I too dislike the headline, but can accept it if the article points to a continued desire for American control of things it cannot control. The idea of continuing hegemony in a multipolar world reminds me of Colonel Blimp sipping his pink gin and dismissing the "bloody wogs", and not having discussed the matter with Dr. William Brydon.

I agree with Common Dreamer that there are immediate problems to address domestically. At the same time, there needs to be thoughtful addressing of global issues, especially those that deal with trade, resources, and a twisted "brain drain" based on offshoring. As to the latter, the history of science and technology shows that the greater the number of qualified people working on problems, the more society tends to benefit.

That doesn't mean moving research labs to Beijing. It means having a research lab in the US, or, as mine had been, with a manager in Ottawa but most participants in the US, and some in Sweden. The Swedish lab also closed down, in the short-sighted view of corporations and shareholders that cutting costs are more important than innovation.

Forgive me if I'm wandering into something that should be in my own blog post, but I see danger in what may be a dumbing-down of America, and a climate that makes innovation more and more difficult. Some of the best work has been done in small business; Cisco is a dominant technology company, but it probably puts a good deal more money into acquiring small business with great technology than it does in creating it. The double whammy of health care and capital concentration makes it more and more difficult for Americans, Americans who learned the lessons of the dot-com crash, to start innovative businesses.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

This is a very important subject that should ideally be part of the national political discourse. A better title to Steve's piece would be 'American hegemony diminished'. We should see this a a wonderful opportunity for America, not a setback. We are a great nation. Our strength lies in our naturally endowed wealth, to be sure, but also in the institutions and culture we have built. The US remains, a will so for some time unless we allow it to degrade, the leading center of science and engineering with its great universities and a national laboratories both private and public. Our entertainment industry projects positive American values internationally. We continue to have the best hospitals and to lead in medical research. In addition, our democratic institutions and beautiful multicultural society should continue to inspire the rest of the world.

What is detracting from achieving these potentials is that militarism has become a dominant force in this country. We have become the world's worst aggressor intervening in the internal affairs of other nations. This effort at international control is bankrupting this country. This is the opportunity that we face. Why don't we use our resources to do what we do best and let the rest of the world solve their own internal political contradictions. Our resources can be used to create more economic equality within the US and even to see that the great health care system that we have built is available to all of our citizens.

I think most understand what would be required to achieve these ends. The US must begin to give up its global military presence with its 800 bases and to begin reducing the size of our military. Let us recognize that our borders are secure, there is no power on earth that can challenge us in North America, but also recognize that we cannot secure the borders of every nation on earth unless we want to end up in bankruptcy.

Between the three paradigmatic concepts of hegemony (respect for other cultures and business deals (China), Transnationalism , European Union, and My Way or the Highway, Oceania (USA)) the last seems the least attractive and the least likely to gain partners around the world.

The essential point of that article is that relying on militaristic coercion, leads to opposition not submission, especially since there are other power centers to align oneself with.

We need to change our view of things, but I'm afraid that that it is too deeply engrained in our elites to be a likely thing to happen. All you have to do is look at McCain's saber rattling, 100 year war and more wars to come rhetoric, to despair.

Khanna's piece seems to be a "dark" view, but it ends on a note of wonky optimism that is beyond my ken. At this moment we are looking into a whirlpool.

Khanna sees all sorts of ways of “managing” the world situation, but, what I believe really defines the world situation is that it is no longer manageable. It’s un-manageability is its defining characteristic.

I also think that Khanna is wrong about Russia’s situation. We are going to be looking at a world of much armed conflict actual and threatened and the Russians have very good weapons for sale. In fact they are the only ones that provide antiaircraft systems of a quality that can neutralize the US air force’s superiority. Thus anyone who would like to be independent of US intimidation only has Russia as an alternative. Iran is an obvious case in point.

I would imagine that Russia’s population will increase as the oil and gas money continues to filter through their society. They also have a fair base in pure science as I recall and that is a real ace in the coming world, where science will have to solve so many hair raising problems. Anyway it is silly to write off any people that produced Leo Tolstoy and who drowned Adolph Hitler in their blood.

Really, what I worry most about is the effect this stomach floating drop in power, influence and ultimately standard of living, will have on the Americans themselves. There are certainly plenty of right wing demagogues around in the USA and I am worried by the idea of a “Wiemar - America”, with an apple pie version of “ve vass stabbed in der back” in the not too distant future. There may be American leaders waiting around the corner that could make Bush look good.
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

I haven't read the whole article, but if what you've excerpted is a decent flavor of what to expect, I am a little concerned.

