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<img src="http://www.tomdispatch.com/application/images/site/logo_print.gif" width=500 height=105 alt="TomDispatch">
<br><br>
</font><h2><font size=4><b>Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, Taking Down
America<br><br>
<br>
</b></font></h2><h5><b>By Alfred McCoy<br>
Posted on December 5, 2010, Printed on December 5, 2010<br>
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175327/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175327/</a> </b></h5><font size=3>Trying
to play down the significance of an ongoing
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-us-embassy-cables">Wikileaks
dump</a> of more than 250,000 State Department documents, Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates recently
<a href="http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4728">
offered</a> the following bit of Washington wisdom: “The fact is,
governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest,
not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they
believe we can keep secrets... [S]ome governments deal with us because
they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need
us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the
indispensable nation.”<br><br>
Now, wisdom like that certainly sounds sober; it’s definitely what passes
for hardheaded geopolitical realism in our nation’s capital; and it's
true, Gates is <i>not</i> the first top American official to
<a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/madeleinea144932.html">
call the U.S.</a> “the indispensable nation”; nor do I doubt that he and
many other inside-the-Beltway players are convinced of our global
indispensability. The problem is that the news has almost weekly
been undermining his version of realism, making it look ever more
phantasmagorical. The ability of Wikileaks, a tiny organization of
activists, to thumb its cyber-nose at the global superpower, repeatedly
shining a blaze of illumination on the
<a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/">penumbra
of secrecy</a> under which its political and military elite like to
conduct their affairs, hasn’t helped one bit either. If our
indispensability is, as yet, hardly questioned in Washington, elsewhere
on the planet it’s
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175299/tomgram%3A_dilip_hiro,_the_waning_of_america/">
another matter</a>. <br><br>
The once shiny badge of the “global sheriff” has lost its gleam and, in
Dodge City, ever fewer are paying the sort of attention that Washington
believes is its due. To my mind, the single most intelligent
comment on the latest Wikileaks uproar
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-wikileaks">
comes from</a> Simon Jenkins of the British <i>Guardian</i> who, on
making his way through the various
<a href="http://www.juancole.com/2010/12/top-ten-middle-east-wikileaks-revelations-so-far.html">
revelations</a> (not to speak of the
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/europe/01wikileaks-france.html">
mounds</a> of global
<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101129/wl_nm/us_wikileaks_russia">
gossip</a>), summed matters up this way: “The money-wasting is
staggering. [U.S.] Aid payments are never followed, never audited, never
evaluated. The impression is of the world's superpower roaming helpless
in a world in which nobody behaves as bidden. Iran, Russia, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Yemen, the United Nations, are all perpetually off script.
Washington reacts like a wounded bear, its instincts imperial but its
power projection unproductive.”<br><br>
Sometimes, to understand just where you are in the present, it helps to
peer into the past -- in this case, into what happened to previous
“indispensable” imperial powers; sometimes, it’s no less useful to peer
into the future. In his latest
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175225/alfred_mccoy_afghanistan_as_a_drug_war">
TomDispatch post</a>, Alfred W. McCoy, author most recently of
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0299234142/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20">
<i>Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the
Rise of the Surveillance State</a></i>, does both. Having convened
a global working group of 140 historians to consider the fate of the U.S.
as an imperial power, he offers us a glimpse of four possible American
(near-)futures. They add up to a monumental, even indispensable
look at just how fast our indispensability is likely to unravel in the
years to come. <i>Tom<br><br>
</i></font>
<dl>
<dd>The Decline and Fall of the American Empire</b> <br>
<dd>Four Scenarios for the End of the American Century by 2025</b> <br>
<dd>By <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/alfredmccoy">Alfred W.
McCoy</a><br><br>
<dd>A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don’t bet on
it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could
come far more quickly than anyone imagines. If Washington is
dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more
realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025,
just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the
shouting.<br><br>
<dd>Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their
history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is
their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires
regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years
for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans,
17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the
United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.<br><br>
<dd>Future historians are likely to identify the Bush administration’s
rash invasion of Iraq in that year as the start of America's downfall.
