If you are going to have an empire, you need to go out there and administer it.
The British understood this. The Americans seem to think they can run things from home. They are wrong.
Sending stealth bombers is all high-tech and all; but it doesn't actually work.
Well, the US empire is (has been) more of a soft-empire verse the British Empire of old. We mostly stuck to maneuvering preferred dictators into power and backing them with money and weapons, with mostly minor direct military engagement. How did the East India Company (or British Raj) work out for you? All empires eventually start crumbling. Sometimes people refuse to see the cracks, and sometimes people see cracks under every rock. The US had a pretty good domination run for the half century after WWII. But I think the cost of all this is starting to catch up with us, along with our aging population and growing fear of having US soldiers die for some vague and remote cause. 50 years ago we tried direct military control of a country, and all we got for it was 58,000 dead American and roughly a million dead Vietnamese. Roll forward 30 years, and we tried it again in the ME. We still haven’t quite given up our exercise in futility within Af-Pak, but so far we have about 6,800 dead Americans and roughly 170,000 dead Iraqi’s and Afghans. Sadly, I think Bin Laden has won in some ways, even in death. We are far more paranoid, and anything that enriches the likes of Lockheed Martin and merc companies like Blackwater>>Xe Services>>Academi is now promoted in the name of security. And we are flushing a shitload of wealth down the toilet each year in the process.
We recently tried bombing the shit out of a country with no boots on the ground, and the only real result has been utter chaos and anarchy as we kicked the dust off our planes as we left Libya. But hey, Raytheon will make a mint on replacing the 47 Tomahawk Land Attack missiles that have been launched so far, at only $1.6 million a pop. And the F-22 that finally gets to see real (as in shooting fish in a barrel realism) combat, instead of just being pretty show pieces. And they only cost $68,000 per operational hour (only 3x the cost for an F-16). Good thing we have these uber expensive and advanced planes go after bad guys with guns, hand held missiles, and artillery… The anti-ISIS coalition is a pathetic and sick joke upon the victims throughout the ME. Without substantial (tens of thousands) of boots on the ground from any/some real army, probably all that will result is a different form of chaos as the west finally decides they can declare victory (with media cheer leading) and slip away from the emerging new and improved chaos.
I think the next 10-20 years will re-introduce the multi-polar world with increased regional conflict as the US fades further from the ability to project its domination desires. Sure we will be able to blow the shit out of a country with our advanced ability to project air power. However, our ability to topple leaders we don’t like via the CIA has generally passed. I can’t see another engagement like in Vietnam, short of something quite extreme. And as our failures in Iraq and Afghanistan will help feed regional distrust of our abilities to control events. And if Putin wins out in the Ukraine-Crimea over the next few years, we lose more credibility. Pres. Obama’s recent comment about Russia being the most isolated since the cold war was laughable…I guess he didn’t read up on the Sino-Soviet rift.
