Is the United States a main-sequence empire?

[Minstrel Boy]

I think a helpful metaphor for understanding America these days might be the solar life cycle.

When a main-sequence star has burned through its hydrogen, it switches to helium and bloats into a red giant, though it's essentially being hollowed out inside. Eventually, because it has lost the mass that could sustain its volume, it collapses. If it was an average-sized star, into a white dwarf, or a black hole if above average.

I think America has reached the red giant stage, having burned through its resources, its economic and fiscal vitality, its moral capital.

Its sapped of all its strength but its military, and now its burning that. Like a red giant, its imperial swelling is a sign of decay, not health. And its unsustainable. Collapse is inevitable. Possibly, given its size, into a black hole, which will suck the whole world in after it.

[ixion]

1. good analogy

Unfortunately, I would have to say that the mass of the 'Murikan Empire is massive, and so the result will most probably be a black hole.

And people think things are cramped now. :+

[Squeech]

2. Doesn't have to be

What are you analogizing to hydrogen? Peak oil? We could get past it, if we had a Manhattan Project-scale effort to develop solar.

There have been previous crucial commodities that the wealth of America depended on, going back to tobacco from the Virginia colony. In the past, when one "hydrogen" ran out, we'd go on to profit from something else. We could do it again, if our pResident wasn't a chimp.

[Minstrel Boy]

3. Peak oil is just a part of it.

And peak oil is also a global reality, not merely specific to the US.

I'm talking about things like America's decline as an industrial power, the coming eclipse of the dollar by the Euro, the exhaustion of national resources (including, soon, fresh water), and less easily quantifiable societal measures like a free press, civil liberties and an educated populace.

It seems to me a choice was made to compensate for the decline of American soft power by playing the ace of US military dominance.

[Squeech]

7. Yeah, but

We *could* solve all these problems if the government wasn't in the hands of thieves.

Yes, we've ceded our industrial base to China and the Asian Tiger countries. (All the working parts of all the VCRs in the world come from Japan or Korea.) What America has done in the past is invent whole new industries-- when Japan learned to build a higher quality automobile, we were already building minicomputers.

I think we could do it again, on several fronts. Making a profitable industry of the environment is one that could easily be established by government action *using laws already on the books,* such as the Clean Air Act. The Bushies have been allowing polluting power plants to not clean up by deliberately misinterpreting "new source review." If we adhered to the law, suddenly there would be nationwide demand for good smokestack scrubbers-- which we know how to build, but at the moment there's no market.

[Stinky The Clown]

16. Spot on!

I agree with this completely. We can, if the government is four square behind it, develop whole new industries that would put us back on top in prestige and in industrial strength. But it would be a neo-industrial thing, in cooperation with the rest of the world.

Peak oil is real and its global.

Environmental issues are real. And they're global.

But the window of opportunity may be closing. In that these issue **are** real, if we don't take the lead, someone else will. And then we're followers, not leaders.

[htuttle]

13. I have a 'chicken and egg' issue with that

Did the decline of American 'soft power' (cultural power) lead to the rise of American military dominance? Or did the quest for American military dominance lead to the decline of American soft power?

I'm inclined to say it is the latter.

:shrug:

[JHB]

4. But then what's the point?

Your analogy makes the supernova inevitable, when the problem is the sort of short-term-thinking grab-it-all that the Republicans are pushing.

I think that analogy is precisely the Republican view (and what's wrong with it). They see a doomed world or sinking ship (due to End Times mumbo jumbo, peak oil, the Roman Empire analogy, or whatever), so they're out to be the top rats on the sinking ship.

I think our view is that this scenario is NOT inevitable, that by acting together for our common benefit, we can solve these problems before they get so very destructive.

[Minstrel Boy]

6. Collapse is inevitable.

The question is whether the collapse can be managed, to avoid the "black hole."

I think the convergence of crises is so grim, and the prospect of an order arising in Washington that works for "our common benefit" so slight, that a managed collapse is unlikely.

And it would require a wholly new order. Not just a change of government from (R) to (D), but one which would begin work with a dismantling of the National Security State.

It's either barbarism or socialism. I'm rooting for the latter, but my money's on the former.

[JHB]

10. With "encouragement" like that, you're money's on the right side.

Marx thought it was either barbarism or socialism, but other paths were found. The problem isn't a lack of alternatives, it's the active dismantling of them.

[sweetheart]

Stretching for metaphors

Must we bother with stars? Empire collapse has plenty of historical
beef here on earth. One of the critical factors, it seems is that
they all go bankrupt, and collapse from the fringes by losing
influence. Rome had trouble paying its army, USSR as well... and
with a dollar collapse, the US will have similar trouble.