However, instead of the bloodshed that marked the end of so many past
empires, with cities burning and civilians slaughtered, this twenty-first
century imperial collapse could come relatively quietly through the
invisible tendrils of economic collapse or cyberwarfare.<br><br>
<dd>But have no doubt: when Washington's global dominion finally ends,
there will be painful daily reminders of what such a loss of power means
for Americans in every walk of life. As a half-dozen European nations
have discovered, imperial decline tends to have a remarkably demoralizing
impact on a society, regularly bringing at least a generation of economic
privation. As the economy cools, political temperatures rise, often
sparking serious domestic unrest.<br><br>
<dd>Available economic, educational, and military data indicate that,
when it comes to U.S. global power, negative trends will aggregate
rapidly by 2020 and are likely to reach a critical mass no later than
2030. The American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of
World War II, will be tattered and fading by 2025, its eighth decade, and
could be history by 2030.<br><br>
<dd>Significantly, in 2008, the U.S. National Intelligence Council
admitted for the first time that America's global power was indeed on a
declining trajectory. In one of its
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175113/Michael_Klare_the_great_superpower_meltdown">
periodic futuristic reports</a>, Global Trends 2025</i>, the Council
<a href="http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html">cited</a> “the
transfer of global wealth and economic power </b>now under way, roughly
from West to East" and "without precedent in modern history,”
as the primary factor in the decline of the “United States' relative
strength -- even in the military realm.” Like many in Washington,
however, the Council’s analysts anticipated a very long, very soft
landing for American global preeminence, and harbored the hope that
somehow the U.S. would long “retain unique military capabilities… to
project military power globally” for decades to come.<br><br>
<dd>No such luck. Under current projections, the United States will
find itself in second place behind China (already the world's second
largest economy) in economic output around 2026, and behind India by
2050. Similarly, Chinese innovation is on a trajectory toward world
leadership in applied science and military technology sometime between
2020 and 2030, just as America's current supply of brilliant scientists
and engineers retires, without adequate replacement by an ill-educated
younger generation.<br><br>
<dd>By 2020, according to current plans, the Pentagon will throw a
military Hail Mary pass for a dying empire. It will launch a lethal
triple canopy of advanced aerospace robotics that represents Washington's
last best hope of retaining global power despite its waning economic
influence. By that year, however, China's global network of
communications satellites, backed by the world's most powerful
supercomputers, will also be fully operational, providing Beijing with an
independent platform for the weaponization of space and a powerful
communications system for missile- or cyber-strikes into every quadrant
of the globe.<br><br>
<dd>Wrapped in imperial hubris, like Whitehall or Quai d'Orsay before it,
the White House still seems to imagine that American decline will be
gradual, gentle, and partial. In his State of the Union address last
January, President Obama
<a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-state-union-address">
offered</a> the reassurance that “I do not accept second place for the
United States of America.” A few days later, Vice President Biden
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/03/AR2010020302913.html">
ridiculed</a> the very idea that “we are destined to fulfill [historian
Paul] Kennedy's prophecy that we are going to be a great nation that has
failed because we lost control of our economy and overextended.”
