in the world. It just requires a few globally beneficial changes for everyone to live very well. Business as usual will be taking place throughout the world. The only thing that will delay this is the inability for people to accept that the US Empire that rules the entire world is over. That means that all of the 1,200+ foreign military bases — all but a small handful — must be closed and removed. Much of the military needs to be discharged and a robust force retained to protect the citizens and homeland. Remember, it is logistically impossible for the US to be invaded, just in case you didn't know that. And the US will remain a key world leader through the UN.
At this point, the government will have a yearly surplus about the size of its entire discretionary spending budget. Everyone will need a basic income for food and shelter and healthcare, and than can be done without touching the surplus. In fact it will boost the economy by a factor of six. All of this will eventually be done, I am certain. But any foot dragging will result in unnecessary hardship and delay. It's up to the People. They can defund the wars any time they want to. They can defund the military, too, down to a normal size. Anyone they elect must have signed a contract to do so. That's how the Vietnam nightmare ended, as a matter of fact.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
I've not read Kennedy, nor McCoy, but I concluded all on my
own that at some point in the life of every empire, the cost of enforcing imperial authority begins to exceed the economic value that the colonies bring to the metropole. Britain figured this out twice in its history. In the early 19th century, parliament wanted nothing to do with administering India, having not the long before discovered that the North American colonies were more expensive to defend than it was worth, first from external aggressors and then from internal rebellion. Indeed, some of those acts the colonists found so damned intolerable were passed exactly to try to extract from the colonial economies financial compensation for the cost of the wars Britain had just fought to drive the French out of North America.
I haven't done any real research on the specifics, but I believe that the life of any colony probably has a handful of stages, and that the most profitable ones correspond to the time when the subjugated population doesn't know what the fuck has hit them; when their own institutions are hopelessly inadequate to stand against the sophisticated political technologies of the colonial power; when their own elites are demoralized and disorganized. Eventually, as the colonial power creates new social, cultural and economic institutions in the colony, the people who live there -- whether original population, or colonists "gone native" -- attain the skills, the organization, and the confidence to challenge the colonial power. When this happens, the decline of the colony as a going concern has begun. Inevitably, it will cost the colonial power more to subjugate the colony that it can possible retrieve in economic boon. At that point, the story is reduced to a tragedy of hubris and vanity.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Shouldn't a democracy supersede or neutralize hubris and pride?
You narrarate the colonial experience like you've been there and done that.
I suppose colonial economics are not much different than corporate economics. The key is knowing the difference between a temporary setback and a sea change.
It's no secret that I regard the US population as afflicted with this condition. I thought there was a simple remedy, once. But now I suspect you have to start again from scratch with a new generation to straighten things out.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
we can hope for democracy to ameliorate the situation
but the electorate is steeped in American exceptionalism. it might take a truly catastrophic political failure -- think WWI -- to create the necessary correction in the minds of the populace.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Wait. This is not quite right:
One did fall in contemporary times — Russia.
They did okay. With US help they got their nuclear installations back under wrap. And they recovered relatively quickly as a new market economy. This infuriated the Neocons, by the way. They had their fingers crossed that Russia with descend into a bloody Empire hell, never to be seen again. The fact is, their communist values helped them. The people all had places to live, even after they ran out of money. They had social medicine in place. The universities continued. All after the government stopped funding them. Being on the cusp of the 21st century helped the Russians stay organized and cohesive to weather the storms, without lashing out.
The US transition out of Empire does not have to be chaotic. It can be very liberating.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
Hasn't this:
"For the majority of Americans, the 2020s will likely be remembered as a demoralizing decade of rising prices, stagnant wages, and fading international competitiveness. After years of swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant lands,"
already been happening for several decades?
dfarrah
Yes.
But now the PTB is getting serious.
Game over man.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
speaking of the decline of the american empire
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090985/?ref_=nv_sr_2
this movie was made 30 years ago, in Canada. it is "about" a group of French Canadian university academics. what, you may wonder, has that got to do with the Decline of the American Empire? well, let's just say, the family always notices your decline before you do.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Such optimism!
"Washington is finally forced to slash its bloated military budget"
The very sick people in charge of things here would slash humanity by 70% or so before they'd let their profits go.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
All they have to do
is watch. The 70% of humanity is doomed anyways.
The question is if their money will outlive their usefulness.
I think not as most of them are already useless.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Matt from Chapo Trap House has it right
Can you provide a link to this?
I'd like to see its context and more of it.
A leftist is someone with morally correct politics. A liberal is someone who wants to feel morally correct w/o ever putting themselves at odds with power or costing themselves opportunities or experiencing the uncomfortable emotions that truth causes.
Here's this
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/comments/7njfjc/my_mantra_for_2018/
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
We better hope it ends because we the people made it end.
And soon.
My first sig line courtesy of Dr. Cornel West
says it all for me. I believe that the American empire will fall via the dollar. This sums up how I think it will happen. In a way, although painful, this may be the least painful for the empire to fall.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I like to think of it
as American Hegemony. Empire is a useful description historically but at least to me seems old school and rings of colonialism. For me hegemony suggests more influence rather than ownership and rings more true to Americas recent past and current adventures. Very similar in reality, asset and resource stripping, political control, carrot and stick approach, financial repression etc etc. My point may be moot but we don't control KSA but we certainly keep the royal status quo. And they are integral in the petrodollar dominance.
