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Page added on September 10, 2013
Collapse of American Influence Recalls Disintegration of Soviet Union, Fall of France
Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and prior to that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States.
The Soviet Union crumbled jurisdictionally: In 1990-1991, one country became the 16 formerly constituent republics of that country, and except perhaps for Belarus, none of them show much disposition to return to the Russian fold into which they had been gathered, almost always by brute force, over the previous 300 years.
The cataclysmic decline of France, of course, was the result of being overrun by Nazi Germany in 1940. And while it took until the return of de Gaulle in 1958 and the establishment of the Fifth Republic with durable governments and a serious currency, and the end of the Algerian War in 1962, and the addition of some other cubits to France’s stature, the largest step in its resurrection was accomplished by the Allied armies sweeping the Germans out of France in 1944.
What we are witnessing now in the United States, by contrast, is just the backwash of inept policy-making in Washington, and nothing that could not eventually be put right. But for this administration to redeem its credibility now would require a change of direction and method so radical it would be the national equivalent of the comeback of Lazarus: a miraculous revolution in the condition of an individual (President Obama), and a comparable metamorphosis (or a comprehensive replacement) of the astonishingly implausible claque around him.
Until recently, it would have been unimaginable to conceive of John Kerry as the strongman of the National Security Council. This is the man who attended political catechism classes from the North Vietnamese to memorize and repeat their accusations against his country of war crimes in Indochina, and, inter alia, ran for president in 2004 asserting that while he had voted to invade Iraq in 2003, he was not implicated in that decision because he did not vote to fund the invasion once underway. (Perhaps Thomas E. Dewey would have been an upset presidential winner in 1944 if he had proclaimed his support for the D-Day landings but advocated an immediate cut-off of funds for General Eisenhower’s armies of liberation.)
As has been touched upon here before, the desire to avoid America in another foreign conflict is understandable. But if that is the policy, the president of the United States should not state that presidents of countries in upheaval (e.g., Bashar Assad) “must go,” should not draw “red lines” and ignore them, should not devise plans to punish rogue leaders but not actually damage their war-making ability, should not promise action and send forces to carry out the action, and then have, in current parlance, a public “conversation” with himself about whether to do anything, and should not thereby abdicate his great office in all respects except the salary and perquisites.
A Senate committee has voted President Obama the authority to attack Syria. But he is the commander-in-chief. He has that authority already, and what he is doing is implicitly making the exercise of that power dependent on Congressional approval. How does that square with the presidential oath, which requires of the inductee that he “faithfully execute the office” and that he “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”?
President Truman famously said, “The buck stops here,” and he was right. The American public despises Congress, with good reason. Most of the members are venal, politically cowardly, and incompetent; the idea of those 535 log-rolling gas-bags sharing the command of the United States armed forces does not bear thinking about.
And if the United States is effectively blasé about countries using chemical weapons on their people, as it apparently is about the formerly “unacceptable” development of nuclear weapons by Iran, this depressing news should be imparted to the world explicitly by the administration and not left to be surmised from the waffling of the Congress.
What is more worrisome than the fact that the United States has an inadequate president, is that the public still accords the incumbent a significant degree of support. If the American people, who have responded to intelligent leadership so often within living memory, has become so morally obtuse that it buys into this flimflam, the problem is more profound than I imagined.
What American will need in 2016 is a new president who enunciates a clear policy: foreign intervention only to prevent genocide, to avenge extreme provocations, or to preserve world peace, and in accord with constitutional and international law. That policy would have cut post-Korea war-making to evicting Saddam from Kuwait, the Taliban from Afghanistan, modestly assisting the opponents of Gaddafi and Assad, (as leaders who had monstrously provoked the West), and would have spared everyone the chimerical extravagance of nation-building in hopeless places. Vietnam and the second Iraq War would have been sidestepped altogether.
The Americans show no sign of wanting their country to be regarded as absurd in the world, and they are so America-centric, and so suffused with the heroic mythos of America, that they seem unable to grasp the possibility that it is.
