The Post-American and Post-Communist World

Sixty years ago an uprising in the Ukraine would have been met with machine guns fired from behind the armor of Communist ideology. With the fall of the USSR, Russia didn’t have much of an ideology to deploy against Ukrainian nationalism.

Putin tried to replace Communism’s international agents of influence by cobbling together a crude network of leftist anti-imperialists, paleo-libertarians and assorted conspiracy theorists and exploited it with classic tradecraft. Assange and Snowden showed how damaging this could be to the United States, but Assange, Snowden and all the rest of the gang couldn’t keep the Ukraine in Putin’s hands.

The anti-government sentiments projected by RT can bring in useful idiots, Assange and Snowden are evidence of that, but they lack Communism’s power to influence millions through the medium of a comprehensive ideology whose followers were willing to lie and die for it in unending numbers.

If Russia had set out to suppress an uprising 60 years ago, its talking points would have been on the lips and printing presses of innumerable writers and papers. To see what that would look like today, just compare and contrast the coverage of protests in Ukraine and Venezuela.  Putin destroyed whatever goodwill he had left from the left by coming out against gay rights. Maduro however is a Socialist in good standing. The media coverage of Venezuela and the Ukraine reflect that ideological disparity.

Russia and China traded Communism for economic productivity, but they lost the ability to project their power through the network of ideological alliances that once bound the left together. While Russia and China have moved away from the left, the United States has moved toward the left, but Obama is no more able to rally the left internationally than Putin or Xi Jinping.

Obama replaced traditional alliances with American allies with empty speeches. Russia and China have imperial visions built on a jumble of nationalism, exceptionalism and internal instability that they have a history of resolving through brutal repression or external conflict.  Obama is operating on a jumble of leftist paradigms and existing pragmatic approaches that he inherited from prior administrations. The two often clash, as they did in Syria, because they are not compatible.

Obama’s foreign policy is a Jekyll and Hyde monster with a split personality of Clintonites trying to steer it away from the rocks and leftist extremists with more ideology than experience from the Center for American Progress aiming for the rocks. Neither side really knows what it’s doing and instead of picking a side, the man at the top is often willing to sit back and let them fight it out while the Washington and New York papers decide which side is right.

That’s not a good way to run a banana republic consisting of two shacks and a donkey. It’s a truly terrible way to run a world power.

Obama and the left don’t want America to be a world power. The old liberal consensus was that American power should be used to intervene in world conflicts. American power might have been abused in the past, but it would be a means to a progressive end. The new leftist consensus trashes even that much rejecting American power as a means to a progressive end because of its unilateral nature.

American power contains the potential for unilateralism. The only way to prevent the United States from acting outside a consensus is to dismantle its military and its influence. This is the aim that Obama has pursued over the years. The former community organizer did not do this in a consistent fashion, recognizing that an immediate implosion would be disastrous, but he worked toward it step by step.

The Post-American country no longer has the influence to allow Obama to do much of anything abroad, but he considers it a worthwhile trade, giving up power so that some nebulous anti-American consensus will take up that power instead.

When liberals dreamed of handing over American power to the United Nations or some international governing body, they were at least pursuing a logical plan for enforcing their values worldwide. The dream of that international governing body is long dead. Not even Samantha Power seriously believes that the United Nations is capable of doing what she would like it to.

The abandonment of power is instead the deliberate creation of a power vacuum. The United Nations with its American roots is also tainted. The neo-liberal system that leftists denounce is too embedded in international organizations to transfer power upward. Instead they transfer power downward.

Obama’s post-American agenda is the mirror image of the anti-government ideology that Russian agents of influence project into the West. Both agree that Western power is the problem. And both are not enough to command international influence in any meaningful way. Ideologies that exist in the negative space do not inspire people. They only usher in an age of apathy, cynicism and despair.

The only real difference between Barack Obama and Julian Assange is that the former was given the custody of a great power whose power he distrusts even as he uses it and the latter wasn’t.

The Islamic movements are the prime beneficiaries of the collapse of the Pax Americana just as they were the prime beneficiaries of the collapse of the Pax Romana. Nomads, merchants and raiders can survive and exploit the fall of an empire better than anyone else, assembling shadow armies, moving vast sums of money around through invisible networks built on trust and invading other territories on short notice as no standing army could do.

The great powers have thought of Islamic raiders, in their various incarnations as corsairs, terrorists, bandits and madmen, as weapons to be used against each other. That is still the way that they think today, repressing domestic Muslims and arming foreign Muslims, encouraging Islamic terrorism against their rivals and striking back when it’s directed at them.

Like Russia and the China, the United States is eager to include Muslims in its consensus, without recognizing that they have entirely different agendas of their own. And it’s not as if our consensus is especially compelling now that we have jettisoned everything except the international projection of the left’s politics of resentment.

The Russians offer Muslims a place in Eurasia and China offers them a role in its People’s Republic; neither offer is particularly compelling. Russia and China will always exist for the purposes of the majority group and its elites and neither particularly bothers to disguise it. That is why few of Russia’s neighbors, Christian or Muslim, are especially enamored of the idea of recreating the USSR as the Eurasian Union, but without the Communism.

