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America, the Fragile Empire
Here today, gone tomorrow -- could the United States fall that fast?
For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public have tended to think about the political process in seasonal, cyclical terms. From Polybius to Paul Kennedy, from ancient Rome to imperial Britain, we discern a rhythm to history. Great powers, like great men, are born, rise, reign and then gradually wane. No matter whether civilizations decline culturally, economically or ecologically, their downfalls are protracted.
In the same way, the challenges that face the United States are often represented as slow-burning. It is the steady march of demographics -- which is driving up the ratio of retirees to workers -- not bad policy that condemns the public finances of the United States to sink deeper into the red. It is the inexorable growth of China's economy, not American stagnation, that will make the gross domestic product of the People's Republic larger than that of the United States by 2027.
As for climate change, the day of reckoning could be as much as a century away. These threats seem very remote compared with the time frame for the deployment of U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan, in which the unit of account is months, not years, much less decades.
But what if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arrhythmic -- at times almost stationary but also capable of accelerating suddenly, like a sports car? What if collapse does not arrive over a number of centuries but comes suddenly, like a thief in the night?
Great powers are complex systems, made up of a very large number of interacting components that are asymmetrically organized, which means their construction more resembles a termite hill than an Egyptian pyramid. They operate somewhere between order and disorder. Such systems can appear to operate quite stably for some time; they seem to be in equilibrium but are, in fact, constantly adapting. But there comes a moment when complex systems "go critical." A very small trigger can set off a "phase transition" from a benign equilibrium to a crisis -- a single grain of sand causes a whole pile to collapse.
Not long after such crises happen, historians arrive on the scene. They are the scholars who specialize in the study of "fat tail" events -- the low-frequency, high-impact historical moments, the ones that are by definition outside the norm and that therefore inhabit the "tails" of probability distributions -- such as wars, revolutions, financial crashes and imperial collapses. But historians often misunderstand complexity in decoding these events. They are trained to explain calamity in terms of long-term causes, often dating back decades. This is what Nassim Taleb rightly condemned in "The Black Swan" as "the narrative fallacy."
In reality, most of the fat-tail phenomena that historians study are not the climaxes of prolonged and deterministic story lines; instead, they represent perturbations, and sometimes the complete breakdowns, of complex systems.
To understand complexity, it is helpful to examine how natural scientists use the concept. Think of the spontaneous organization of termites, which allows them to construct complex hills and nests, or the fractal geometry of water molecules as they form intricate snowflakes. Human intelligence itself is a complex system, a product of the interaction of billions of neurons in the central nervous system.
All these complex systems share certain characteristics. A small input to such a system can produce huge, often unanticipated changes -- what scientists call "the amplifier effect." Causal relationships are often nonlinear, which means that traditional methods of generalizing through observation are of little use. Thus, when things go wrong in a complex system, the scale of disruption is nearly impossible to anticipate.
There is no such thing as a typical or average forest fire, for example. To use the jargon of modern physics, a forest before a fire is in a state of "self-organized criticality": It is teetering on the verge of a breakdown, but the size of the breakdown is unknown. Will there be a small fire or a huge one? It is nearly impossible to predict. The key point is that in such systems, a relatively minor shock can cause a disproportionate disruption.
Any large-scale political unit is a complex system. Most great empires have a nominal central authority -- either a hereditary emperor or an elected president -- but in practice the power of any individual ruler is a function of the network of economic, social and political relations over which he or she presides. As such, empires exhibit many of the characteristics of other complex adaptive systems -- including the tendency to move from stability to instability quite suddenly.
The most recent and familiar example of precipitous decline is the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the benefit of hindsight, historians have traced all kinds of rot within the Soviet system back to the Brezhnev era and beyond. Perhaps, as the historian and political scientist Stephen Kotkin has argued, it was only the high oil prices of the 1970s that "averted Armageddon." But this did not seem to be the case at the time. The Soviet nuclear arsenal was larger than the U.S. stockpile. And governments in what was then called the Third World, from Vietnam to Nicaragua, had been tilting in the Soviets' favor for most of the previous 20 years.
Yet, less than five years after Mikhail Gorbachev took power, the Soviet imperium in central and Eastern Europe had fallen apart, followed by the Soviet Union itself in 1991. If ever an empire fell off a cliff, rather than gently declining, it was the one founded by Lenin.