My first observation is the characterization of the European Union as some sort of monolithic new superpower, which always strikes me as inaccurate.

The European Union acts as a reasonably coherent body when it comes to trade negotations. But how long can this unity last whilst trade negotiations founder against the backdrop of agricultural protectionism on which France is increasingly isolated in defending its position?

In any case, this tenuous unity is about the only proper unity that Europe tends to exhibit. Only half the members of the EU are part of the monetary union, there seems little popular appetite anywhere for greater political union, and further expansion of the EU (apart from the Balkan nations) seems a long way off because of deeply entrenched and opposing views. On defense beyond Europe's perimeter, there isn't much unity at all.

I fully accept that there are EU officials who see the EU as a "superpower", but just because they see it as such does not make it so. I view the EU as a group of countries that occasionally act co-operatively, but most of the time pursue their own interests. Their own interests are often tied up with defining relations between EU countries, and it confirms that European "hegemony" or something of that ilk is a fantasy.

Next, there's this assertion:

"India, lagging decades behind China in both development and strategic appetite"

Development in India and China is so vastly different it defies comparison. China's leadership, so far, has staked all on manufacturing. India leadership, so far, has allowed service industries to flourish. Is India 10 years or 20 years behind China? 30? Or is is silly to imagine a any gap given standard development theory purports that India has skipped a phase and is thus already well clear of China?

Plus, India is a democracy. Maybe India has the same foreign policy conundrum as America has, that agreeing on a long-term strategy (as China has) is a heckuva lot more tricky in practice. Basically, it is wrong to assume India has a lack of strategic appetite, it just might differ depending who you speak to.

Then there's this:

"What we have today, for the first time in history, is a global, multicivilizational, multipolar battle."

First time in history? Come on. 70 years ago you had America, Germany, Japan, Russia and Britain in a major strategic battle, or do we need a reminder of how that played out?

But the bigger difficulty is that this time around it is another "battle". And particularly, a battle for what? Resources, maybe. Influence, perhaps. A level-playing field for international trade, I can grant you. But is it really a battle? It just seems a very loaded metaphor, when really the objectives aren't simply to beat Europe at X and defeat China on Y. There's jockeying and competing and co-operating and agreeing, but does anyone see open warfare? Even the ritualistic renmibi revaluation question falls well short of anything resembling open hostility.

In any case, I take it the key concern here is a decline of America's hegemony. Well, my take is that it has occurred because people are no longer as eager for their countries to be like America. To be 100% in America's camp, as was seen to be the case in the Cold War. America's warts are open to more scrutiny these days, and screwing up a la Vietnam carries more serious consequences in terms of international standing.

The question is so much less what can America do to make other countries come round to our liberal traditions, it is what will make other countries want to do so. As I see it, countries want to belong to the European common market (the difficulty is getting existing members to accept them); they want a constructive relationship with multi-billion strong China because they ultimately see this relationship as advantageous, certainly far better than being frozen out.

The question is therefore what America has to offer. Rich corporations, supported by an untrustworthy government, aggressively pursuing their self interests is how America is perceived these days. To reclaim a hegemony worth having, this perception has to change (and that might include dropping the martial imagery when it comes to international relations). Otherwise, America loses a defining battle with herself.

Re: Come on. 70 years ago you had America, Germany, Japan, Russia and Britain in a major strategic battle, or do we need a reminder of how that played out?

70 years ago Europe (which culturally includes both the US and Russia) was the predominant civilization of the world, still holidng vast territories as colonies. Japan, furiously aping Europe in ways both good (technology) and bad (fascism), was the only non-European power.

I missed the reference to "Greater Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere" in the magazine.  Ouch.

Good article, but you have to laugh at the paragraph that suggests we pretend to be Kissinger and advise the president on the best strategy to succeed. If we pretend to be Kissinger our advice would be to bomb anything that moves while keeping it hidden from the American people, use rightwing dictators as shields (and shills) in exploiting regional confrontation, use covert action and undercover operations to overthrow legally elected governments and be completely wrong in every single issue/confrontation/policy, domestic and international and betraying and selling out the president who gave you the job in the first place.

Just a tangential thought:

A major consideration that prevents all the nations from holding hands and singing kumbaya is that pesky problem of scarcity of resources and then who should get what.

Given that, it is every nation for herself.

The point is not that militaristic subjugation of the planet is unethical (that too but in a Hobsean world of every nation against every other nation ethics is irrelevant), but that in a multipolar world where others offer ( for strictly selfish reasons) a more attractive deal, the purely militaristic strategy is losing its effectiveness.