But paradoxically a post-American order has even less to offer them. Russia and China stand for something even if it is only their own power. The Post-American order stands for nothing except its own dismantling. That is why Obama sets red lines that he won’t enforce and issues threats that he doesn’t mean.

The only thing less appealing than selfishness is the complete absence of self. The only thing less appealing than empire is an anti-imperialism that so thoroughly negates its own power that it has no reason to exist.

Post-American America exists to destroy itself. Until that changes, it has nothing to offer the world except membership in a suicide pact.

  • Texas Patriot

    America is not abandoning power. Instead America is abandoning the foolish projection of power into conflicts that do not affect the national security of the United States and our key allies. In this way, America conserves and increases the real power available for our own defense and the defense of our allies rather than wasting and diminishing our power in conflicts that are not vital to the national security of America or our allies. It’s a win-win for America and our allies, and a much needed change for the better.

    • objectivefactsmatter

      “America conserves and increases the real power available for our own defense and the defense of our allies rather than wasting and diminishing our power in conflicts that are not vital to the national security of America or our allies. It’s a win-win for America and our allies, and a much needed change for the better.”

      By spending it on the increasing welfare commitments. It’s kind of hard to draw on that kind of “investment” when you need it for something else.

      • Texas Patriot

        The fact that tens of millions of Americans are out of work and can’t find decent jobs is the direct result of loss of jobs and entire industries to foreign competition. Unless we turn that around, millions of Americans will starve and go without health care and it will be impossible to pretend that the domestic and foreign policies of the last fifty years have been anything but a complete failure. Regaining and reclaiming our competitive position as first among industrial nations is the highest national priority we face today.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWM08DzTuhY

        • objectivefactsmatter

          “The fact that tens of millions of Americans are out of work and can’t find decent jobs is the direct result of loss of jobs and entire industries to foreign competition. ”

          And the left continues to make that worse by using the rhetoric of class warfare making workers feel exploited rather than pointing out that we all need to do our best to succeed. As one example. New international agreements are more about compensation for past (alleged) colonial exploitation and so forth. The leadership sucks and it’s only the resilience of the American people at large that keep us going.

          • Texas Patriot

            It’s a total failure by both political parties to recognize the need for a set of policies designed to create an environment that is attractive to international manufacturing industries, including high education levels, high levels of fitness and health, low corporate taxes, high incentives for investment in plant and equipment, and above all, freedom from the need to provide health care for employees. Pretending that it’s only “the left” which is responsible for these failures is fine so long as you include 90% of the Republican Party in that category.

          • Davros11

            You got that right! Both Dummycrats and Rhino’s need to be put against the wall….

          • truebearing

            You are conflating Left and Right with Democrat and Republican. All Democrats are Left, but some Republicans are as well. To say 90% are Left is obviously not accurate, unless you are looking at it from the perspective of a hyper-right Paulist, or some other libertarian, anarcho-capitalistic, utopian cult. To say 90% are responsible for all of these failures is merely your erroneous opinion.
            Just for fun, who are the 10% you have decided aren’t responsible?

          • Texas Patriot

            Given the corrupt and toxic swamp of Washington politics and the reality of what it takes to get reelected in today’s political environment, I think it would be hard to find any Republican who did not have his hand in the special interest cookie jar to some degree. That said, my hunch is that Jeb Bush would make an outstanding candidate for President in 2016, and I hope he runs and has a chance to give us a better idea on where he stands on all the issues facing America today.

          • Texas Patriot

            Given the corrupt and toxic swamp of Washington politics and the reality of what it takes to get reelected in today’s political environment, I think it would be hard to find any Republican who did not have his hand in the special interest cookie jar to some degree. That said, my hunch is that Jeb Bush would make an outstanding candidate for President in 2016, and I hope he runs and has a chance to give us a better idea on where he stands on all the issues facing America today.

          • truebearing

            I don’t dislike Jeb Bush, but the Left and its media will impale him with every mistake his father ever made, real or fabricated, and he will immediately be saddled with major baggage.

            Don’t make the classic Republican mistake in selecting the presidential candidate. Republicans obsess over choosing the perfect candidate, while the Left works on crafting the perfect lie. We need a good candidate, but we need one who can articulate a vision, while deftly turning the Left’s lie into a liability. McCain and Romney both failed to do that, though Romney was far superior to McCain in every possible way.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            Yeah, it’s the left and conservatives that support cannibalistic unions equally.

            Sure.

            “Pretending that it’s only “the left” which is responsible for these failures is fine so long as you include 90% of the Republican Party in that category.”

            Well that is probably true. But it’s not clear whether you see that you too are among the left when it comes to market interventions that hurt our economy.

            Freedom from the need to provide healthcare? LOL

          • Texas Patriot

            OFM: “Freedom from the need to provide healthcare? LOL”

            What’s funny about that? America is the only industrialized nation on earth that requires its manufacturing industries to add the cost of employee health care to the cost of goods sold. Lee Iacocca recognized as far back as 1979 the fact that the burden of providing health care to employees effectively handicapped and prevented American industries from competing effectively in world markets. And you think that’s funny?

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “And you think that’s funny?”

