America’s power is in decline and it's
necessary for its leadership to manage that decline in the best
interests of the U.S, its people and the world.
-
U.S. President Barack Obama must grapple with a U.S. that is past its peak military power.
- By:
Tony Burman
Special to the Star, www.thestar.com
- America’s
“military-industrial complex,” as U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower
described it in his farewell address in 1961, is in full-throated
terror.
- The world is about to end — or at least their inflated, overly
protected and dangerous part of it.
- But I suspect that Eisenhower, were
he still alive, would respond to their agony with a brush-off:
- “My
fellow Americans, it is about time.”
- Across-the-board cuts
to the bloated U.S. military budget — variously described as
“catastrophic,” “draconian” and “legislative madness” — will go into
effect in two weeks unless Washington’s warring Republican and
Democratic leaders come to a compromise on spending and revenue.
- It is timely to recall
Eisenhower’s warning in 1961.
- He worried about the growing power of the
“military-industrial complex” and the impact of the defence industry’s
quest for profits on foreign policy.
- As Aaron B. O’Connell, who teaches
history at the United States Naval Academy, wrote in The New York Times
last November:
- “(Eisenhower) warned that unending preparations for war
were incongruous with the nation’s history (and) cautioned that war and
war making took up too large a proportion of national life.”
- Those prophetic
words were spoken 52 years ago by one of America’s most honoured
military leaders.
- Earlier this week, in his state of the union speech,
President Barack Obama seemed to echo that theme, perhaps
unintentionally.
- Obama never once mentioned the words “Iraq” or “war on
terror.”
- He talked about ending the war in Afghanistan and focused on
the need to “fix” America, rather than “fix” the world.
- Most Americans see
themselves as “peacemakers” who are committed to bringing their sense of
“democratic values” to all.
- It is a comforting self-image shaped by a
conceited belief in American “exceptionalism.”
- But much of the
developing world, particularly after the disastrous decade that followed
Sept. 11, see the United States as mostly “war makers” — with a
self-serving and hypocritical commitment to true “democracy.”
- It is this
crucial contradiction where change, finally, may be occurring.In much of the current
alarmist debate about the threats to “America’s national security,”
several facts have been lost in the shuffle.
- The United States has a
staggering military budget, which has ballooned since Sept. 11.
- It is
20 per cent of the entire federal budget and now significantly more than
Medicare.
- In 2011, the U.S. spent more on its military that the next 13
nations combined.
- That will still be true, even if the latest round of
cuts — roughly 10 per cent — is imposed.
- The cuts would leave the
military budget at roughly the same level as it was in the latter years
of the Bush administration.
- What is also revealing
is what Americans think.
- This reality is largely ignored in the debate
among America’s chattering classes.
- A national survey by the Stimson
Center revealed that most American voters — including Republicans —
favoured budget cuts to the military that would be far greater than has
currently been proposed.
- It is ironic that
these significant budget cuts to the U.S. military, if they go ahead,
will begin in early March when Americans mark the 10th anniversary of
the invasion of Iraq. Many might see that as a historic transition
point.
- In 2003, American imperial power seemed to be at its height.
- Now,
after the collapse of that adventure, America’s power is in decline and
it is necessary for its leadership to manage that decline in the best
interests of the United States, its people and the world at large.
- In 2003 at Yale
University, former president Bill Clinton said the U.S. should be
realistic about how the future will unfold, and act in partnership with
other nations:
- “(The U.S.) is the biggest, most powerful country in the
world now . . .
- But if you believe that we should be trying to create a
world with rules and partnerships and habits of behaviour that we would
like to live in when we’re no longer the military, political, economic
superpower in the world, then you wouldn’t (act unilaterally).”
- But this must be done
by stealth. No active American politician can acknowledge that this 21st
century will not be America’s century, and that includes Obama. But his
recent actions suggest he has listened to Clinton’s words.
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