If empires are complex systems that sooner or later succumb to sudden and catastrophic malfunctions, what are the implications for the United States today? First, debating the stages of decline may be a waste of time -- it is a precipitous and unexpected fall that should most concern policymakers and citizens. Second, most imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises. Alarm bells should therefore be ringing very loudly indeed as the United States contemplates a deficit for 2010 of more than $1.5 trillion -- about 11% of GDP, the biggest since World War II.
These numbers are bad, but in the realm of political entities, the role of perception is just as crucial. In imperial crises, it is not the material underpinnings of power that really matter but expectations about future power. The fiscal numbers cited above cannot erode U.S. strength on their own, but they can work to weaken a long-assumed faith in the United States' ability to weather any crisis.
One day, a seemingly random piece of bad news -- perhaps a negative report by a rating agency -- will make the headlines during an otherwise quiet news cycle. Suddenly, it will be not just a few policy wonks who worry about the sustainability of U.S. fiscal policy but the public at large, not to mention investors abroad. It is this shift that is crucial: A complex adaptive system is in big trouble when its component parts lose faith in its viability.
Over the last three years, the complex system of the global economy flipped from boom to bust -- all because a bunch of Americans started to default on their subprime mortgages, thereby blowing huge holes in the business models of thousands of highly leveraged financial institutions. The next phase of the current crisis may begin when the public begins to reassess the credibility of the radical monetary and fiscal steps that were taken in response.
Neither interest rates at zero nor fiscal stimulus can achieve a sustainable recovery if people in the United States and abroad collectively decide, overnight, that such measures will ultimately lead to much higher inflation rates or outright default. Bond yields can shoot up if expectations change about future government solvency, intensifying an already bad fiscal crisis by driving up the cost of interest payments on new debt. Just ask Greece.
Ask Russia too. Fighting a losing battle in the mountains of the Hindu Kush has long been a harbinger of imperial fall. What happened 20 years ago is a reminder that empires do not in fact appear, rise, reign, decline and fall according to some recurrent and predictable life cycle. It is historians who retrospectively portray the process of imperial dissolution as slow-acting. Rather, empires behave like all complex adaptive systems. They function in apparent equilibrium for some unknowable period. And then, quite abruptly, they collapse.
Washington, you have been warned.
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37 Comments so far
Show All"Over the last three years, the complex system of the global economy flipped from boom to bust -- all because a bunch of Americans started to default on their subprime mortgages, thereby blowing huge holes in the business models of thousands of highly leveraged financial institutions."
Is that why it happened? Or did it happen due to wholly-owned politicians enacting deregulation so the greedy elites could suck up even more wealth?
However, maybe it's best if everyone holding an upside-down mortgage walked away as quickly as possible, it might help precipitate a further crisis (let's get this over with. :)
But what if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arrhythmic -- at times almost stationary but also capable of accelerating suddenly, like a sports car? What if collapse does not arrive over a number of centuries but comes suddenly, like a thief in the night?
Right now, the USA is a Toyota with the gas peddle stuck to the floor, the doors locked from the outside, the driver stoned on corruption and gross, utter stupidity, heading for the cliff at 120 mph. Thelma and Louise redux.
"From Polybius to Paul Kennedy, from ancient Rome to imperial Britain, we discern a rhythm to history."
Polybius would be surprised to hear this!
But I guess it pays to throw in the name of an ancient historian, no matter how inappripriate.
After all, who's going to know the difference?
What if the collapse of the economy has nothing to do with anything more intricate than supply and demand?
The population of the planet increases at THREE additional people per second.
Resources on the planet are finite.
The ant hill continues to breed as the resources run out.
On top of that, the ant hill promotes a philosophy that the only way to live is to have more children in the name of family values, and to continue shopping to keep everyone happy.
Complex arguments arise that it's the fault of other ant hills for using up all the resources.
Anyone who dissents is ignored or killed.
Soon the ant hill faces it's destiny.
America's population growth( if you don't include immigration) is a little over zero.
This guy is certainly full of himself.
A tiny point: it wasn't really the defaults on mortgages (we get those all the time) that lead to the collapse of the fiscal system, it was all those crazy derivatives and such. It was the repeal of Glass-Steadman, it's also the pure greed of Wall Street. The mortgage-holders are more the victims rather than the cause.
Otherwise a pretty wise and honest interpretation of history, not that I quite buy some of the premises. But interesting none-the-less.