            I’m laughing because I think I know what the (progressive) “solution” is and it’s heading in the wrong direction. I could of course be wrong.

            The problems are caused by the unions that inject socialist values in to their collective bargaining efforts. And of course they are parasites too. But that’s another discussion.

            But in theory, collective bargaining does not have to be driven by collectivism (collective ideology that overlooks or denies the rights of the individual).

          • Texas Patriot

            OFM: “I’m laughing because I think I know what the (progressive) “solution” is and it’s heading in the wrong direction.”

            There’s nothing new about this. When I was finishing college in the early seventies, there were already textbooks talking about how unreasonable union bargaining tactics had cost America millions of manufacturing jobs to overseas competition and how entire industries had already moved overseas. Tacking health care expenses onto the backs of American businesses is just another example of how Congress has killed the Golden Goose and left America as a empty hulk and mere shadow of our former manufacturing dominance and excellence.

            You say that profits are what attracts industries? I say that is the underlying elements of profitability that they want. Low corporate taxes. Highly educated and reliable workers. Highly fit and highly skilled workers. Highly energetic and focused workers capable of operating the latest industrial arts and manufacturing technologies. High incentives for investment in plant and equipment. Generous deductions for research and development of automation, robotics, and advanced manufacturing technologies. Great schools for the families of their executives. Great health care. Great cultural opportunities. ZERO responsibility for the health care of their employees.

            Guess what. America flunks in all of those categories relative to our top competitors overseas. Is it any wonder we’ve deindustrialized faster than any nation in history? It’s a disaster of monumental proportions, and no one is talking about it. And you think it’s funny because you think you know what your political counterparts will say? How about what your side is saying? Do they have any solutions besides more ridicule? How about you? What do you say? Do you have any solutions? How do you think we are going to get out of this death spiral if everyone is ridiculing the other side and no one is talking about positive solutions?

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “I say that is the underlying elements of profitability that they want. Low corporate taxes. Highly educated workers. Highly fit and highly skilled workers. High incentives for investment in plant and equipment. Deductions for research and development expenses. Great schools for the families of their executives. Great health care. Great cultural opportunities. ZERO responsibility for the health care of their employees.”

            You’re pivoting smoothly from theories to false assumptions. There is no such thing as zero responsibility for something funded by taxpayers. K? Get over it. So do not forget that the driving factor is profit. Period. You inject your theories about what drives profit and get confused, thinking that you’re supporting the cardinal rules. You’re not.

            “America flunks in all of those categories. Is it any wonder we’ve deindustrialized faster than any nation in history?”

            Dude, I already explained to you the problems, almost entirely due to unjust and unproductive intervention. You want to reinvent the ruinous interventions and give these interventions greater ability to destroy us. You’re like the guy who criticizes 0′Bamacare and says we need true freedom with single payer. You are somehow missing some important lessons in economics and how enterprises create wealth, and how parasites siphon that wealth.

            Now. Healthcare funded by employers, when it’s negotiated as part of compensation, can be a very good thing. That is far superior to imagining that if the government takes over that suddenly the environment becomes better for manufacturing. That idea is delusional. Someone has to pay. Best to make sure each enterprise is delivering maximum values. Your ideas involve playing the “nutshell game” with costs and accountability. And when you lose track of costs and accountability, corruption and waste skyrocket. It seems like a good idea to attract businesses when they are not obligated to fund healthcare DIRECTLY. But who will fund it? Either they will fund it indirectly, or someone else will. And costs will go up. That means profits go down for someone.

            These are just accounting games that corrupt entities exploit. You’re making it easier for them (the corrupt parasites), not harder.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “And you think it’s funny because you think you know what your political counterparts will say?”

            We’re talking about your ideas versus mine. I learned these things from direct experience. I’m not promoting any party line. Maybe they’re quoting from similar experience or from thinktanks that study the real world as it exists. I don’t know.

            But even progressive economists can’t and won’t dispute what I’ve said. They just put a lot more stock in to other ideas about group psychology and so forth and creating an environment that “seems just” to the workers. That in theory helps worker productivity. Well that’s nice. Maybe that’s a factor and maybe it isn’t. It’s not a factor that we can quantify.

            Translation: Business strategies that work in reality might deliver the highest productivity, but if you don’t cater to perceptions, you might pay a price at the other end with strikes and low morale. So who causes low morale? Those who breed ignorance rather than intelligence about how things actually work best.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “How about what your side is saying?”

            What kind of question is that?

            “Do they have any solutions besides more ridicule?”

            I think you’ll understand how to better work through any suggestions that make sense if we simply review the fundamentals about how enterprises achieve success. I’m not worried about who said what but about who is promoting fallacious ideas that are killing us. I have no political ox to gore. Period.

            “How about you? What do you say? Do you have any solutions?”

            Of course I do. But maybe your expectations need adjustment. Do you think the Soviet Union had a good thing going? OK, so what is your solution for Russia? Please keep your answer under 10,000 words and the world will be grateful. Thanks a lot.

