The end of the empire?

How many great empires have collapsed from one last military overexpansion? True, I don't think the US is in any peril of falling to anarchy, but certainly we've reached a point where our reach has exceeded our grasp.

WASHINGTON - Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a "thin green line" that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon.

Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report under a Pentagon contract, concluded that the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency. He also suggested that the Pentagon's decision, announced in December, to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven in part by a realization that the Army was overextended.

I'm hoping that Bill is out there to chime in on some of the historical parallels, but I would just look at some of the modern parallels of imperial failures. The British in the Middle East, the French in North Africa, the last Russian overexpansion into Afghanistan....

I think that this moment may be hugely significant in the history of the American empire. If the US cannot pacify a country less than one tenth it's size, its claims of imperial domination of the world are already fading. What realistic threat do we possess when facing down Iran, for instance. We've lost two of the last three major deployment wars, and the one win we managed was a supremely successful set piece battle, not the holding of territory.

As you might guess from the blog title, I would actually contend that the US empire formally crested sometime in the 1960's when the US underwent the transition from largest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor nation and from a net oil exporter to a net oil importer. This is not a bad thing, this is the reality of the historical re-emergence of China.

My whole point in this blog is that in this absolutely critical period of transition, the US needs brilliant but subtle leadership to establish structures and relationships that will benefit the coming geopolitical order. For instance, if the US is to no longer be the preeminent power in the latter half of this century, it is in US interests to establish a binding law of nations which will limit the power of those that will ultimately surpass us.

Instead, we have a leadership which is detroying international conventions. If we can invade Iraq around the UN, what keeps China from invading anyone they want in ten to twenty years time. We have the final threat of nuclear weapons, but I think a look at the Soviets near the end shows that that is a difficult card to play.

Bush is right when he says that a failure in Iraq will embolden our enemies. However, I would argue that we should be much more worried about the greater challengers to our empire rather than a small group of terrorists no matter how deadly.

The one thing that Bush doesn't see is that failure in Iraq is almost inevitable at this point. His war has shown that the emperor has no clothes. And future Americans will suffer for that.

So, the next time you hear Bush acclaimed for his "national security" leadership, remember what the real threat is, and that this administration is further weakening our long term position. It's too complicated to distill down into a talking point, but it is the future. And the sooner we can come to grips with it, the better the outcome for us will be.

(Sorry, don't know where all that came from. I may write more on this later depending on the reaction. This has little more "me" than I usually like to interject, but there are all sorts of elements that play into this complicated coming power struggle. But I guess if you elect an oilman, everything looks like it's about oil.)