I think that makes a lot of sense for a different reason.
The US idea of Empire was never reached. They were/are on their way to crush China and Russia under their heel, and end the idea of Eurasia. Only then would they achieve the Empire they were looking for. American Hegemony, or Dollar hegemony, was the process for creating Empire.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
We can't keep using the world to power America
The reason that we get away with issuing paper fiat currency is that countries like China provide all of our consumer goods and accept payment in, soon to be, useless dollars. Since we don't actually make anything that they want, they take those dollars and invest in US debt, never to be paid back, and in US real estate, soon to crash, and the ultimate casino .. the stock market. Except that the stock market is worse than a casino in that at the end of the day you can cash in your chips for money, and the casino actually has money to back the chips. The US is a hollow shell using the Far East to be its manufacturing engine for peanuts if anything at all.
One scenario that I can see for collapse will first be the need for foreign currency to sustain import trade. That will be quickly followed by the international collapse of the dollar, as the US will try to buy Yuan with dollars and will require more and more dollars to do so. This will result in massive domestic inflation in the price in the US for consumer goods. Without wage inflation, this will collapse the economy, stock market, real estate. Companies will lay people off right and left, since reducing payroll is the first reaction in a declining economy. That will kill the consumer market, about 70% of US GDP. We do not have the infrastructure for cheap manufacturing, especially the financial infrastructure as economic rent inflates the price of everything. The rich will not give up control and will choke on their wealth.
Some people thing erroneously that this will bring back manufacturing jobs. No way. We cannot manufacture consumer goods efficiently. All domestic consumer products company are already using China, or they are out of business. We have no idea of how to produce cheap consumer goods. As someone who has had a business partner in China I know how they do it, and we have zero possibility of doing it. Automation will not save us and will not make jobs.
We need China desperately to keep our economy going, but Trump has a very different analysis. His aggressive actions and rhetoric against China will hasten our collapse.
The collapse will happen fast because the potential energy stored in debt and market bubbles is gargantuan, especially relative to our real economic output. This will be converted to kinetic energy.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
If the yuan . . .
becomes more expensive relative to the dollar then Chinese exports to the world become more expensive and American exports to the world become less expensive. Yes, there will be inflation in the US, but there may be recession in China.
If anything the Chinese have worked very hard to keep the value of their currency low.
The alternative to the dollar as a reserve currency will have to be a weighted market basket of currencies simply because nobody else is going to create that much currency. That's why the notion of the Euro as a reserve currency is far fetched. Can you imagine Angela Merkel agreeing to create hundreds of billions of petro Euros?
A market basket of currencies has its own problems. Most simplistically the component countries will have different needs. You see it with Germany and southern Europe now.
That's not to say that the number of international trades made with something other than dollars will not increase substantially. If these trades become truly significant the value of the dollar will decline. But that will help US exports and reduce the US balance of trade deficit. There are a lot of countries that find the US balance of trade deficit a very good thing.
Massive inflation.
We export power and weapons. That's about it. And one of those is diminishing rapidly.
Buckle up.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
You assume the USD as the global currency
The US Dollar will collapse, but the world will continue to trade in other currencies. In a multipolar economic world, the US plays a small part. Chinese goods will cost the same in Europe, Eurasia, the ME, Africa and the Far East. After all, currency trade is how relative productivities get rationalized. Chinese trade to the US will decrease, but then the US can't really afford those goods and services and refuses to really pay for them. China now has the largest middle class in the world, so that is a built in market, and the rest of the world, especially India is growing to be a very large market. Add in Asia and the EU, who really do have considerably large, usable exports and you have the export base for China without the US. Future trade will be in multiple currencies, the world doesn't need the dollar or any other dominant currency. Watch Saudi Arabia start to sell oil to China in Yuan.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
@The Wizard
Is it possible for America to be repossessed by Chinese banks? Not an appealing thought, either... I wish you weren't so right, though...
Americans have been plundered dry and TPTB are also in the process of taking the rest of the world down with them; something has to be done to stop the destruction but I hope that process won't be as destructive itself, as seems possible.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
What's your take on why
we have zero possibility of making cheap consumer goods?
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
China has the infrastructure, and cost structure
China has an interwoven cheap manufacturing infrastructure. Government support is huge. The cost of everything is less, from electricity to manufacturing space. I compared costs of building a manufacturing company in the US with my partner's costs in China. All I can say is ... HA! Our country is a joke for anything but very high value manufacturing. Automation will not fix it as that is very expensive in capital and only makes sense for very high volumes of the exact same thing that don't require dexterous handling.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Got it, thanks! n/t
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Formal colonial rule Plan B by declining Britain after 1850-per
Formal colonial rule was the "Plan B" of declining Imperial Britain after 1850, per Bernard Porter's 1975 book "The Lion's Share", which summarized many examples where Britain's increasing weakness, and its resulting inability to use economic and indirect political influence to control many dependent territories, led Britain to create a formal colonial presence that was more costly and less sustainable.
This is an interesting framework for comparing the methods and success of the respective post-WWII empires of the USA and USSR.