            My solution is to start with the fundamentals. If you find someone failing in the sciences and you look at some of their notes where they add 2 and 2 to equal 5, you’re going to want to comprehensively review just about everything the guy is thinking about. They might be great at theory and other work but if the fundamental calculations are error prone, most of the work will probably be flawed. It’s the same with policy suggestions. 2+2 does not equal 5. Until we agree about that, there is not a whole lot to build on. And there is no subjectivity to some of these fundamentals. You don’t reduce costs by hiding them. When you hide them, they usually go up rather than down and they sure won’t go down until you put together a reality based plan to arrive at that result.

            “How do you think we are going to get out of this death spiral if everyone is ridiculing the other side and no one is talking about positive solutions?”

            My ridicule doesn’t contribute to the root causes. I’ve given a lot of positive solutions but you’re not tuned in.

            Basically we’ve got to go through a similar process to what the Russian state did after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but we’ve got to do it much better than they have so far. We didn’t go as far as they did with socialism, but we’re making many of the same errors, integrating socialist delusions in to our policies. We’ve got to root out those delusional ideas.

            They say that the first step in solving a problem is recognizing the causes. Doesn’t that make sense?

          • Texas Patriot

            OFM: “Basically we’ve got to go through a similar process to what the Russian state did after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but we’ve got to do it much better than they have so far.”

            I agree completely. But before we will be able to do that, we have to be willing to face the fact that our system has failed, and failed miserably, and needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up in order to compete effectively in the global marketplace of the 21st Century . And it doesn’t look as if we are ready for that. Russia and China both know that their systems failed and they have already begun the process of rebuilding and retooling. We still think our system is working. It’s a formula for absolute disaster.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “I agree completely. But before we will be able to do that, we have to be willing to face the fact that our system has failed, and failed miserably, and needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up in order to compete effectively in the global marketplace of the 21st Century .”

            What you don’t understand is that our failures are almost entirely the result of trying to move to the left in response to perceptions about the “good stuff” of socialism.

          • Texas Patriot

            OFM: “What you don’t understand is that our failures are almost entirely the result of trying to move to the left in response to perceptions about the “good stuff” of socialism.”

            That’s not an objective analysis or a factual analysis. It’s a political analysis which blames the other guy.

            A big part of our failure to remain competitive in high technology and high value added manufacturing is the fact that we have thrown away trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of American lives fighting foreign wars that had no chance of benefitting the American people in any way, shape or form. Instead of building better schools, finding better ways to educate and train our workers, lowering corporate taxes, providing tax incentives for research and development, sealing off illegal immigration and drug trafficking on our southern border, removing the burden of health care expenses from our industries, and generally creating a better environment to attract industries from around the world, we’ve spent most of the last sixty years with massive land armies in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan fighting against phantoms that did not directly affect the national security interest of the United States.

            Although you say you haven’t taken sides and don’t have a dog in this hunt, you are quick to criticize the “progressives” (whoever and whatever they are). Take off your blinders. Unless you are willing to concede that the neoconservative “globalization” agenda pursued by the Republican Party since Richard Nixon has been an absolute disaster for the American people, you have taken sides whether you know it or not.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “That’s not an objective analysis or a factual analysis. It’s a political analysis which blames the other guy.”

            It’s a summary of my objective analysis. People might use the same arguments in political conversations but that doesn’t negate the value. What matters is whether the facts support what I claim.

            Blame the other guy? Well we can’t ever do that. THAT sounds like a political statement.

            “A big part of our failure to remain competitive in high technology and high value added manufacturing is the fact that we have thrown away trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of American lives fighting foreign wars that had no chance of benefitting the American people in any way, shape or form.”

            In theory and probably in reality that’s a small part of it. But it’s not something we’re burdened with long term because it’s widely agreed that we need to manage costs better and avoid self-defeating military expeditions.

            And aside from that, nothing I’ve said argues against dealing with waste in defense. If anything, cleaning house in domestic policies will clear up resources and allow us to focus on all of our enterprises.

            I’m trying to get to the root problems and you’re telling me that I’m politically incorrect. You’re making it political, not me. The problem with the DP is that they live by these fallacies and the problem with the RP is that they go along with them. I have no ox to gore here.

            You’re getting confused because you make too many assumptions and some of them are false. That’s how these ideas are allowed to prosper. You’re one of the dupes on the right who goes along with some theories of the left. It seems “natural” to you and that is how they seduce would-be conservatives: Make leftist ideas seem scientific and organic.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “Although you say you haven’t taken sides and don’t have a dog in this hunt, you are quick to criticize the “progressives” (whoever and whatever they are). ”

            Progressives (in politics) are those who take for granted that the government is both capable and responsible for driving progress.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “Take off your blinders. Unless you are willing to concede that the neoconservative “globalization” agenda pursued by the Republican Party since Richard Nixon has been an absolute disaster for the American people, you have taken sides whether you know it or not.”

            Here we are discussing best practices for businesses and ideal GDP policies and you’re making accusations that are not true and not even directly related to what I’ve said.

            I’m not a Republican. I simply state that the Republican Party is vastly superior to the DP. But they’ve been corrupted by the need to morph in to something that competes for popularity by leaning left rather than charting a winning course for America and accepting that they might do more good for the country by articulating winning ideas as the opposition party instead of trying to win each and every immediate election.