But, you will say, we offer more than the stick, we offer the carrot. What is the carrot?
The chance that everyone on the globe can live the "American Dream". That brings us back to resource scarcity. But besides that the version of "The American Dream" that prevails now is unregulated unfettered capitalism which is kind of bringing the Hobsean world that prevails internationally to the Res Publica at home. It is a harsh docrine. Ronald Reagan was the soothsayer who told us that go-go capitlaism would benefit all Americans. Obama thinks that was "transformational". Obama has since backtracked and claims (implausibly) that he was merely pointing out that it was transformational not that he was endorsing it.

In any case, the people of the world are more attracted to the European version of the social contract than the Hayek version.

Or, to give the short version of what I just said, there's no point in talking about what to do now that they can thwart us without first asking what it is we want to do that is being thwarted.

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

First, I did not "pretend not to know" about Postol's work. When reminded, I found a reference about his work, which was very preliminary with respect to the actual problem. Postol didn't occur to me to mention because it was a very early study and there was subsequent much more detailed work on the modified PAC-2 used in 1993. That subsequent work went into the PAC-3 and was discussed significantly in computer science.

I will note that many of the computer science discussions were in general, academic/research contexts, not military ones. The clock drift problem was sufficiently educational, and potentiallty an occurrence in other, nonmilitary systems, that it was very worthy of discussion. PAC-3 was used as an example.

As to "defending the military industrial complex", I suppose that depends on what one means by it. There are absolutely idiotic military decisions, and there have been senior officers that had to think hard to become idiots. One retired colonel, my civilian third-level boss, would get obsessional about toilets not being flushed, and a briefing or memo on the subject could be expected about every month.

Harry Summers, one of our better strategic analysts and historians, said (from memory) that one of the problems of Vietnam was that the criticism that was directed at the uniformed executors of policy was misdirected, and should have been directed at the civilian makers of policy. During the Johnson administrations, a group of civilians (and sometimes one paratroop officer) without any air warfare experience would micro-plan bombing missions against North Vietnam, down to the types of bombs. They lacked the specialized knowledge to know if they were describing deathtraps for the pilots and ineffective damage to the target.

McNamara's "signaling" strategy was so subtle that North Vietnamese, after the war, confessed they had never suspected it. The most damning memo of the war, from McNaughton to McNamara, based strategy on assumptions that were absurd to anyone who had studied Vietnamese history.

By this, I am not suggesting that the US should ever have been a combatant in Vietnam. I believe that the US should have worked with Ho Chi Minh, who was in contact with the OSS (and succeeding organizations) team led by MAJ Archimedes Patti, from 1945-7. Ho was making proposals that would have been reasonable even to the French had anyone looked at them seriously. Instead, the US acted with then-reflexive anticommunism and reinstalled a colonialist.

The actual kleptocracy that took over South Vietnam, lied in the 1954-6 period and never held the reunification referendum, would have failed with the best military in the world. The reason that Ramon Magsaysay succeeded in ending the Hukbalahap insurgency in the US is that he demonstrated that government intended to serve the people, and offering genuine amnesty to the other side. Both sides learned his word was good. This was as Defense Minister; when he became President of the Phillipines, he did both solid and symbolic things to stabilize the situation. His solid contributions included rooting out corruption. His symbolic contributions included throwing open the gates of the Presidential Palace and inviting the people into what, after all, was their oue.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I have the sense that you would consider me "defending that system" if I suggested anything done by the military was wrong and should be stamped out. I've tried to start a discussion on roles and missions, yet I was the only one, on short notice, to propose a list that was not discussed in toto. Instead, I got a lecture on "Star Wars", which I never defended if that is the description for NBMD. When I spoke of TBMD, I was chastised for not accepting, as a complete explanation and condemnation, preliminary data that was far less complete than emerged with further analysis.

As I mentioned, there are idiots in the military. There are also some very smart military people that are overruled by civilians, sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly. GEN Eric Shinseki testified, before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, on historical and analytic reasons why there would be little security once the combat forces of Iraq were defeated. I suspect he had been aware of the OPERATION RANKIN plans for the occupation of Germany, which took several years to plan and to prepare forces appropriate to the task. Rumsfeld ignored all this.

The decision to invade, however, was "above the pay grade" of the military officers urging caution, and also suggesting finishing Afghanistan before distracting attention.

The most damning memo in planning for Vietnam went from McNaughton to McNamara, and was ludicrous for anyone who had studied Vietnamese history. There was additional ludicrous planning by Johnson & McNamara.

The military industrial complex is deeply ingrained in our society; why do you keep on defending that system.

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]