Saturday, September 19, 2009
Return to normalcy?
Obama's decision to cancel anti-missile installations in Eastern Europe makes good sense. We don't owe anything to Poland and Czechoslovakia, and they haven't given us anything to justify our continued support.
But Russia has actually given us something in return for the cancellation. "Russia may abandon plans to deploy tactical missiles in Kaliningrad Region in response to the US decision to drop missile defense plans for Central Europe."
The American people never gained anything from our vaunted Superpower status. Over the decades we paid trillions of dollars and thousands of lives to "defend" our "allies" and got no value in return.
Old-fashioned empires made economic sense: taking resources from the colonies in return for supporting the corrupt local governments. America ran such a rational empire from 1890 to 1940 (or more precisely from San Juan Hill to Pearl Harbor!) with colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Since then our empire has been all output and no input.
Time to give up this extravagant illusion. Now that we have joined Russia in the club of collapsed empires, perhaps we can finally slide into a more normal and humble relationship ... not exactly friends or allies, but non-belligerent competitors who work together when necessary. We were heading in this direction in 1945, but Stalin screwed it up by turning to subversion and sabotage. ¶ 7:49 AM
But Russia has actually given us something in return for the cancellation. "Russia may abandon plans to deploy tactical missiles in Kaliningrad Region in response to the US decision to drop missile defense plans for Central Europe."
The American people never gained anything from our vaunted Superpower status. Over the decades we paid trillions of dollars and thousands of lives to "defend" our "allies" and got no value in return.
Old-fashioned empires made economic sense: taking resources from the colonies in return for supporting the corrupt local governments. America ran such a rational empire from 1890 to 1940 (or more precisely from San Juan Hill to Pearl Harbor!) with colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Since then our empire has been all output and no input.
Time to give up this extravagant illusion. Now that we have joined Russia in the club of collapsed empires, perhaps we can finally slide into a more normal and humble relationship ... not exactly friends or allies, but non-belligerent competitors who work together when necessary. We were heading in this direction in 1945, but Stalin screwed it up by turning to subversion and sabotage. ¶ 7:49 AM