            Of course I’ve taken sides because at some point it’s foolish not to. It’s foolish to say you don’t like both so you therefore can’t pick which is better. I don’t lie about it when I do. Picking sides after an objective evaluation is not partisan. I have zero loyalty towards any politician or party. Period.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “Russia and China both know that their systems failed and they have already begun the process of rebuilding and retooling. We still think our system is working. It’s a formula for absolute disaster.”

            They’re pivoting from socialism that supposedly was working towards pure communism to fascism, which is another flavor of socialism.

            That gives the sovereigns more power in the short run but will fail in the long run. But they “win” if that short term power is used to successfully destroy or diminish competing (in the zero sum sense rather than cooperative competition) sovereigns.

          • Texas Patriot

            OFM: “They’re pivoting from socialism that supposedly was working towards pure communism to fascism, which is another flavor of socialism.”

            Guess what. This is not about “isms”. It’s about economics and productivity. Whoever attracts more industry and more investment, creates more jobs, and exports more goods will prosper and survive. Whoever doesn’t will decline and die. Is that what you want? To stick with what you think is the right “ism” whether it works or not? What good is it to have the right “ism” if your civilization collapses because it wasn’t competitive economically?

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “Guess what. This is not about “isms”. It’s about economics and productivity.”

            It is about “ism” if your “ism” leads you to conclude that 2 + 2 is some times 5 and other times 3. That can effect your productivity quite a bit but it also enables you to lie about it.

            Hey, no worries then – I guess.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “Whoever attracts more industry and more investment, creates more jobs, and exports more goods will prosper and survive.”

            Whoever attracts winners that can maximize productivity will win. You want to attract “jobs” with social justice metrics? Count how many guys are at work? Is that the driving factor? No it is not.

            You can’t sort out the fundamentals so you don’t know which policies will win in the end.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “To stick with what you think is the right “ism” whether it works or not?”

            I’m anti-ism. That’s what works best in business. You don’t get the final say on anything if all you can present are vague ideas. You must prove your theories.

            “What good is it to have the right “ism” if your civilization collapses because it wasn’t competitive economically?”

            We (I, and by that I mean we should) want to remove the isms when putting together productive policies.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            My objection to fascism and socialism in general is not without sound reason. Isms in economics and politics are used to deceive people, partly because the believers are themselves deceived. Deception is not good when putting together a framework for creating policies on anything – unless deception is your end goal.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            http://miltonfriedman.blogspot.com/

            Watch the “Free to Choose” series and then we can discuss some things. The series doesn’t answer every question but it provides a clear framework for intelligent debate.

            Milton Friedman PBS Free to Choose 1980 Vol 1 of 10

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Fj5tzuYBE

          • Texas Patriot

            Thanks. I remember watching those in 1980, and I was very impressed. I’m looking forward to revisiting Friedman’s theories thirty-four years and a million miles later. I’ll report back when I finish. Thanks again.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            Very good. Now remember that Friedman is only providing a framework to maximize productivity. He’s not suggesting that charity or “welfare” is always bad but that you’ve got to be very careful about managing programs and not getting caught up in what seems like it should work in spite of evidence to the contrary.

            Put another way, it’s not going to guide you to solve all of the problems that people want to solve but it does help understand how to build maximum wealth so that we can then argue about charity from a position of strength rather than mere theoretical solutions about “social justice.” Creating wealth is separate from dividing it up.

            It’s not that we’re saying “let them eat cake” but “let’s all learn how to get the most cake before we worry about dividing it.”

          • Texas Patriot

            While I am revisiting Milton Friedman’s material to discover why his idea of total government non-involvement has not worked over the last 34 years, you can revisit Dr. Rob Atikinson’s material to discover why proactive government intervention on behalf of industry is necessary for international competitive excellence in the 21st Century.

            In that regard, please focus on whether, in your view, the following would be harmful or helpful to America’s competitive position relative to our other major global competitors going forward: (1) low corporate taxes; (2) high tax incentives for investment in plant and equipment; (3) high tax incentives for research and development in automation, robotics, and advanced manufacturing processes: (4) excellent educational system that prepares Americans to compete in a high tech global economy; (5) affordable access to excellent health care that is not chargeable to American industry; (6) tax incentives to facilitate energy independence and create low energy costs for American industry; and (7) non-involvement in hopeless foreign wars that destroy American families and place an unnecessary financial burden on American taxpayers and prevents the necessary construction and maintenance of excellent infrastructure in the areas of education, health care, and high technology research and development.

            My initial reaction to Friedman’s videos is that they are quaint, anachronistic, and fail almost completely to deal with the actual reality of high tech global industrial competition in the 21st Century. The truth is that the world has changed radically since 1980. Governments worldwide now play an active role in creating competitive advantages for their domestic industries to the detriment of international competitors. As a direct result of our government’s failure, as its first priority, to create and maintain an environment in which high technology industries can take root, survive, and thrive in America, the greatest economy in the history of the world has steadily deindustrialized and is now on the verge of bankruptcy.