Gary
"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history."
-- George Bernard Shaw
actually that is glass-steagall. just for accuracy sake..
It isn't a tiny point. That is a HUGE point. There will always be people who default on their loans, mortgages, IOUs, whatever. Regardless of debates about predatory lending, defaults will inevitably happen; the occurrence of defaults should NOT bring down the global economy. If they do, then there is a serious systemic problem. That he downplays it is very notable.
It is especially notable when you look at the rest of the article, the complaints about the low interest rate, complaining about the "radical" fiscal and monetary stimulus by government, complaining about the budget deficit without doing even a cursory look at the components of the budget, complaining about inflation, the ridiculous comparison to Greece. This is a typical Friedmanesque monetarist article.
Sioux Rose
GARY: Glass-Steagall, Steadman dates (or did) Oprah.
Let us not leave out of consideration the history changing power of thoughts that have appeared in this world for the very first time, thoughts that can will-bend hundreds of millions of people with a suddenness beyond description.
Hidden within the rotteness and evil there grows a fruit, which is health making and good, and which, as it emerges more and more into the light, will change this world forever and in ways never before imagined.
Sioux Rose
Light always does follow darkness. I, too, hope to see realized the vision you herewith describe. 2020 AD: when mankind SEES and ACTS from a balanced vision.
I'm with you on this, Leland Mellott. Anything is possible, and why not this possibility?
/cm
I get from this that there are handy models and paradigms which allow us to begin to understand systems and ideas, but that this is only a first step, not a comprehensive theory. Thus we can look at history, and life, as a time line with identifiable cycles, forcing some order upon a great confusion of people, places, events, and times. But like in evolution, the slow steady rates of change are non-periodically interrupted by sudden drastic change, and this is 'normal'.
So while empires always fall, 'there has always been war', cycles can be identified, and change always occurs, we really can't predict when, how, or even why.
Niall Ferguson, Fellow of Jesus College and B-School Professor at Harvard, is is a confirmed apologist for capitalist imperialism with a lengthy resume of support for war crimes, such as the invasion of Iraq. Reports Wikipedia "He [Ferguson] is best known outside academia for his revisionist views rehabilitating imperialism and colonialism . . . ."
He is also a poor scholar. In today's article he weaves in and out of various half-baked scientistic conjectures. The point of his article is easy to miss for those not attuned to dealing with the sort of dishonesty that is standard in what Chomsky calls the "ideological disciplines." (Ferguson's degrees are in history.) What then, is Ferguson's point, so important that not only the L.A. Times but Common Dreams features the article? --This comes in the sixth-to-last paragraph, where Niall warns, ". . . most imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises. Alarm bells should therefore be ringing very loudly indeed as the United States contemplates a deficit for 2010 of more than $1.5 trillion -- about 11% of GDP, the biggest since World War II."
The point, please note, is therefore fiscal austerity for the majority in service to upholding the empire of the few; the few being our rulers, the corporate capitalist/imperialist elite. This service to empire is the reason why Ferguson "forgets" to mention the vast imperial contribution to the deficit, most notably in the always growing military/security spending; regarded as untouchable by imperial apologists, of course.
Note also the propagandists' use of fear: We had to bail out Wall Street because the economy was about to collapse and ruin us all. We have to invade country X (you fill in the blank) because X poses a grave and growing existential danger to the USA. We have to increase the military/security budget because bin Laden wants to kill us. We have to cut back on wasteful "entitlement" spending because our imperial hegemony is under dire threat of sudden and catastrophic collapse. (You are going to burn in hell unless you come to Jesus; send me your money--oops! different propagandist . . . .)
Ferguson thus delivers the same message as that brought by the Peterson Institute and its clone, the bipartisan deficit commission recently decreed by Obama. Make no mistake about it: Capital is accelerating the offensive against all human elements of federal spending, the same offensive that it has successfully and incrementally pursued since the Reagan years. The message: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc., will have to be cut back severely in order to "save" America--imperialist America, that is.
We are left with the question: Why does Common Dreams feature such articles? What's next, screeds from the Peterson Institute? Press releases from the Chamber of Commerce?
Thanks for an excellent post, Soloduff. Other points against Ferguson (besides his association with Harvard Business School) are his belief that Social Security should be privatized, that personal and corporate income taxes, the estate tax and FICA should be replaced by a 33% sales tax, that Medicare and Medicaid should be replaced by “health vouchers” whose value would depend on an individual’s health, and that federal discretionary spending should be cut 20%. His tour de force is a two volume work on the Rothschilds, and to complete the picture, he’s a contributing editor at the Financial Times.
