The Fearful Superpower
Consider the top GOP candidates to replace Bush. On the campaign trail, Rudolph Giuliani endlessly repeats his mantra that "we are facing an enemy that is planning all over this world … to come here and kill us." Mitt Romney has explained that while "some people have said we ought to close Guant?namo, my view is we ought to double [the size of] Guant?namo." And John McCain sometimes sounds cavalier about bombing Iran—despite the fact that, if it happened, it would be the third U.S. war against a Muslim country in seven years.
The notion that the United States today is in grave danger of sitting back and going on the defensive is bizarre. Since 2001, Washington, with bipartisan support, has invaded two countries and dispatched troops around the world, from Somalia to the Philippines, to fight Islamic militants. It has ramped up defense spending by $187 billion—more than the combined military budgets of China, Russia, India and Britain. It has created a Department of Homeland Security that now spends more than $40 billion a year. How then would Giuliani go on the offensive? Invade a couple more countries?
To recover its place in the world, the United States should first recover its confidence. It remains the world's only superpower, the only big country with a total portfolio of military, economic and political dominance. Most major states are either well disposed toward it or, at worst, neutral. The challenges America confronts come from small, faceless terrorist organizations and a few rogue nations. This is not to minimize the challenges. Today's asymmetries of power mean that small groups can do big damage. But it is to put things in perspective. When President Bush speaks of Iran's nuclear program as the road to World War III, one wonders if he has noticed that Iran's total GDP is just one sixty-eighth that of the United States, or that its military spending is less than 1 percent of the Pentagon's.
The real challenges that the United States faces come not from globalization's losers but from its winners, not from yesterday's bombs but from tomorrow's factories. The crucial project for the next president will be to change the basic focus of U.S. foreign policy, away from the Middle East and toward the Far East. When the history of these times is written, surely the great trend that will dominate the accounts, far larger than the war in Lebanon or the tensions over Iran, will be the rise of China and India and how they reshaped the world.
This power shift is having broad and benign effects around the planet; global growth is a marvel to behold. But it is also producing massive complications and dislocations. It creates high demand for raw materials and energy. Countries that possess such resources—Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia—have become powerful islands of exception to the rules of markets and trade that are sweeping the world. Thus global capitalism is producing its own well-funded anticapitalists. Environmental degradation proceeds in much of the world on a colossal scale. And these problems get exacerbated by changes in climate, rainfall and habitation. Scarcities of water and wheat and other grains might turn out to be the fault lines of the future as populations move in search of secure and arable land.
There is no way to turn off the underlying global growth, nor should one try. Every previous expansion of global capitalism has led to greater prosperity across the world. But this is a massive, complex process that requires enormous focus and attention. And while other nations around the world, from China to Chile, are playing to win, the United States as a government has barely focused on any of the major challenges or opportunities they present. The Bush administration is too busy settling disputes between Sunnis and Shiites in downtown Baghdad.
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Member Comments
Posted By: Bossmaine @ 05/28/2008 12:50:47 PM
Comment: May 27, 2008
8:56 p.m.
[ Suggest removal ] bossmaine ( no real name given ) says...
We all need to stop buying into this political nonsense these canadites feed us when its time for elections. They all sing the same song year after year election after election about providing more jobs, Better healthcare, Tax cuts, Money for schools ect. The majority of us are hard working americans just getting by and the majority of congress are upper-class, wealthy, and are born/bread to get into congress seats like its a family business of some sort. So how could they know what's going on with the rest of america; We should be asking congress and the presidents "Why are we getting double taxed?" Most people dont even know how much the're are paying in taxes each month. The average american makes about 400 a week thats 1600 a month,take out 80 a week in taxes, 35 in insurance which leaves 280/290 wkly before you get a check in your hand, So thats around 1120 mthly. Now do you believe out of that 1120 a month you're paying anywhere from 175 to 275 in sales tax. Add all the taxes u paid that month and its probably going to be almost half of your gross. And where does that put U and me into a low income,high crime area. And half of those people who were making that 400 a week have now lost their jobs and are now waiting behind bushes and around corners to rob me for my few pennies. "Thanks Mr. Bush" The whole point i'm trying to make is to stop letting the news media and your favorite talk show hosts brain wash you into voting for someone bc they like or dislike the cannidate most of them come home to luxury not affected at all. We need a new beggining and thats why im voting for Barack Obama because i feel he is new. Hell if anyone else was new I'd vote for them too. The fact is we have the same people in congress just moving from seat to seat like a chess game. If we want to go foward in life we have to make a new beginging and get rid of the old "hell god got rid of everything old to make way for the new so why can't we." The same people in congress with the same old mentality, got us stuck in time with no way to advance to the future, or better yet look at it this way if you use a vaccum cleaner to clean your floor, over time the bag gets old and full of dirt: So what do you do? Put a new one in or it stops working right! That's what has happend to this country congress stop working "for us" As for that full of dirt comment take it as some are old as dirt and the others are dirty meaning "corrupted." Now it's time to put in our new bag. "Barack" and get rid of all the filth in congress. By the way someone tell Hillary Clinton to tell her husband we said thanks for the foriegn trade policy he passed "which shipped most of our jobs overseas" and then tell Hillary thanks for her vote which helped send our troops over seas not to long after that. You know for some reason the Clintons like se
Posted By: bijindesu @ 05/16/2008 10:31:20 AM
Comment: cc
Posted By: Mambo @ 05/10/2008 9:50:36 AM
Comment: Now why the most powerful nation in the World-the United state of America always fears a war against terror today.It needs to protect all americans at home and abroad,but this costs them so much and its current terrorism budget has often been higher than the MCA on an endemic malaria of which kills many children in sub saharan region.This is disgraceful.
The priority is terrorism and nothing else since it had become the order of the day everywhere.For the Bush admistration to tell African states to use his free mosquito nets does not help them in reducing mortality rates just because these poorer countries have no money to construct good infrastructures like tarmac roads,energy sectors e.t.c which are also obstacles to economic and foreign investment particularly in the Third World.
Mambo,Tanzania.