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWM08DzTuhY

          • objectivefactsmatter

            What attracts international (and domestic) investment is high profits through high productivity. In reality, not in theory. That applies to manufacturing as well as service industries, and any other investment opportunities.

          • Justathough

            And its so true on what you are saying even thought companies are taking jobs into foreign countries like mine which is Nicaragua they are not paying a deserve salary i work in a call center for a U.S company and you know what is my salary $500 a month which only keeps food on my table thank God for that, but if you think about it in the U.S you get five time that pay. We don’t even get the half. if you saying that if because New international agreements are more about compensation for past (alleged) colonial exploitation. Believe me is not. Is because they can pay us cheaper here in Nicaragua than in U.S so they save them self lots of money greedy companies greed-ed to greedier if you know what i mean.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “And its so true on what you are saying even thought companies are taking jobs into foreign countries like mine which is Nicaragua they are not paying a deserve salary i work in a call center for a U.S company and you know what is my salary $500 a month which only keeps food on my table thank God for that, but if you think about it in the U.S you get five time that pay.”

            There are lots of issues raised here but the important point is that I have no resentment at all towards “foreigners” who get jobs due to outsourcing.

            Whether your pay is fair I can’t say. Expenses are a lot higher in the USA as you know and the standardized indexes for consumer prices simply don’t give you enough information to judge.

            What is fair is when your government makes sure that the companies that do come in don’t collude to make sure you have little chance for upward mobility. As long as you are able to work and build your skills, you should be able to move to other higher paying jobs and negotiate higher wages as your work becomes more valuable.

            A lot of places have it much worse, especially in Asia. You probably have a brighter future than you realize.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            “We don’t even get the half. if you saying that if because New international agreements are more about compensation for past (alleged) colonial exploitation. Believe me is not.”

            That’s not what I meant at all. Not even close. The deals for wealth transfers are from one sovereign to another, not reflected in higher wages for workers. It basically funds corruption is what ends up happening.

            Believe me when I tell you that I’m on your side.

            “Is because they can pay us cheaper here in Nicaragua than in U.S so they save them self lots of money greedy companies greed-ed to greedier if you know what i mean.”

            I don’t know enough about your industry and circumstances to say too much. But there are ways up for you. Focus most of your energy on that. You have Internet access and you speak English well enough that you can continue building skills as you find the time to put in to it.

        • objectivefactsmatter

          “Unless we turn that around, millions of Americans will starve and go without health care and it will be impossible to pretend that the domestic and foreign policies of the last fifty years haven’t been a complete failure. Regaining and reclaiming our competitive position as first among industrial nations is the highest national priority we face today.”

          A lot of Americans don’t need turning around. They need their unjust burdens lifted by the one burdening them. And we need to celebrate success again before political correctness.

          • Texas Patriot

            OFM: “And we need to celebrate success again…”

            Have you ever been to a Third World country. Have you seen people walking around with open sores, broken backs, untreated health care problems? Have you seen old people begging on the streets and starving to death? Well, you’re getting ready to see a lot more of that in America, and if you think that is anything to “celebrate”, I am very surprised.

          • objectivefactsmatter

            I think you probably miss the only valid point you’ve made.

            Third world countries are by and large “suffering” relative to our living standards because they are either ignorant about how to do better or they reject our efforts to teach them. It’s not like they are “denied” access to success but are led to failure.

            Reread what I wrote. Our nation is still successful because we haven’t lost any of the things that make us great. What we’ve lost is the ability to teach what made us great to others without being seen as liars and “imperialist” or “supremacist.” The third world countries pay an even higher price for these leftist victim narratives because when someone shows up that could help them with constructive leadership. they see a colonial settler or “racist.”

            If we do see those things in America, it won’t be due to conservatives fighting universal healthcare. But it sounds smart to say something stupid like that to people that don’t know any better.

        • Drakken

          The fact that Obummer and his minions are running the country into the ground makes your point moot.

    • objectivefactsmatter

      Explain how he handled Syria. What’s your reading of that? Explain the deal with Iran.

    • truebearing

      This is all vacuous generalization. Not only that, you are contradicting yourself. You didn’t understand what Greenfield wrote, the consequences of our current foreign policy, nor those of your own convoluted “solutions.”

      You say America is not abandoning power, but it is abandoning projection of power. In the world of foreign policy, latent power that everyone knows won’t be projected, is no power at all. The greatest benefit to having power is convincing the bad actors that you can and will use it. We are abandoning the can and the will.

      The ability to threaten effectively staves off far more conflict than announcing to the world that you are in full and utter retreat.

      Your definition of what is vital to national security would be interesting to see, but would still only be hypothetical. You can’t impose ideology on existence. Things happen that sometimes that don’t fit into a rigid plan. Foresight is the key to success in this minefield and foresight is not included with the ideological package.

      I agree that we shouldn’t be “wasting and diminishing our power in conflicts that are not vital to the national security of America or our allies.” Now you have to define what is vital and who are our allies. If we won’t defend our allies, they won’t remain allies for long.

    • ricpic

      Would our own defense include control of our own borders? Only a freak lefty like yourself would say nay. But assuming a thread of sanity is left in your skull, why has the conservation and increase in the real power available to us (a fiction, but let’s go with it for the sake of this discussion), why has that increase not been employed in defense of our borders?