Similarly, writing in the November issue of the establishment journal
Foreign Affairs</i>, neo-liberal foreign policy guru Joseph Nye
<a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66796/joseph-s-nye-jr/the-future-of-american-power">
waved away</a> talk of China's economic and military rise, dismissing
“misleading metaphors of organic decline” and denying that any
deterioration in U.S. global power was underway.<br><br>
<dd>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0299234142/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20">
<img src="http://www.tomdispatch.com/img/mccoy.gif" alt="[]"></a>Ordinary
Americans, watching their jobs head overseas, have a more realistic view
than their cosseted leaders. An opinion poll in August 2010
<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38996574/ns/politics/">found</a>
that 65% of Americans believed the country was now “in a state of
decline.” Already,
<a href="http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Australia-China-Conduct-Live-Fire-Naval-Exercise-in-Yellow-Sea-103780194.html">
Australia</a> and
<a href="http://www.acus.org/natosource/new-questions-about-turkeys-secret-military-exercise-china">
Turkey</a>, traditional U.S. military allies, are using their
American-manufactured weapons for joint air and naval maneuvers with
China. Already, America's closest economic partners are backing away from
Washington's opposition to China's rigged currency rates. As the
president flew back from his Asian tour last month, a gloomy New York
Times</i> headline
</b>
<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/11/12/gergen.america.economy/?hpt=Sbin">
summed the moment up</a> this way: “Obama's Economic View Is Rejected on
World Stage, China, Britain and Germany Challenge U.S., Trade Talks With
Seoul Fail, Too.”<br><br>
<dd>Viewed historically, the question is not whether the United States
will lose its unchallenged global power, but just how precipitous and
wrenching the decline will be. In place of Washington's wishful thinking,
let’s use the National Intelligence Council's own futuristic methodology
to suggest four realistic scenarios for how, whether with a bang or a
whimper, U.S. global power could reach its end in the 2020s (along with
four accompanying assessments of just where we are today). The
future scenarios include: economic decline, oil shock, military
misadventure, and World War III. While these are hardly the only
possibilities when it comes to American decline or even collapse, they
offer a window into an onrushing future.<br><br>
<dd>Economic Decline: Present Situation<br><br>
</b>
<dd>Today, three main threats exist to America’s dominant position in the
global economy: loss of economic clout thanks to a shrinking share of
world trade, the decline of American technological innovation, and the
end of the dollar's privileged status as the global reserve
currency.<br><br>
<dd>By 2008, the United States had already
<a href="http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/pres09_e/pr554_e.htm">
fallen</a> to number three in global merchandise exports, with just 11%
of them compared to 12% for China and 16% for the European Union.
There is no reason to believe that this trend will reverse
itself.<br><br>
<dd>Similarly, American leadership in technological innovation is on the
wane. In 2008, the U.S. was still
<a href="http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IP.PAT.RESD">number two</a>
behind Japan in worldwide patent applications with 232,000, but China was
closing fast at 195,000, thanks to a blistering 400% increase since
2000. A harbinger of further decline: in 2009 the U.S. hit rock
bottom in ranking among the 40 nations
<a href="http://www.itif.org/publications/atlantic-century-benchmarking-eu-and-us-innovation-and-competitiveness">
surveyed</a> by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
when it came to “change” in “global innovation-based competitiveness”
during the previous decade. Adding substance to these statistics,
in October China's Defense Ministry unveiled the world's fastest
supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A, so powerful,
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/technology/28compute.html">
said</a> one U.S. expert, that it “blows away the existing No. 1 machine”
in America.<br><br>
<dd>Add to this clear evidence that the U.S. education system, that
source of future scientists and innovators, has been falling behind its
competitors. After leading the world for decades in 25- to 34-year-olds
with university degrees, the country
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/education/23college.html">
sank</a> to 12th place in 2010. The World Economic Forum
<a href="http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Competitiveness%20Report/index.htm">
ranked</a> the United States at a mediocre 52nd among 139 nations in the
quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010. Nearly
half of all graduate students in the sciences in the U.S. are now
foreigners, most of whom will be heading home, not staying here as once
would have happened. By 2025, in other words, the United States is
likely to face a critical shortage of talented scientists.<br><br>
<dd>Such negative trends are encouraging increasingly sharp criticism of
the dollar's role as the world’s reserve currency. “Other countries are
no longer willing to buy into the idea that the U.S. knows best on
economic policy,”
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/business/economy/11currency.html">
observed</a> Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the
International Monetary Fund. In mid-2009, with the world's central banks
holding an astronomical $4 trillion in U.S. Treasury notes, Russian
president Dimitri Medvedev
<a href="http://michael-hudson.com/2009/06/washington-cannot-call-all-the-shots/">
insisted</a> that it was time to end “the artificially maintained
unipolar system” based on “one formerly strong reserve
currency.”<br><br>
<dd>Simultaneously, China's central bank governor
<a href="http://www.cfr.org/publication/21189/chinas_foreign_exchange_reserves.html">
suggested</a> that the future might lie with a global reserve currency
“disconnected from individual nations” (that is, the U.S. dollar). Take
these as signposts of a world to come, and of a possible attempt, as
economist Michael Hudson
<a href="http://michael-hudson.com/2009/06/washington-cannot-call-all-the-shots/">
has argued</a>, “to hasten the bankruptcy of the U.S. financial-military
world order.”<br><br>
<dd>Economic Decline: Scenario 2020<br><br>
</b>
<dd>After years of swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant
lands, in 2020, as long expected, the U.S. dollar finally loses its
special status as the world's reserve currency. Suddenly, the cost
of imports soars. Unable to pay for swelling deficits by selling
now-devalued Treasury notes abroad, Washington is finally forced to slash
its bloated military budget. Under pressure at home and abroad,
Washington slowly pulls U.S. forces back from hundreds of overseas bases
to a continental perimeter. By now, however, it is far too
late.<br><br>
<dd>Faced with a fading superpower incapable of paying the bills, China,
India, Iran, Russia, and other powers, great and regional, provocatively
challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.
