The Reluctant Empire

[atommom]

An interesting article looking at PNAC and American attempts at empire-building. The author argues that these tactics are meeting with resistance here and abroad, and that the PNAC will fail. I hope he's right...

In 2002, Bush declared, "Today, the US enjoys a position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence." But looking back over these 60 years or so and looking around the world and America now, it is clear that American "global leadership" has proven to be a short-lived and difficult period of global domination and the whole idea is in crisis again.

Suspicion of US motives
It is not just governments. People around the world have been responding. A January 2005 Pew study on global opinion, based on that group's polling in recent years in 44 countries, reported that "the rest of the world has become deeply suspicious of US motives and openly skeptical about its word". It observed that "anti-Americanism is deeper and broader now than at any time in modern history. It is most acute in the Muslim world but it spans the globe - from Europe to Asia, from South America to Africa". This includes people in countries that have been close US allies for over 50 years.

The Pew survey found that these opinions were enduring, noting that "this new hardening of attitudes amounts to something much larger than a thumbs down on the current occupant of the White House". Pew reported that "at the heart of the decline in world opinion about America is the perception that the United States acts internationally without taking into account the interests of other nations". A December 2004 public opinion poll in 23 countries found that in 20 of these countries a majority of citizens believed it would be better for Europe to become more influential than the US in world affairs.

Nowhere is the decline in the "global leadership" of the US more evident than in its occupation of Iraq. The much vaunted "coalition of the willing" that the Bush administration claimed to have built in 2003 for the invasion of Iraq has all but collapsed. Thirteen countries have already withdrawn their forces. Italy, Poland and Ukraine have all announced they will pull their troops out; these are the fourth, fifth and sixth-largest contingents of foreign troops there. The countries that will soon be left, apart from US and UK, are Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, Romania, Slovakia, South Korea, Japan, Denmark, and Australia.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GE14Aa02.html

[brainshrub]

1. "Reluctant" Empire is a joke.

The US has worked hard to build the empire it has today. There was nothing accidental about it. A lot of people had to die so that we can have access to cheap oil and a next-to-free labor.

I read an article a few years back about how the British, Spanish and Romans all considered themselves "reluctant" empires. It's easier to do cruel things to other people if you believe that you were thrust onto the top of the food-chain because divine providence is on your side.

I'm looking for the article now. I'll post the link if can find it.

[atommom]

3. It's not Bush and the PNAC that are reluctant ... it's the American

people. Not to mention the rest of the world...

[damntexdem]

2. Being top dog has an increasingly poor prognosis.

The U.S. is on a downward trend after only about 2/3 century at the top, and a little over a decade alone at the top.

Well, destroying the economy is often what does in the empire -- and Dubya has not let the slide go slowly, rather has turned it into a race to the bottom.