Signs of a Dying Empire

[pbrower2a]

(10-20-2017, 03:01 AM)Galen Wrote:

(10-19-2017, 02:51 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(10-18-2017, 03:35 PM)Galen Wrote:

(10-18-2017, 12:02 PM)David Horn Wrote: No one wants to see the US as the permanent cop-of-the-world, but, much like a land mine, once you step on it, lifting your foot is nigh to impossible.  If you have a plan that leaves the world in decent shape after we retreat from world leadership, let's hear it.

The British didn't step away but rather circumstances such as their fiscal condition in the wake of the First World War forced them to.  As things are now, the permanent bureaucracy in DC still hasn't figured out that their actual ability to project power has dramatically decreased in the last twenty years.  It is not the responsibility of the US to fix the problems of the rest of the world which really hasn't worked out all that well.

This is actually a good example.  The Brits had to fold; they were nearly bankrupt.  We opted to give world leadership a pass because, well, we just did.  The result: World War II.  QED.

The traditional position of the US prior to the First World War was neutrality.  Ironically it was the Lost that were anti-war and opposing entry into the Second World War.  It took FDR goading Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor to change that.  Consult Infamy by John Toland for more details.

Some of the anti-war Lost were better described as defeatists than as pacifists. Defeatists want their countries to fail to prepare to resist aggression so that they can get special benefits (including power and gain, or the satisfaction of their hatred) from the hostile victor. Among defeatists were pro-Nazi groups who saw themselves taking over Jewish properties cheaply after a Nazi victory or even restoring slavery. Until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, many Communists went for the line that fascism was the last gasp of capitalist plutocracy that would make obvious the 'need' for Marxist-Leninist revolution.

The United States could have avoided war with Thug Japan (as opposed to the more decent Japan that we now know) through only one means: complicity. The United States refused to sell motor fuels to Japan for use in the Japanese war machine that was doing horrible things in China. The United States as a partner in crime with Thug Japan could have likely taken big chunks of the British, Dutch, and French colonial empires in the Pacific basin and established Australia and New Zealand as American protectorates. Meanwhile American oil companies would have made killings by selling oil to the Japanese to support their mass-killing in China and probably India as well. Basically this would have been Manifest Destiny run amok. But this presumes that America would be practically a fascist state.