The Ghost of Soviet Collapse haunts the West: Military Hegemony isn’t what it Used to Be

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2015/07/collapse-military-hegemony.html

The Ghost of Soviet Collapse haunts the West: Military Hegemony isn’t what it Used to Be
By contributors | Jul. 3, 2015
By Tom Engelhardt

The rise and fall of great powers and their imperial domains has been a central fact of history for centuries. It’s been a sensible, repeatedly validated framework for thinking about the fate of the planet. So it’s hardly surprising, when faced with a country once regularly labeled the “sole superpower,” “the last superpower,” or even the global “hyperpower” and now, curiously, called nothing whatsoever, that the “decline” question should come up. Is the U.S. or isn’t it? Might it or might it not now be on the downhill side of imperial greatness?

Take a slow train — that is, any train — anywhere in America, as I did recently in the northeast, and then take a high-speed train anywhere else on Earth, as I also did recently, and it’s not hard to imagine the U.S. in decline. The greatest power in history, the “unipolar power,” can’t build a single mile of high-speed rail? Really? And its Congress is now mired in an argument about whether funds can even be raised to keep America’s highways more or less pothole-free.

Sometimes, I imagine myself talking to my long-dead parents because I know how such things would have astonished two people who lived through the Great Depression, World War II, and a can-do post-war era in which the staggering wealth and power of this country were indisputable. What if I could tell them how the crucial infrastructure of such a still-wealthy nation — bridges, pipelines, roads, and the like — is now grossly underfunded, in an increasing state of disrepair, and beginning to crumble? That would definitely shock them.

And what would they think upon learning that, with the Soviet Union a quarter-century in the trash bin of history, the U.S., alone in triumph, has been incapable of applying its overwhelming military and economic power effectively? I’m sure they would be dumbstruck to discover that, since the moment the Soviet Union imploded, the U.S. has been at war continuously with another country (three conflicts and endless strife); that I was talking about, of all places, Iraq; and that the mission there was never faintly accomplished. How improbable is that? And what would they think if I mentioned that the other great conflicts of the post-Cold-War era were with Afghanistan (two wars with a decade off in-between) and the relatively small groups of non-state actors we now call terrorists? And how would they react on discovering that the results were: failure in Iraq, failure in Afghanistan, and the proliferation of terror groups across much of the Greater Middle East (including the establishment of an actual terror caliphate) and increasing parts of Africa?

[Human101948]

1. The military has no real mission other than enriching the one percenters....

Since WWII, it's been one more Banana War after another.

[bemildred]

2. I think the advantage professional militaries once enjoyed over civilian populations

is what has eroded. This results from a combination of the proliferation of cheap high-powered weapons, the development of the bomb as an instrument of terror and politics, and the rise of modern media and the consequent failure of propaganda to control public opinion as it once did. The peasants are all armed, some of them are very well armed. Carbombs have been innovated into being a very effective weapon, for terror and for warfare. And sniper rifles, RPGs and the like, and mortars. That's your new insurgent armory. And everything leaks.

And as we can see from the constant stream of atrocities it is just about impossible to stop by force alone.