Welcoming the Decline

After enumerating the more quantitive evidence for national decline, Gary Leupp (professor of history at Tufts) writes:

I thought about the Daniel story [of the 'handwriting on the wall,' predicing the fall of Babylon] while reading an article in the most recent issue of the American Conservative. It cites a Chicago Council of Global Affairs survey that reported “a majority of Americans is taking a very sensible view of how activist and interventionist the U.S. should be in the future. There appears to be much more acceptance of relative decline in U.S. preeminence and the rise of more independent powers….”

Specifically, a large majority thinks the U.S. shouldn’t be the “world’s policeman,” shouldn’t try to “solve problems” unilaterally, and welcome the fact that countries like Turkey and Brazil are becoming more independent of the U.S. in the conduct of their foreign policy. They think that rather than trying to limit China’s power the U.S. should engage it and cooperate with it in a friendly way.

I find the report encouraging. Perhaps people are thinking: What is wrong with allowing others to emerge and share center stage? We’re tired of being in charge of the world.

The neoconservative strategy following the Cold War has been to allow no rival, to maintain global “supremacy” or “full spectrum dominance.” But how can you do that when China (a generally peaceful power, that happens to own almost a quarter of the U.S. national debt) threatens to surpass the U.S. in economic clout within 20 years?

Indeed what is wrong with becoming a Britain or a Spain, or a France or a Holland or Japan? Generally speaking, people in these countries don’t lament the decline of their empires. Few Japanese want to revive the empire that once extended from Sakhalin to Samoa. They’re content to live in a normal peaceful country that cooperates with others.

...Why not just realize and say: We’re just a country like other countries. Or we would like to be. We reached our peak half a century ago and are now in decline. And that is okay. During the period of peak prosperity U.S. military forces killed millions of Koreans and Vietnamese in order to maintain and expand the empire. This is nothing to be proud of. In our Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union we armed and trained tens of thousands of Islamist warriors to wage jihad against a secularist regime in Afghanistan, creating in the process groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

You can get thrown into the lion’s den for saying this, but the deeds of the U.S. have come back to haunt us. There are drawbacks to being an imperialist, bloodstained superpower.

Why does the U.S., protected by two vast oceans and peaceful borders with friendly nations, with no significant military rivals, need an empire of 700 bases in 130 countries? Why does it need to pretend to be “protecting” people (as in Okinawa) who haven’t asked for their presence and ask who’s protecting them from the U.S. troops? People who are asking them to please leave?

Why does the U.S. need to constantly topple regimes posing no threat to itself, always on the basis of lies? Why does it need to bully its allies (whose people want nothing to do with the Iraq and Afghan wars) to get support, or to maintain an alliance (NATO) that has long outlived its original Cold War purpose? Why must it insist on dominance? In whose interest is all this?