Meanwhile, amid soaring prices, ever-rising unemployment, and a
continuing decline in real wages, domestic divisions widen into violent
clashes and divisive debates, often over remarkably irrelevant issues.
Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right
patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding
respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or
economic reprisal. The world pays next to no attention as the American
Century ends in silence.<br><br>
<dd>Oil Shock: Present Situation<br><br>
</b>
<dd>One casualty of America's waning economic power has been its lock on
global oil supplies. Speeding by America's gas-guzzling economy in the
passing lane, China became the world's number one energy consumer this
summer, a position the U.S. had held for over a century. Energy
specialist Michael Klare
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175297/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_china_shakes_the_world/">
has argued</a> that this change means China will “set the pace in shaping
our global future.”<br><br>
<dd>By 2025, Iran and Russia will control almost half of the world's
natural gas supply, which will potentially give them enormous leverage
over energy-starved Europe. Add petroleum reserves to the mix and, as the
National Intelligence Council
<a href="http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html">has warned</a>, in
just 15 years two countries, Russia and Iran, could “emerge as energy
kingpins.”<br><br>
<dd>Despite remarkable ingenuity, the major oil powers are now draining
the big basins of petroleum reserves that are amenable to easy, cheap
extraction. The real lesson of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the
Gulf of Mexico was not BP's sloppy safety standards, but the simple fact
everyone saw on “spillcam”: one of the corporate energy giants had little
choice but to search for what Klare
<a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128212150">
calls</a> “tough oil” miles beneath the surface of the ocean to keep its
profits up.<br><br>
<dd>Compounding the problem, the Chinese and Indians have suddenly become
far heavier energy consumers. Even if fossil fuel supplies were to remain
constant (which they won’t), demand, and so costs, are almost certain to
rise -- and sharply at that. Other developed nations are meeting
this threat aggressively by plunging into experimental programs to
develop alternative energy sources. The United States has taken a
different path, doing far too little to develop alternative sources
while, in the last three decades,
<a href="http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTNTUS2&f=M">
doubling</a> its dependence on foreign oil imports. Between 1973
and 2007, oil imports have
<a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/oil-crises">risen</a> from 36% of
energy consumed in the U.S. to
<a href="http://centexresources.com/investors.php">66%</a>.<br><br>
<dd>Oil Shock: Scenario 2025<br><br>
</b>
<dd>The United States remains so dependent upon foreign oil that a few
adverse developments in the global energy market in 2025 spark an oil
shock. By comparison, it makes the 1973 oil shock (when prices
quadrupled in just months) look like the proverbial molehill.
Angered at the dollar's plummeting value, OPEC oil ministers, meeting in
Riyadh, demand future energy payments in a “basket” of Yen, Yuan, and
Euros. That only hikes the cost of U.S. oil imports further.
