Perils of Dominance

"The author, Gareth Porter, makes some very interesting points, backed up by his source notes, that put things in a different perspective for me. For example, he points out how utterly weak the Soviet Union was, throughout much of the Cold War, relative to the US. And how defensive its posture was, relative to the US. How it lacked the technology and weaponry that could have allowed it to do the kinds of things that people like Curtis LeMay said the Soviets could do just by snapping their fingers. Again, he does a great job of showcasing the extent to which the Soviet threat was hyped. He also effectively debunks some of the other shibboleths of the Cold War, like the Sino-Soviet bloc. That’s a perfect example. At a time when Dulles is saying, “We’re locked in a mortal struggle with the Sino-Soviet bloc,” Porter shows that Mao and Stalin were hurling the most crude epithets at one another. If there was going to be a war at all, it wasn’t going to be between the US and the Sino-Soviet bloc, but between Russia and China. It’s hard to reverse a spending imbalance with a ratio of 12:1. For every $12 we spend on defence we spend $1 on diplomacy. There’s just no appetite in Congress to give the State Department the resources that they need, and, to be honest, the State Department is in need of an enormous amount of structural and institutional reform. I’ve had very thoughtful, worldly men in military uniform, say, “Look, we hear it loud and clear and we agree with you. We’re tired of having to shoulder the State Department’s burden, but they’re not up to it.” Which segues into another conversation, which is how do you fix the State Department in such a way that if you do give them more money, it won’t be wasted or allocated in an inefficient way. They’re cutting defence spending right now, but that’s because they don’t have the courage to go after our entitlement systems. Their hearts are not in it. They’re not doing it because they want to, they’re doing it because it’s the lesser of two evils. They’re talking about significant cuts, but they’re not talking about dismantling the American empire, because the vast majority of lawmakers would not acknowledge that we have an empire. There is something about these foreign deployments in Korea, Japan and Europe that is just so deeply entrenched. It’s not just American constituencies that have an interest in maintaining them, it’s also the host countries. They like having the US in their back pocket. They contribute to the economy, they’re the source of a huge black market. It would be politically difficult for them to kick the Americans out. They may take some serious whacks at the defence budget, but until they start talking seriously about dismantling these Cold War-era deployments, which are the foundation of the empire, I just don’t see any prospects for change. I would put our allies on notice that the days of unconditional US hegemony are numbered. We’re prepared to help you develop your own deterrent against whatever threats you face. I would tell NATO, you’re going to have to develop expeditionary capability without our help. We’ll help you, but in four years’ time we’re out the door. The other thing I would do is appoint our best Sinologists to figure out how we’re going to disentangle all of these claims and counterclaims to the strategic seaways of Asia, which have become such a touchstone for potential conflict between the US and China. Because I would hate to be the one to tell the mothers of America that their sons or daughters died defending Mischief Reef in the South China Sea from Chinese encroachment. You would think so. At a time when we’re facing a relentless challenger in the form of China, which, for now, is peaceful, you’d think we’d want to cultivate our diplomatic resources. You can’t win a war with China. It’s just madness to even consider it. But because the all-volunteer military in this country has been so successful, we’ve effectively segregated the military and the civilian realms. We don’t know what they do, we don’t know the sacrifices they’re making, but we appreciate that we don’t have to make similar sacrifices. So we give them all the money they need. They leave us alone, and we leave them alone. That’s a really pernicious legacy of this wildly successful professional military of ours."