Courtesy of “generalcommentator” on the DM Green thread, I read this article http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17826, “Prognosis 2012: Towards a New World Social Order,” which envisions a looming transition from post-growth capitalism (globalization, privatization and financialization) to a consumer carbon economy in which the elite bankers—to whom even governments are subordinate, as we have recently seen them as they could not get the bailout money to them fast enough and with less oversight and conditions—control the world’s resources in a sort of brave new feudalism. Powerful global financial bodies are already in place in the form of the IMF and World Bank. I would add to the list in your third paragraph, “We have to curtail civil liberties and increase monitoring of citizens to protect our great Homeland from the evildoing [Muslim] Terrorists.” Niall Ferguson could easily manage the propaganda effort setting the stage for such a transition, which, needless to say, wouldn’t be pretty.
The question now almost always is my mind is: Is it too late to create a popular resistance movement which could have some positive effect, could somehow neutralize the cancer the banksters have been spreading throughout the planet?
Desmoulins: Your addenda are quite helpful. Thanks.
Your last paragraph poses the crucial question and ultimate test of one's political judgment. My answer: Yes, it is too late to stop the slide into barbarism. Rather than make a proper case for this answer, I'll cite the valedictory book of Ralph Nader, a genuine hero of American progressive causes. The upshot of a lifetime of struggle is indicated by the title of his last book: "Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us." The conclusion stated in the title, please note, implies the political invalidism of American progressives. And rather than indulge in Nader's fantasy of salvation from the higher circles, I would argue that the rich--i.e., the corporate capitalist/imperialist elite that rules us--will continue to act in accordance with their class nature; which, as your second paragraph attests, is evidently to run the world to hell, at a profit.
I find that a long view of history is helpful in accepting such an unpleasant verdict. It is not written in the sky that America can be an exception to the usual path of imperial decline. Nor is it written in the sky that Nature's first known experiment in (semi-)intelligence--that would be us--would be a keeper. Biology is replete with innovations that fail in their first embodiment. So too the history of human technical innovation. To think that history is exempt from this phenomenon is vanity.
The thesis that I have just sketched is not novel. Some 2500 years ago, some very sensitive philosophers took a hard look at the civilization (class society) established around them and declared the experiment dubious if not doomed. I refer to such as the Buddha (of the Pali canon, not the Mahayana version), Heraclitus of Ephesus, and Epicurus of Samos. --These thinkers taught that Acceptance is a wonderful thing. Alas, this presupposes awareness, which is as difficult to attain as it is to accept when the news is unpleasant. But a sane person can take no other path. (Ignorance is most assuredly not bliss, as every minute of contemporary America proves.)
Sioux Rose
SOLODUFF/DESMOULINS: Interesting discussion between you both. It is helpful to know the background of the author as it lends what otherwise is missing context from the article. I appreciate that you provided that info, along with indepth analyses.
Are you saying that rights/benefits for the USan people must be sacrificed for the sake of the USan Imperium, which by the way should not exist in our minds, so our minds must be filled with false external threats to "justify" our sacrifice?
rtdrury: I plainly said that Niall Ferguson is speaking for the offensive of capital waged by our rulers, which demands austerity for the many in order to succor the empire of the few. And yes, I noted that scare tactics play a prominent role in stampeding the many off the imperial cliff. Call it shock and awe on the home front. Add to that the usual All-American mix of nationalism (a.k.a. patriotism, a.k.a. American Exceptionalism), racism, xenophobia, ignorance, superstition, anti-intellectualism and greed (a.k.a. the American Dream) and you have a recipe for political lobotomization and social retardation that serves none but the predatory society.
Rationalizing all of the above are the pretentious and overpaid eunuchs of imperialist ideology, fraudulent intellectuals such as Niall Ferguson.
Nothing is happening by accident.
Things are going to plan for the small group at the top.
The rest of us can keep fighting each other down here in the gutter.
While it might be possible that the us empire could quickly fall, I'm not too sure that such a fall would happen in the way the author thinks.
There's also the notion that the author missed, in that there are and always have been nation states that have risen to 'empirehood', then fallen back to nation state. After all empires are rather shaky creations.
