(This is Part 2 in a series. Go back to Part 1.)
In plain terms, the U.S. is overstretched financially and becoming more so every day. This is undermining the very basis on which the unmatched U.S. military machine depends.
If the dollar goes into a tailspin and the Great Credit Bubble bursts, the resulting depression would make it extremely difficult if not impossible for the U.S. to maintain military force projections around the globe at anywhere near their current levels.
As the dollar falls, making it thereby more expensive to purchase oil and maintain hundreds of bases abroad, it's likely that fairly soon the U.S. will have to cut back, perhaps drastically, on its military force levels around the globe. We already see this happening, among the strained U.S. military, in the partial troop withdrawals from Japan, S. Korea, Germany and elsewhere.
Meanwhile the operation in Iraq has severly hurt the U.S. For example, it has pierced the idea of the invincibility of the U.S. military. America's precision high-tech military is simply not well prepared for asymmetrical warfare against guerillas and terrorists who strike and then blend into the local population.
The extreme difficulty which the U.S. is experiencing in pacifying Iraq—a relatively small developing country—is something which is not going unnoticed in capitals around the world. It cannot but have an effect upon the world's perception of U.S. force projection.
The invasion of Iraq has also severely hurt the United States diplomatically. The over-muscular and unilateral foreign policy approach since 9/11 has diplomatically isolated the U.S. more than at any time in its history.
In addition to the invasion of Iraq, which most of our allies in Europe and Asia saw as premature at best, the U.S. has walked away from important treaties such as the Kyoto Treaty, the International Court, the Nuclear Non-prolifieration Treaty, the Land Mind Treaty and others.
This posture has fostered an impression that the U.S. is only interested in getting its own way and is unconcerned with the concerns of other nations. This has created an increasing rift—still mostly beneath the surface—between the U.S. and many countries around the globe.
As the geopolitical analyst W. Joseph Stroup points out, though the United States has been the strongest nation in the world for many decades, its real power always derived from the many multilateral dimensions—moral, cultural, political, economic, diplomatic and military—of its global relationships. In the aftermath of 9/11, many of these multilateral relationships have been discounted, neglected or tossed aside.
The result has been a catastrophic reduction in the ability of the U.S. to get its way in the world. The real power of the U.S. has always depended on most nations in the world wanting to follow our moral, economic, political and military leadership on various matters. In some ways the U.S. republic has indeed been a shining light.
Now that is changing. Many nations around the world have become concerned about the instability caused by the militaristic foreign policy approach taken by the U.S. and are quietly seeking to form a counterweight to U.S. unipolar power.
(This is the end of Part 2. Go to Part 3.)
—jim sloman, 12.8.04 for Nov 29
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