At the same moment, while signing a new series of long-term delivery
contracts with China, the Saudis stabilize their own foreign exchange
reserves by switching to the Yuan. Meanwhile, China pours countless
billions into building a massive trans-Asia pipeline and funding Iran's
exploitation of the world largest natural gas field at South Pars in the
Persian Gulf.<br><br>
<dd>Concerned that the U.S. Navy might no longer be able to protect the
oil tankers traveling from the Persian Gulf to fuel East Asia, a
coalition of Tehran, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi form an unexpected new Gulf
alliance and affirm that China's new fleet of swift aircraft carriers
will henceforth patrol the Persian Gulf from a base on the Gulf of
Oman. Under heavy economic pressure, London agrees to cancel the
U.S. lease on its Indian Ocean island base of Diego Garcia, while
Canberra, pressured by the Chinese, informs Washington that the Seventh
Fleet is no longer welcome to use Fremantle as a homeport, effectively
evicting the U.S. Navy from the Indian Ocean.<br><br>
<dd>With just a few strokes of the pen and some terse announcements,
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Doctrine">the “Carter
Doctrine,”</a> by which U.S. military power was to eternally protect the
Persian Gulf, is laid to rest in 2025. All the elements that long
assured the United States limitless supplies of low-cost oil from that
region -- logistics, exchange rates, and naval power -- evaporate. At
this point, the U.S. can still cover only an
<a href="http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/execsummary.html">insignificant
12%</a> of its energy needs from its nascent alternative energy industry,
and remains dependent on imported oil for half of its energy
consumption.<br><br>
<dd>The oil shock that follows hits the country like a hurricane, sending
prices to startling heights, making travel a staggeringly expensive
proposition, putting real wages (which had long been declining) into
freefall, and rendering non-competitive whatever American exports
remained. With thermostats dropping, gas prices climbing through the
roof, and dollars flowing overseas in return for costly oil, the American
economy is paralyzed. With long-fraying alliances at an end and fiscal
pressures mounting, U.S. military forces finally begin a staged
withdrawal from their overseas bases.<br><br>
<dd>Within a few years, the U.S. is functionally bankrupt and the clock
is ticking toward midnight on the American Century.<br><br>
<dd>Military Misadventure: Present Situation<br><br>
</b>
<dd>Counterintuitively, as their power wanes, empires often plunge into
ill-advised military misadventures. This phenomenon is known among
historians of empire as “micro-militarism” and seems to involve
psychologically compensatory efforts to salve the sting of retreat or
defeat by occupying new territories, however briefly and
catastrophically. These operations, irrational even from an imperial
point of view, often yield hemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating
defeats that only accelerate the loss of power.<br><br>
<dd>Embattled empires through the ages suffer an arrogance that drives
them to plunge ever deeper into military misadventures until defeat
becomes debacle. In 413 BCE, a weakened Athens sent 200 ships to be
slaughtered in Sicily. In 1921, a dying imperial Spain dispatched 20,000
soldiers to be massacred by Berber guerrillas in Morocco. In 1956, a
fading British Empire destroyed its prestige by attacking Suez. And in
2001 and 2003, the U.S. occupied Afghanistan and invaded Iraq. With the
hubris that marks empires over the millennia, Washington has increased
its troops in Afghanistan to 100,000, expanded the war into Pakistan, and
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175324/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_general_petraeus%27s_two_campaigns/">
extended its commitment</a> to 2014 and beyond, courting disasters large
and small in this guerilla-infested, nuclear-armed graveyard of
empires.<br><br>
<dd>Military Misadventure: Scenario 2014<br><br>
</b>
<dd>So irrational, so unpredictable is “micro-militarism” that seemingly
fanciful scenarios are soon outdone by actual events. With the U.S.
military stretched thin from Somalia to the Philippines and tensions
rising in Israel, Iran, and Korea, possible combinations for a disastrous
military crisis abroad are multifold.<br><br>
<dd>It’s mid-summer 2014 and a drawn-down U.S. garrison in embattled
Kandahar in southern Afghanistan is suddenly, unexpectedly overrun by
Taliban guerrillas, while U.S. aircraft are grounded by a blinding
sandstorm. Heavy loses are taken and in retaliation, an embarrassed
American war commander looses B-1 bombers and F-16 fighters to demolish
whole neighborhoods of the city that are believed to be under Taliban
control, while AC-130U “Spooky” gunships rake the rubble with devastating
cannon fire.<br><br>
<dd>Soon, mullahs are preaching jihad</i> from mosques throughout the
region, and Afghan Army units, long trained by American forces to turn
the tide of the war, begin to desert en masse. Taliban fighters
then launch a series of remarkably sophisticated strikes aimed at U.S.