The uk built an empire in the 17-20th centuries, yet today still exists (even if it is nearly a vassal state of the usa). Some could argue that the uk has had an empire before the 17th century, by colonizing Wales and some parts of France (but that's a dodgy argument). Note as well that the uk fought twice (at least) in Afghanistan long before their empire was forced into decline by a different war against Germany in 1914-18, and into it's terminal decline when the states made sure they were bankrupt before sending them aid during the second act of that war from 39-45. And though the British Empire has set, they still do have some influence in their former colonies, and are not seen as a uniformly negative bunch of arsehats. They did try to leave their colonies better off than they were when they founded them.
The author mentions Russia/the USSR, and yet the Russians still possess a great deal of the land that formed their 'empire' during the Romonov dynasty. Sure they've lost Ukraine, Belorussia and the southern Stans, but they've still got all of Siberia. And they still influence events in their former possessions, after all they do share borders with them. The Russians also have most of the nuke arsenal that caused so many stained shorts in the 1950s-80s. In some ways that empire didn't die, of course the ussr is dead but the empire lived before the ussr took it over.
The thing is, even if the us economy collapses, and the state is forced to withdraw its troops from their worldwide bases, those events alone or together will not bring about an end to the us' empire. Empires have survived massive economic collapses before, and reformed themselves. They have suffered the loss of half or more of their territory, and still continued to exist. Some have lost all of their major colonial possessions, and yet still have colonies today (France and England still have colonies in the Americas for example).
I think the rapidity of an empire's collapse is proportional to the degree to which power has concentrated at the top. Russia was a 'peoples economy' in name only: eventually all power in Russia resided at the very top. Insulated, by the time they realized they were on a bankrupt course it was too late, and the entire 'termite hill' collapsed, from the top down.
The lesson for the U.S. is the concentration of power at the top. Our democracy was supposed to prevent that, but money has become horrifically concentrated at the top, and has acted to subvert our democracy. Arguably, this is now a 'one-dollar-one-vote' Republic. Money has also pushed for globalization in an attempt to take over the world, has overextended itself, and is now insisting that 'its' government in the U.S. back its bets. I'm not sure the degree to which America has become a top-down democracy, but if the answer is 'entirely' then the fall we are about to experience could be a 'Made in the USSR' freefall.
[I think the rapidity of an empire's collapse is proportional to the degree to which power has concentrated at the top.]
I'd respond by mentioning the Roman Empire, it had quite the concentration of power at the top, yet it took centuries to fall totally. The last outpost of the former Roman Empire fell in the 1450s when Constantinople was captured by the Turks. But that's the ancient world, in the modern age there have been empires that have been 'falling' for quite some time. The Russian Empire is a very good example of an empire where that power was concentrated at the top, whether as a Tsar or as the Secretary General of the Communist Party, and yet that 'empire' has yet to fall completely. Russia still exists, and it's still an empire. (an empire being defined as a nation that is composed of different national groups within its borders, kept together by force) In some ways the rise of communism in the USSR kept the bankrupt Russia Empire going for another 70 years.
Something like that could happen in the usa, where a 'new revolution' could keep the yankee empire going for another few decades before it too weakened and was no longer a 'superpower'. Of course there is no chance of a 'communist' revolution in the usa, such an idea would be laughable. The only 'new revolution' that would work at this time in the states is one based on the ideals of B. Mussolini. Should such a revolution actually occur, then a precipitous decline of the yank empire would likely take the form of a nuclear winter, but not an economic collapse.
I think the author is not making a case about the USA as a NATION collapsing.
as he pointed out - the infrastructure , being part of what leads it towards empire abroad , can remain intact or functioning well appropriate to a country ...but that it's the loss of power and influence abroad that is the end of "empire".
in that case - he is probably correct..and that the "sudden collapse" will likely have more to do with the USA one day, from sheer financial weight - combined with increasingly intense rejection and "dis-cooperation" by "client" states finding other alternatives to c0-exist with their neighbors will cause the USA -- or FORCE the USA - to eventually abandon its "empire of bases"...and WITH IT - the "back-up" - the IMPLICIT threat that it has enjoyed or used for generations - to impose its Imperial will abroad.
