Life at the End of American Empire
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Life at the End of American Empire
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Re: Life at the End of American Empire
#2A long list of poor arguments.
"America is unique among the world’s dominant powers of the past 500 years in its repeated failure to achieve military objectives over decades."
Not even close.
"The US war in Korea had an ambiguous result"
50M relatively prosperous South Koreans would beg to differ.
"Vietnam was a clear defeat" Also not.
'Life expectancy' is a very poor measure of the healthcare system etc..
It goes on.
Re: Life at the End of American Empire
#3The author presents a long list of laments (some reasonable, some comically oblivious in that way that only older college professors are capable of) but appears to regret the one thing that will actually improve any of them: the falling of the American Empire.
Re: Life at the End of American Empire
#4> ...the prevalence of poor health [in America] is on par with the former Soviet-bloc states of Central and Eastern Europe
This claim seems tough to believe, but I suppose part of it does depend on what you classify as 'poor health'. If anyone knows sources that back up this claim, I'd be interested to read them.
Re: Life at the End of American Empire
#5[dead]
Re: Life at the End of American Empire
#6A long list of poor arguments. "America is unique among the world’s dominant powers of the past 500 years in its repeated failure to achieve military objectives over decades." Not even close. "The US war in Korea had an ambiguous result" 50M relatively prosperous South Koreans would beg to differ. "Vietnam was a clear defeat" Also not. 'Life expectancy' is a very poor measure of the healthcare system etc.. It goes on…
You're not presenting rebuttals for any of the arguments. You're just disagreeing. Could you offer explanations of how the war in Vietnam was not a clear defeat, or how a healthcare system could be measured in a better way than citizen life expectancy?
Re: Life at the End of American Empire
#7"Any single defeat can be attributed to particular and ad hoc circumstances, but America is unique among the world’s dominant powers of the past 500 years in its repeated failure to achieve military objectives over decades. Those failures are even more extraordinary because they occurred in the absence of a rising military rival and as America’s ability and willingness to produce and pay for the weapons needed for military supremacy remained undiminished."
Yes. That's extremely important. Vietnam was the US's first total loss, and the US hasn't had a successful outcome since then. The US blew the endgame in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and, most importantly, in Russia after the Cold War.
What went wrong?
After WWII, the US had confidence in its own system of government, and imposed it on Germany and Japan with a sizable occupation force. It worked.
The US underfunded the post-war period of round one in Afghanistan, after kicking the Soviets out. In Iraq, the occupation was botched. Paul Bremer is generally blamed for this.[1]
Blowing the aftermath of a war leads to big trouble. See: WWI.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bremer#Criticism_and_cont...
Re: Life at the End of American Empire
#8I'm not yet at the point of starting a family, but when the time approaches I'm going to seriously consider other, more functional societies as places to do so.
Re: Life at the End of American Empire
#9American pride won't save this country from long-term trends. Before any meaningful change can be made, the "we're the best" attitude has to go. Sometime in the next 2 decades China is gonna put a man on Mars before the US, I can't wait to see the shocked faces
Re: Life at the End of American Empire
#10> ...the prevalence of poor health [in America] is on par with the former Soviet-bloc states of Central and Eastern Europe This claim seems tough to believe, but I suppose part of it does depend on what you classify as 'poor health'. If anyone knows sources that back up this claim, I'd be interested to read them.
Why do you think it's tough to believe?