garrisons across the country, sending American casualties soaring. In
scenes reminiscent of Saigon in 1975, U.S. helicopters rescue American
soldiers and civilians from rooftops in Kabul and Kandahar.<br><br>
<dd>Meanwhile, angry at the endless, decades-long stalemate over
Palestine, OPEC’s leaders impose a new oil embargo on the U.S. to protest
its backing of Israel as well as the killing of untold numbers of Muslim
civilians in its ongoing wars across the Greater Middle East. With gas
prices soaring and refineries running dry, Washington makes its move,
sending in Special Operations forces to seize oil ports in the Persian
Gulf. This, in turn, sparks a rash of suicide attacks and the
sabotage of pipelines and oil wells. As black clouds billow skyward and
diplomats rise at the U.N. to bitterly denounce American actions,
commentators worldwide reach back into history to brand this “America's
Suez,” a telling reference to the 1956 debacle that marked the end of the
British Empire.<br><br>
<dd>World War III: Present Situation<br><br>
</b>
<dd>In the summer of 2010, military tensions between the U.S. and China
began to rise in the western Pacific, once considered an American
“lake.” Even a year earlier no one would have predicted such a
development. As Washington played upon its alliance with London to
appropriate much of Britain's global power after World War II, so China
is now using the profits from its export trade with the U.S. to fund what
is likely to become a military challenge to American dominion over the
waterways of Asia and the Pacific.<br><br>
<dd>With its growing resources, Beijing is claiming a vast maritime arc
from Korea to Indonesia long dominated by the U.S. Navy. In August, after
Washington
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/world/asia/24diplo.html">
expressed</a> a “national interest” in the South China Sea and conducted
naval exercises there to reinforce that claim, Beijing's official Global
Times</i>
<a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2010/0817/China-and-the-US-battle-to-assert-presence-in-South-China-Sea">
responded angrily</a>, saying, “The U.S.-China wrestling match over the
South China Sea issue has raised the stakes in deciding who the real
future ruler of the planet will be.”<br><br>
<dd>Amid growing tensions, the Pentagon
<a href="http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA526678">
reported</a> that Beijing now holds “the capability to attack… [U.S.]
aircraft carriers in the western Pacific Ocean” and target “nuclear
forces throughout… the continental United States.” By developing
“offensive nuclear, space, and cyber warfare capabilities,” China seems
determined to vie for dominance of what the Pentagon calls “the
information spectrum in all dimensions of the modern battlespace.” With
ongoing development of the powerful Long March V booster rocket, as well
as the
<a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2010-01/17/content_12822615.htm">
launch</a> of two satellites in January 2010 and
<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67005R20100801">another</a>
in July, for a total of five, Beijing signaled that the country was
making rapid strides toward an “independent” network of 35 satellites for
global positioning, communications, and reconnaissance capabilities by
2020.<br><br>
<dd>To check China and extend its military position globally, Washington
is intent on building a new digital network of air and space robotics,
advanced cyberwarfare capabilities, and electronic surveillance.
Military planners expect this integrated system to envelop the Earth in a
cyber-grid capable of blinding entire armies on the battlefield or taking
out a single terrorist in field or favela</i>. By 2020, if all goes
according to plan, the Pentagon will launch a three-tiered shield of
space drones -- reaching from stratosphere to exosphere, armed with agile
missiles, linked by a resilient modular satellite system, and operated
through total telescopic surveillance.<br><br>
<dd>Last April, the Pentagon made history. It extended drone
operations into the exosphere by quietly
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/science/space/23secret.html">
launching</a> the X-37B unmanned space shuttle into a low orbit 255 miles
above the planet. The X-37B is the first in a new generation of
unmanned vehicles that will mark the full weaponization of space,
creating an arena for future warfare unlike anything that has gone
before.<br><br>
<dd>World War III: Scenario 2025<br><br>
</b>
<dd>The technology of space and cyberwarfare is so new and untested that
even the most outlandish scenarios may soon be superseded by a reality
still hard to conceive. If we simply employ the sort of scenarios that
the Air Force itself
<a href="http://www.aetc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123175083">used</a> in
its 2009 Future Capabilities Game, however, we can gain “a better
understanding of how air, space and cyberspace overlap in warfare,” and
so begin to imagine how the next world war might actually be
fought.<br><br>
<dd>It’s 11:59 p.m. on Thanksgiving Thursday in 2025. While
cyber-shoppers pound the portals of Best Buy for deep discounts on the
latest home electronics from China, U.S. Air Force technicians at the
<a href="http://www.darpa.mil/tto/programs/sst/index.html">Space
Surveillance Telescope</a> (SST) on Maui choke on their coffee as their
panoramic screens suddenly blip to black. Thousands of miles away at the
U.S. CyberCommand's
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/us/politics/13cyber.html">
operations center</a> in Texas, cyberwarriors soon detect malicious
binaries that, though fired anonymously, show the
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/science/06cyber.html?pagewanted=all">
distinctive digital fingerprints</a> of China's People's Liberation
Army.<br><br>
<dd>The first overt strike is one nobody predicted. Chinese “malware”
seizes control of the robotics aboard an unmanned solar-powered U.S.