ALREADY< for example - as a result of its over-extension - great as its war machinery is in the middle east or central asia - even with more War Drums against Iran (even now seemingly to include Syria for the latter RE-Emphasising its alliance with IRAN) , Pakistan has already thumbed its nose at the USA - refusing to hand over the recently capture Taliban Leader and denied the CIA access for already 2 weeks - and in effect - making the "capture" a "SAFE HAVEN" for taliban.
while they will have their internal and regional contradictions - what is rising here to the top is that they will ALWAYS remain "central asians" and NEVER become fully "american trustees"..their LOYALTY will always be to THEIR culture and ways of thinking, NEVER to the american "democracy in a box"...for the simple reason that
the americans - and their empire - is a FOREIGN intruder in their affairs - which to THEM is only an entity that they can , should, and WILL use to their contradictory or rival advantages...until eventually the empire exhausts itself trying to be the "law-giver" in a region that will always look at the USA as an intruder.
how can the USA or any "empire" sustain that?.
for the first time in its political history - perhaps as a result of worry about "problems at our borders" spilling over from pakistan due to USA meddling -- CHINA's communist party which is actually the "commander" of the Chinese ARMY - voted to impose the potential of CONSCRIPTION to increase its army in the event of invasions.
you can imagine that they can , following the USA example, use "national interests" to spill over into pakistan SHOULD US behavior CAUSE "problems in our border".
as a chinese general last years observed about increasing NATO /USA forays deep into central asia - which is next door toChina which has huge investments in pakistan, afghanistan and the other central asian nations , not to mention IRan -
"WE are worried about the USA's behavior in central asia - we hope she will not cause problems for US near our borders".....
and everyone knows how sensitive the chinese are -- if afghanis or pakistanis are sensitive about national borders , how much more the chinese, with their matter about tibet? - on their borders and any disruptions to their stated national prosperity programs spanning as far east as the china sea and back to their western borders - opening up TO the central asian and the ancient traditional "silk road" of trade with the middle east and beyond?
but having said that - just as speculation - htat is merely ONE region that the USA keeps meddling in trying to "expand" its "supremacy"...
what about south america? africa? back to the southeast asians who are no longer as cowed and likely as not going to be more and more annoyed at the USA's meddlesome behavior especially militarily that only interferes with their much greater concerns of economic resurgence and INTEGRATION as a region in the world?
the USA's "divide and conquer" approach will continue to decay.
and eventually that is going to FORCE the USA to have to behave like a "normal country".
big - prosperous relative to dozens of others -- but NOT PERMITTED by the rest of the world to behave as it has behaved and gotten away with for the past generations.
"In imperial crises, it is not the material underpinnings of power that really matter but expectations about future power"
In the USA, the people expect to grab future power away from the elites, so Harvard Business School will become Harvard Pigeon Roost.
China could very well be planning the coup de grace for the Empire of the United States. The Chinese will eventually call the USA's bluff over Taiwan. They look far ahead and are patient. At this very time they are stockpiling stategic materials in a way that would only be done by a nation preparing for war. The fact that they buy so many iou's from the USA comforts some into thinking that they would never try to bring the USA down because the USA owes them so much. But the buying of USA iou's could well be a strategic move to undermine the USA economy by letting the USA expend huge amounts on maintaining the far flung empire. The manufacturing infrastructure which the USA would need in times of war is also being atrophied by the willingness of the Chinese to perform the manufacturing functions for the USA. And wars have to be financed. How would the USA finance a war against China when it relies so heavily on China for shoring up its economic system? Eventually the Chinese will simply assert their right to unify China by invading Taiwan. And when they do the USA will have the choice of fighting over that island or backing down and losing face. Either way could be the tipping point for the Empire. The Chinese will wait for the opportune moment and they will also work to make sure that the opportune moment arrives on time.
just a note on developments in china:
it seems that in china - they have a huge problem:
LABOR SHORTAGE...and it's tightening... along with an increase in general wages. a report said that even "white collar workers have to pitch in to reach production deadlines"...
maybe china's Jobs Stimulus programme (the one that outlayed something like 500 billion dollars last year -- not including the new infrastructures yet set to come in operation like the 42 high speed rails in 3 years and its attendant other businesses and jobs) -- maybe it has increased this "tight labor market".
as far as I know - many chinese are finding it easier to go home to the provinces as they are able to wrangle higher wages.
but it comes to mind something that Henry CK Liu wrote numerously about in Asiatimesonline....