      • Texas Patriot

        ricpic: “Would our own defense include control of our own borders? Only a freak lefty like yourself would say nay. “

        You flatter me, Sir. I always take it as a compliment when someone thinks I’m a liberal, much less a lefty. As Winston Churchill said, a young man who is not a liberal has no heart, but an old man who is not a conservative has no brain. Although I am no longer as young as I used to be, I’ve never been the least bit of a lefty. My political and economic philosophy probably most resembles that of an American industrialist in the tradition of Adam Smith, an American humanist in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, and an American conservative in the tradition of Barry Goldwater, and In fact, think I’m probably to the right of anyone I’ve yet to encounter on this board. So my answer to your question is not nay, but rather yay, and indeed double yay.

        My proposal is to bring our armies home from around and station them on our southern border from Brownsville to Tijuana where they can train and remain in a state of readiness for deployment around the world and also develop and test the latest surveillance and interdiction technologies so as to constantly improve on the ones now being deployed along the border between Afghanistan Pakistan. With the U.S. military using that kind of technology as a backup to the Border Patrol, not even a gila monster could cross our border without us knowing about it.

        In a nutshell, no more illegal immigration. No more drug-trafficking. No more international arms smuggling and gun-running. Nothing would cross our border that we didn’t want to cross our border. And it would all be virtually invisible. No wall. No fences. Nothing except 100% perfect day and night electronic surveillance and interdiction with 0% failure rate. And on top of all that, instead of pouring money into foreign economies with no benefit to the American people, all the money we spend to support our armies along the border would be a huge economic stimulus to the American economy resulting in millions of new jobs for American citizens.

        And if any of this proposal sounds liberal or leftyish to you, I must respectfully disagree.

  • churchill

    The rationale of your piece seems to hang on a string, unconnected
    to anything. Were you intending to tell us about Obama, or Russia and China, or
    Islam, or America, or the current locus of world power? Your premise that Obama
    is dismantling US power is credible enough, but you describe it in a way that
    makes Obama look purposeful and subtle whilst pursuing a coherent policy.

    Is our boy that bright? I wouldn’t bet that he could find
    his way to the bathroom without a map. His blundering is all about us; red
    lines drawn and abandoned; random promises and threats that few take seriously;
    it’s perfectly obvious that he gets up in the morning to no other purpose but
    to tell lies that will eventually be discovered as such. Everything he touches
    turns to dust.

    God’s speed

    churchill

    • A Z

      I only found one sentence that needed to be reworked (It would be difficult hard for me to do better).

      “Russia and China have imperial visions built on a jumble of nationalism, exceptionalism and internal instability ^^ that they have a history of resolving through brutal repression or external conflict. ”

      You are here sniping because you are upset that FPM has more than doubled its’ outreach. If you had good arguments and backing you would be here in force (brought your friends), under a “persistent” post name, and had good counter arguments.

      But you don’t, so you hide & snipe

    • Daniel Greenfield

      “Were you intending to tell us about Obama, or Russia and China, or
      Islam, or America, or the current locus of world power?”

      All of the above.

      • truebearing

        Well, you could have written a 1000 page book, but then, there are limitations with this format, and your goal wasn’t an exhaustive world history. if I understand it correctly, it was to provide a context to show that America’s decline is self-inflicted…with Obama being the inflicter to our selves. I thought it was a very good job of reducing ideology to consequences.

        • Daniel Greenfield

          I wanted to take a broader look at what was going on in terms of the decline of the world powers and their limits after the ideological collapse.

          • truebearing

            Not an easy task. The entire world is in chaos now that the Obama Doctrine — find a threat to America and make it worse — is taking effect.

  • http://johnnyangel10.WordPress.com John Collignon

    A very possible merging of an EU superstate with Muslim leanings will become the next world superpower, especially if the US economy tanks completely.

    • A Z

      There is a statistical basis for analyzing war such as their frequency. It occurred to me that one could look at different civilizations and form a null hypothesis of all civilizations have the same frequency of outbreak of war.

      My point is assuming the merger you hypothesize comes true how long would the state last?

      Being able to model the outbreak of war (Poisson distribution) is very depressing. It suggests some very bad things about people, the nature of all living things and existence.

      Oh and did I mention the world is nuking up?

      (And preppers are crazy?)

    • Drakken

      The countries of the EU are about to implode because of their immigration and free benefits policies. With our withdrawal of our forces, conflict is inevitable, for nature abhors a vacuum.

  • rbla

    Putin is not Mr. Nice Guy. But between him and the tyrannical petty bureaucrats of the EU-SSR with their neo Nazi allies in Ukraine (or their Islamist allies in the Balkans) I’ll go with the Pute.

  • cacslewisfan

    Thanks for the assessment, super depressing but true. Anybody ever read “Diamond Age” by Neil Stevenson? Might be a good prediction of the future.