<a href="http://boeing.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1425">
“Vulture” drone</a> as it flies at 70,000 feet over the Tsushima Strait
between Korea and Japan. It suddenly fires all the rocket pods
beneath its enormous 400-foot wingspan, sending dozens of lethal missiles
plunging harmlessly into the Yellow Sea, effectively disarming this
formidable weapon.<br><br>
<dd>Determined to fight fire with fire, the White House authorizes a
retaliatory strike. Confident that its
<a href="http://www.darpa.mil/tto/programs/systemf6/">F-6</a>
“Fractionated, Free-Flying” satellite system is impenetrable, Air Force
commanders in California transmit robotic codes to the flotilla of X-37B
space drones orbiting 250 miles above the Earth, ordering them to launch
their <a href="http://www.darpa.mil/tto/programs/t3/index.html">“Triple
Terminator” missiles</a> at China's 35 satellites. Zero response. In near
panic, the Air Force launches its
<a href="http://air-attack.com/page/32/USAF--DARPA-FALCON-Program.html">
Falcon Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle</a> into an arc 100 miles above the
Pacific Ocean and then, just 20 minutes later, sends the computer codes
to fire missiles at seven Chinese satellites in nearby orbits. The
launch codes are suddenly inoperative.<br><br>
<dd>As the Chinese virus spreads uncontrollably through the F-6 satellite
architecture, while those second-rate U.S. supercomputers fail to crack
the malware's devilishly complex code, GPS signals crucial to the
navigation of U.S. ships and aircraft worldwide are compromised. Carrier
fleets begin steaming in circles in the mid-Pacific. Fighter squadrons
are grounded. Reaper drones fly aimlessly toward the horizon, crashing
when their fuel is exhausted. Suddenly, the United States loses what the
U.S. Air Force has long
<a href="http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj06/sum06/harter.html">
called</a> “the ultimate high ground”: space. Within hours, the military
power that had dominated the globe for nearly a century has been defeated
in World War III without a single human casualty.<br><br>
<dd>A New World Order?<br><br>
</b>
<dd>Even if future events prove duller than these four scenarios suggest,
every significant trend points toward a far more striking decline in
American global power by 2025 than anything Washington now seems to be
envisioning.<br><br>
<dd>As allies worldwide begin to realign their policies to take
cognizance of rising Asian powers, the cost of maintaining 800 or more
overseas military bases will simply become unsustainable, finally forcing
a staged withdrawal on a still-unwilling Washington. With both the U.S.
and China in a race to weaponize space and cyberspace, tensions between
the two powers are bound to rise, making military conflict by 2025 at
least feasible, if hardly guaranteed.<br><br>
<dd>Complicating matters even more, the economic, military, and
technological trends outlined above will not operate in tidy isolation.