(i'm of course simplifying and paraphrasing from his long articles)
"what is needed in the world is a LABOR CARTEL to offset the dominance of the Money Capital Cartel...and to put in place the proper relationship -- that LABOR ought to control Money capital, not the other way around....a proper society's AIM ought to be providing conditions for an economy of Full Employment at ever rising Wages towards a society in which LABOR and not money capital controls the outcome of wealth distribution....the True WEalth of Nations is not Money or Money Capital...the True wealth of nations is People....without people there is no economy...a healthy society is one in which LABOR is ALWAYS scarce.".
as for China invading Taiwan - it is likely not necessary nor even fruitful for the mainland..
why bother to cause physical damage on an island that is so prosperous already - when - as with Hongkong after the British had to give it up - all china had to do was allow it to maintain itself and become a "showcase" or "gateway" of sorts for the mainland?
as things stand - regardless of Taiwans' still being somewhat beholden to its "patron" USA -- taiwan is merely a "westernized" economy or "independent country" as a result of historically very RECENT developments - namely:
Taiwan as a modern "country" really was just a linchpin for the USA supporting a RIGHTWING faction that once came from the mainland -- the Kuomintang - who were originally nationalists themselves but LOST to the Communists...so they became EXILES in Taiwan which IS and has always been a chinese territory.
how else to prove it? can anyone find anything that is of BRITISH or US ENGLISH in its old history? -- no -- it's CHINESE.
what's their culture? it's CHINESE.
what's this big problem about understanding that Taiwan IS chinese?
in the end -- when these politicians , abetted by the western colonialist USA - are long gone -- Taiwan will simply have to be reabsorbed...and not necessarily by military means ...but by the simple fact of Taiwan BEING chinese.
that's all.
Taiwan will return to the mainland once China becomes a democracy (N. Korea will collapse as well since its dependent on Chinese aid, but that a different story).
It might take 50-75 yrs to happen but it will happen... As for a labor shortage, lol, there are always more nations with more people.
China will see its own wave of outsourcing soon enough( in a way it allready has, Vietnam, India are all seeing new jobs come there way)
Exactly keith,
The Taiwanese do not consider themselves Chinese anymore, although most have Chinese families and travel back and forth now that restrictions by Beijing have been relaxed. But without US protection they could never fend off a Chinese invasion. China's Massive Military buildup is not for defense. They are ambitious and hold grudges and feel that renegade Taiwan must be throttled. In 1997 missile tests were fired at the island, and only the arrival of two US aircraft carriers stopped the invasion drill. They already reclaimed Hong Kong, then Macao, Taiwan is next, and then all nations that share a border with them are in deep trouble. They have already stolen islands from Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, and others. Huge Mexican standoffs have occurred between Chinese warships and the US Navy in the South China Sea during War Games in the past few years.
Their justification for their aggression is that these islands were Chinese thousands of years ago. They salt an island or reef (imho) and then Chinese warships show up and blow everything off the island (to protect the pottery shards, of course.) I personally witnessed this in the late 90's from 35.000 feet on one occasion over the Spratly Islands, the jamming of my weather radar and communications gave me a fair degree of concern.
Is the relationship between China and the US better now?
Man, i sure hope so. I've seen the fear of "the Party" by people in Shanghai, and I don't want that creeping over onto my little set of islands. The US government is bad right now, but the Communist Party inside China is worse. I don't ever see it becoming a democracy. All big governments are bad news. Give me a weak central government and Liberty will shine down on the the inhabitants. Big governments, conversely, are usually hijacked by elite greed sooner or later.
TJ
It seems likely that the Chinese will eventually just purchase the right to govern Taiwan. It's not like the US will hold out for some moral principle, and some circumstance will happen in which it can be done without losing face.
You cannot do anything too drastic by calling in IOU's: the debtor refuses to pay and takes whatever those consequences might be. Were anything resembling a military confrontation on the close horizon, American government could quickly convince its citizens that they were morally entitled to Chinese money with no compunction to return it, all similar pleas against odious debt being cast aside with little mention.
It seems likely that the Chinese will eventually just purchase the right to govern Taiwan. It's not like the US will hold out for some moral principle, and some circumstance will happen in which it can be done without losing face.
You cannot do anything too drastic by calling in IOU's: the debtor refuses to pay and takes whatever those consequences might be. Were anything resembling a military confrontation on the close horizon, American government could quickly convince its citizens that they were morally entitled to Chinese money with no compunction to return it, all similar pleas against odious debt being cast aside with little mention.