  • The Facts

    This article is a rather dramatic way to pine about the fact that the American Jewish and American Muslim populations exist at demographic parity. Mr. Greenfield is grasping at straws, citing RT as an example of the apocalypse. Kudos for trying to coin the word “paleo-libertarian.” Truth Revolt is sliding right into the RT cesspool as well. It is already starting to replicate across the Lew Rockwell bandwidth. Does this indicate a post-America or simply a post-Drudge America?

    • truebearing

      Nice word salad. You even threw in the croutons.

      • darnellecheri

        That’s funny. What are the croutons of which he speaks?

        • truebearing

          Well, the first line was a bit crummy, and then there is the hapless “paleo-libertarian” snide-swipe. :)

    • Daniel Greenfield

      I didn’t coin it, Bob.

      • The Facts

        That’s too bad. That was the original sounding part.

  • truebearing

    This is an excellent global view of ideological consequences. Russia and China are victims of their leader’s choice of ideology. Now Americans are victims of the same ideology, but we inflicted this upon ourselves by not valuing and defending the ideas and principles that made us free and the nation great. We twice elected a leader who would see the American spirit die. It’s now a matter of will, his or ours.

    • Daniel Greenfield

      And most people did it without understand what they were choosing.

    • Ellman48

      Evil never rests. It marches forward tireless and invincible, unless, and until, it is confronted by Good with the same tenacity and passion.

  • YankInSlough

    I think this article is too sanguine about the ability of Putin to create an international consensus. I see a large number of comments, left and right, States and Europe, which parrot the Putin line. You will find them in the comments here.

    The author is also too sanguine about trouble coming down the road. Spreading global disorder is a consequence of American withdrawal. It will get worse. Vacuums will be filled. A new balance of power will be created. The global damage being done by this White House is severe and will take years to repair.

    • Daniel Greenfield

      The Russian propaganda does its work, but at best it’s, “Putin isn’t the worst evil” out there.

  • truebearing

    Iran has openly stated that they aren’t obligated to stick to any deal. It’s dead before it’s finalized. It was dead before Obama proposed it. You can’t negotiate with terrorists or terrorist states.

    • Texas Patriot

      We negotiated with Nazi Germany. We negotiated with Imperial Japan. We negotiated with Stalinist Russia. And we can negotiate with Jihadist Iran. And the terms of our proposal can be plain for all to see. Allow full and open inspections of all your nuclear facilities, dismantle your nuclear weapons and intercontinental missile programs, or be prepared to lose them all by surgical strike with whatever force may be necessary to do the job.

  • Nabukuduriuzhur

    It should be noted that Russia and China have taken radically divergent paths. A large portion of Chinese industry is still owned by the PLA. The model of msilaicoS that China now follows is much closer to central Europe of the 1940s than it is to the steivoS.

    Adhering to 6+ Planks of the tsinummoC Manifesto for China vs. 8.17 for the steivoS and 9.0 for the modern Democrat Party, China doesn’t fit msinummoC, but the current Chinese system does fit msilaicoS lanoitaN where key industries are nationalized. In addition, they have become nationalistic and are looking to expand. (The Lord help Australia if China and India ever decide they have to
    have more room.)

    (I apologize for the reverse names for government types, but invariably Frontpage’s system prevents postings when those government types are used in analyzing the history of the bad old days and comparing it to similar ideologies today by governments and political parties like the Democrats. It really isn’t appropriate to prevent such posts, but one works within the system as it is.)

    The main difference between the teivoS system and the 1930s/40s
    German/Italian/Finnish/Hungarian/Bulgarian/Greek/Albanian/Rumanian system was the level of economic control, with the steivoS controlling everything and the former controlling key industries and banks. Both were brutal. The stsinummoC merely had many more years to do their dirty work than the others.

    Unlike that part of Chinese industry that is owned by the PLA, Russia has decentralized. Love him or hate him, Putin has demolished the old system and Russia is booming. Also unlike China, Russia elects its leaders. While corrupt, ironically it’s not as corrupt as the 2012 election was in the U.S. Which says something truly dire about the honesty of our elections. The Duma voted to give Putin’s current powers largely because of the threat of the Russian aifaM and can remove them— and Putin— if they voted to do so. None of that would be possible in China.

    The truly sad fact is that in many way, Russia is better off than we are. They have much greater religious freedom of its citizens, they don’t tolerate violent lifestyles that harm those living those lifestyles and harm those around them, and their elections and officials are frequently less corrupt. The latter should scare the proverbial snot out of us when we consider that vote “adjustments”
    after the votes had been counted, frequently with increasing or doubling the number of “voters”, cost Romney the presidency. Without free elections, no representative republic or representative democracy is possible.

  • Berceuse

    Once Russia’s putative socialism got washed away, what remained was what had been there all along: rank nationalism.

  • Ellman48

    Ronald Reagan made the Soviet Union implode. Barack Obama has done the same for the USA. Ergo, no more super-powers in the planet. But keep an eye on China! The only thing holding it back from replacing the US as a super power is the Chinese Communist Party.

  • oxpoqxo

    It hasn’t even been a week and your declaring both sides toast? I wish I had your optimism. Pessimism comes easy since 2008.

  • Dyer’s Eve

    The land of the Boresethens (Dnieper river) (Ukraine) wiil be the first to fall (escape Russia).- Michel de Nostradame.