As happened to European empires after World War II, such negative forces
will undoubtedly prove synergistic. They will combine in thoroughly
unexpected ways, create crises for which Americans are remarkably
unprepared, and threaten to spin the economy into a sudden downward
spiral, consigning this country to a generation or more of economic
misery.<br><br>
<dd>As U.S. power recedes, the past offers a spectrum of possibilities
for a future world order. At one end of this spectrum, the rise of
a new global superpower, however unlikely, cannot be ruled out. Yet both
China and Russia evince self-referential cultures, recondite non-roman
scripts, regional defense strategies, and underdeveloped legal systems,
denying them key instruments for global dominion. At the moment then, no
single superpower seems to be on the horizon likely to succeed the
U.S.<br><br>
<dd>In a dark, dystopian version of our global future, a coalition of
transnational corporations, multilateral forces like NATO, and an
international financial elite could conceivably forge a single, possibly
unstable, supra-national nexus that would make it no longer meaningful to
speak of national empires at all. While denationalized corporations
and multinational elites would assumedly rule such a world from secure
urban enclaves, the multitudes would be relegated to urban and rural
wastelands.<br><br>
<dd>In
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1844671607/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20">
Planet of Slums</a></i>, Mike Davis offers at least a partial vision of
such a world from the bottom up. He argues that the billion people
already packed into fetid favela</i>-style </i>slums worldwide (rising to
two billion by 2030) will make “the 'feral, failed cities' of the Third
World… the distinctive battlespace of the twenty-first century.” As
darkness settles over some future super-favela</i>, “the empire can
deploy Orwellian technologies of repression” as “hornet-like helicopter
gun-ships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum
districts… Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and
eloquent explosions.”<br><br>
<dd>At a midpoint on the spectrum of possible futures, a new global
oligopoly might emerge between 2020 and 2040, with rising powers China,
Russia, India, and Brazil collaborating with receding powers like
Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States to enforce an ad hoc</i>
global dominion, akin to the loose alliance of European empires that
ruled half of humanity circa 1900.<br><br>
<dd>Another possibility: the rise of regional hegemons in a return to
something reminiscent of the international system that operated before
modern empires took shape. In this neo-Westphalian world order, with its
endless vistas of micro-violence and unchecked exploitation, each hegemon
would dominate its immediate region -- Brasilia in South America,
Washington in North America, Pretoria in southern Africa, and so on.
Space, cyberspace, and the maritime deeps, removed from the control of
the former planetary “policeman,” the United States, might even become a
new global commons, controlled through an expanded U.N. Security Council
or some ad hoc</i> body.<br><br>
<dd>All of these scenarios extrapolate existing trends into the future on
the assumption that Americans, blinded by the arrogance of decades of
historically unparalleled power, cannot or will not take steps to manage
the unchecked erosion of their global position.<br><br>
<dd>If America's decline is in fact on a 22-year trajectory from 2003 to
2025, then we have already frittered away most of the first decade of
that decline with wars that distracted us from long-term problems and,
like water tossed onto desert sands,
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846.html">
wasted</a> trillions of desperately needed dollars.<br><br>
<dd>If only 15 years remain, the odds of frittering them all away still
remain high. Congress and the president are now in gridlock; the
American system is flooded with corporate money meant to jam up the
works; and there is little suggestion that any issues of significance,
including our wars, our bloated national security state, our starved
education system, and our antiquated energy supplies, will be addressed
with sufficient seriousness to assure the sort of soft landing that might
maximize our country's role and prosperity in a changing world.<br><br>
<dd>Europe's empires are gone and America's imperium is going. It
seems increasingly doubtful that the United States will have anything
like Britain's success in shaping a succeeding world order that protects
its interests, preserves its prosperity, and bears the imprint of its
best values.<br><br>
<dd>Alfred W. McCoy is professor of history at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. A
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175225/alfred_mccoy_afghanista_as_a_drug_war">
TomDispatch regular</a>, he is the author, most recently, of
</i>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0299234142/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20">
Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the
Rise of the Surveillance State</a> (2009). He is also the convener of the
<a href="http://history.wisc.edu/goldberg/us_empire_project.htm">“Empires
in Transition”</a> project, a global working group of 140 historians from
universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings at
Madison, Sydney, and Manila were published as
</i>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0299231046/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20">
Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State</a>
and the findings from their latest conference will appear next year as
“</i>Endless Empire: Europe’s Eclipse, America’s Ascent, and the Decline
of U.S. Global Power.”<br><br>
</i>
<dd>Copyright 2010 Alfred W. McCoy<br><br>
<br>
</dl><h5><b>© 2010 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.<br>
View this story online at:
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175327/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175327/<br><br>
<br><br>
</a></b></h5><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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