Maybe the climate change issue is so big that it will overwhelm any patterns of history that have been described here. The countries that can produce their own food may be the ones that continue to exist. Those would be Russia, Ukraine, Australia, Canada, and a few countries in Latin America. Imperialism may be the least of humanity's worries in the near future; sheer survival might trump whatever political/economic systems are vying for supremacy.
Gordon Gecko: "Greed is good."
This article is corporate, neo-liberal boilerplate delivered by a fat, tenured (economically insulated) tool of the same Harvard Business School that helped produce many of the corporate pigs who executed for Enron, Goldman Sachs, and the
Rubin/Greenspan/Summers anti-regulatory Friedmanite Washington consensus on economics over the last 15 years.
Prof. Ferguson is a neanderthal Reaganite supply-sider singling out economic (read: jobs) stimulus because our "free trade," anti-union, "decrease the surplus population" by any means necessary CEO class has American workers and the unemployed right where they want them--going in the direction of spreading poverty and entitlement cuts for the lower-classes--and he wants more than anything for that current situation to become the new status quo: Deliberately contrived long-term economic structural decline that preserves the globalized and TARP bubble market-maintained capital of the upper-middle and upper-classes at the expense of every other class.
It's pathetic really. Their economic "fortress America" is an extortionate stock market bubble kept inflated by periodic tax-payer TARP giveaways to the big banks--plus whatever the speculators can "financialize" out of that bubble selling still unregulated derivatives and other crooked devices to foreign banks and investors. When that TARP bubble market pops the true global capitalist super-predators will just pull up stakes and privately jet to some lavish tropical pirate banking enclave and start all over again with some other countries' middle- and lower-classes' money (lookout India & China). Fergie's not really part of der uber-class so it's in his upper-middle-class interest for the bubble to last at least until he croaks of old age or can put aside some gold and 30 year bonds for his progeny in Switzerland, Dubai or somewhere similar.
He doesn't mention over-concentration of wealth in the richest 1% of Americans. He doesn't mention income disparities and how historically destabilizing they are to great nations (google: French Revolution). He mentions over-spending but doesn't discuss obscene military expenditures coupled to tax cuts for the super rich (unprecedented in U.S. history). He ignores the effect on the government's revenue base of 16 years of accelerated offshoring of American middle-class manufacturing jobs. He ignores roughly $8 Trillion dollars of illegally offshored taxable upper-class income hidden out in the world's pirate banking enclaves over the last 20 years. He ignores the $600 Trillion dollar global black market in derivatives and the fact that 40% of the bundled mortage CDOs made in America were sold to banks in foreign countries--and how that all still might come back to bite us with a vengeance. Out of sight out of mind.
He specifically targets stimulus spending aimed at job creation. Then he slitheringly insinuates the need for an increase in interest rates of unspecified size in order to (unstated) help long-term bond yields (something he wants to be more heavily invested in along with his gold purchases because he knows that bubble's going to blow unpredictably at some point). He likes the fact that credit is in contraction and that his upper-middle-class and the upper-class that owns him hold all the cards, and he wants to convert as much of the remnant middle-middle and lower-middle-class into deliciously squeezable under-class tenants or the homeless--politically and economically crushed--for as long as possible because they are much less troublesome that way. Crushed, out of sight and out of mind. Guillotines are too good for these upper-middle-henchmen parasites.
The empire meme sinks its claws deep.
It takes a lot of energy (expense, blood, message spinning) to keep 75% of wealth in 1% of the wallets.
Article is correct. System is tight, house of cards... a lot like the climate.
A deadfall rabbit trap works on leverage, controlled by a small trip knotch. Climate could be controlled by a change in location of water mass from frozen at the poles to liquid at the equatorial bulge--->torque change on the tectonic plates--->quakes--->magma flow heating the oceans & tsunamis loosing methane clathrates as they traverse the ocean floor--->quick build-up of water vapor/stronger storms--->iceage scenario.
Seismic trigger, rather than relentlessly rising temp/high sea levels...had any quakes lately?
"Fighting a losing battle in the mountains of the Hindu Kush has long been a harbinger of imperial fall."
This much is certainly true. Napoleon, the British Empire, Hitler, the Soviet Union, and now America. Did I leave anyone out? All signaled their decline by attempting to conquer Afghanistan. It's almost like a required initiation ritual. What a riot.