I dunna know about giant stars. I've never seen one close up. The
US is no longer giant, as we speak. THe propaganda of superpowerdom
is wearing thin, and nothing in the empire is healthy except the
graft.

[sweetheart]

5. Stretching for metaphors

Must we bother with stars? Empire collapse has plenty of historical
beef here on earth. One of the critical factors, it seems is that
they all go bankrupt, and collapse from the fringes by losing
influence. Rome had trouble paying its army, USSR as well... and
with a dollar collapse, the US will have similar trouble.

I dunna know about giant stars. I've never seen one close up. The
US is no longer giant, as we speak. THe propaganda of superpowerdom
is wearing thin, and nothing in the empire is healthy except the
graft.

[Protagoras]

8. I like the metaphor

Bloated and hollow pretty much describes this empire. Seems like most Empires that expand and fail do so in this pattern.

[billyskank]

9. Conceit

Even if the USA does die as you suggest, the world will survive. I'm not saying it won't sustain damage, even serious damage, but the USA will not "suck the whole world in after it." Ten thousand years from now the world will still have people on it, and no-one will know the name America (or that of any other contemporary country).

[Minstrel Boy]

11. This would be a hard century to weather,

given environmental systems collapse, and peak oil and gas, even if we were governed by reasonable men and women.

The US is compounding the crises by an opportunistic militarism, grabbing what it can before potential rivals can grab theirs. This is a recipe for calamity.

[billyskank]

12. Yes, definitely hard

especially for us. Those of us dependent on oil are going to find things extremely difficult. Maybe most of us won't make it. But remember that this is not "the end of the world," but rather the end of our world. My point was just that our conceit shows through even now when considering the damage that will be inflicted on the world through our actions. The world is bigger than us. It will survive, although we might not. What's more, people will still live on it. You know, they think that 60,000 years ago a volcano erupted that was so big it changed the climate of the world and led to the human population being cut to just thousands. But nowadays you wouldn't know it.

We have a tendency to see everything through the prism of our own interests. This is natural. But I am not worried for the world's survival. That is assured. Our survival, on the other hand, is another matter.

[rman]

14. still it may destroy western civilisation as we know it

in some ways that might not be a big loss, apart from the loss of human life, but our civilisation also has brought some good things that might get lost in the process.

[Octafish]

15. Main sequence.

And if things go normally -- following the precepts laid down in the Constitution of the United States --
the Republic can stand for millenia: That means Democracy.



The trick is to prevent it going supernova. And if it does, it does not necessarily turn into a black hole.

Some days I agree that it's all going to blow and suck the whole damn planet down the hole, too.

Then again, I remember there are more good people than bad -- despite what the polls say.

[Taxloss]

17. All major, global empires share characteristics.

There is never an insane genius sitting in a castle cackling and saying "I shall conquer the world! Hahahahaha!". In the cases where it looks like that - Napoleon and Hitler - what they create are short-lived aberrations formed out of military imbalances.

What might be described as "third-stage" empires - which are initially stable, cover a huge area, have a compliant domestic populace, and retain the ability to strike anywhere within their area of influence - are few and far between. The Romans were the first real empire in this respect. Later, the Spanish and the British created global third-stage Empires. In the 20th century, the Soviets and the Americans joined the 3rd club. The Soviet empire collapsed. America is the only 3rd-stage empire remaining. A lot of countries that you might think belong in the third-stage club - such as Alexander the Great, the French, and the Chinese - don't belong for a variety of reasons.

Now, the common characteristics of the third-stagers are:

1. They form almost "by accident". There is no plan to create an empire. By the time an imperial policy emerges, the empire is already in place. This is because:

2. They form in response to what is considered to be a global threat. In Rome, Carthage and Barbarians. In Spain, Islam. In Britain, Spain and France. In the US, communism.

3. By the time the empire becomes aware of its full power - generally, when its adversary is defeated or rendered harmless - it is already over. Empires only make money in their early stages, later on they are very, very expensive.

Once the third stage is reached, imperial maturity, the empire is in a hopeless state. It will bankrupt itself, or rip itself apart domestically. Britain, Spain and the Soviet Union just ran out of money. No teeming hordes of barbarians; we just could not afford empire any more. The piggybanks was empty. The loot had been spent. The game was up.

The British historian Sir John Seeley wrote: "The British, it seems, have conquered and peopled a quarter of the globe in a fit of absence of mind." I can only begin to imagine how our politicians felt, with this globe-spanning empire at their command, and having defeated Nazism and maintained British liberty, when they looked at the books and realised the country was sunk.