There is a contagion that makes the condition less startling: The United Kingdom suddenly has begun to appear ridiculous, too. The British replaced leaders who did not conduct wars effectively, during the Seven Years’, American Revolutionary, Napoleonic, Crimean, and both World Wars. But never in their history until last week have they had a prime minister who summoned Parliament to seek authority to make war and then was denied that authority. The Grand Alliance of Churchill and Roosevelt, the Special Relationship of Thatcher and Reagan, is reduced to slap-stick, farce.
The country that could pick up the slack and lead is Germany, but it is psychologically incapable. A third of its voters are communists, eco-extremists or cyber-nihilists calling themselves “pirates.” They are still in attrition-therapy over the after-effects of Nazi and communist rule. And the European power that can’t take the lead, because it is almost bankrupt, over-centralized, suffocating in pettifogging regulations and governed by idiots, is France (though it yet has the superb, often misplaced, feline confidence of a Great Power, and admittedly has been magnificent on Libya, Mali and Syria).
Canada could play a role — but first it must acquire an aircraft carrier and the other equipment necessary to project power. For starters, we should buy one of these splendid aircraft carriers the United States is retiring because of the gridlock-fed deficit and the idiocy of sequestration, rename it H.M.C.S. Canada, recruit the 6,000 people necessary for the crew and partner with other countries in the aviation industry that can help provide it with the aircraft it would carry, and show the aid and defense flag in the world. Nearly 70 years ago, recall, we had two — admittedly much smaller — aircraft carriers despite having a population of just 11.5-million. At the least we could get a helicopter carrier.
The United States is a hard-working, patriotic country with a talented work force and a political system that can generate policy and govern and lead effectively. Unless the environmentalist extremists who predicted that by now Manhattan would be underwater, the average temperature in Toronto in February would be 20 centigrade, and that we would all be gasping for oxygen, find richer electoral sugar daddies than the oil industry and get political control of that country (almost impossible), the United States will be self-sufficient in energy in a few years.
This will end the suicidal U.S. balance-of-payments deficit, cut the worst terrorist-supporting, oil-producing regimes in the world off at the ankles financially, and drastically reduce the federal government budget deficit.
11 Comments on "Collapse of American Influence Recalls Disintegration of Soviet Union, Fall of France"
DC on Tue, 10th Sep 2013 11:46 pm
For more self-serving exceptionalist nonsense-see above
Grover Lembeck on Wed, 11th Sep 2013 12:04 am
Wow. DC called it. This is as far removed from reality as a Soviet editorial calling for a restoration of stalinesque policies in 1990. Nice headline, though.
DC on Wed, 11th Sep 2013 3:09 am
Edit:the above US bootlick@the NP does not speak for Canadians.
We have no desire, or money, to acquire useless a/c carriers in order to support amerikas global war of terror. We have enough problems with our own zionist corporate puppet, one S. Harper without sailing around the world trying to make new enemies.
Thats what amerikans are for…
curlyq3 on Wed, 11th Sep 2013 3:19 am
“The Great White North” … (what a hoser, eh?)… curlyq3
BillT on Wed, 11th Sep 2013 3:32 am
The US needs to go back to the Constitution and bring ALL of our troops home. ALL of them! Reduce the military to that needed to keep the 50 states safe and let corporations protect their shipping, just like they did before the Empires tried to do the job.
Instead, the USSA has the same future as the old USSR. We will break into 50 republics, and realign according to other needs and wants. Or we will just perish as a country entirely. Either are in our future. We have been destroyed from within, as have most really powerful empires of old. Greed, sloth, stupidity have replaced morals, work, and intelligence.
GregT on Wed, 11th Sep 2013 4:21 am
Wow, someone needs to go see their psychiatrist, and get their meds adjusted.
Jerk on Wed, 11th Sep 2013 7:56 am
Let’s bring back George Willy Bush. He really can make us laugh about the US. Please Americans do revote him in 2016. Or otherwise his Sunstate family member. And do admit: Bushes will attack every brute dictator using toy weapons. Spraying water over the enemy instead of hydraulic fracking. By the way there’s a rumour George Willy is playing Stratego with Dick Halliburton Cheney and Donald Duck Rumblefield. But only creepy GW got the patriot missiles on his board. Hopefully the N(azi)SA will not intercept this message!
J-Gav on Wed, 11th Sep 2013 8:58 am
The glaring disconnect between the 1st paragraph of this article and the last one kinda makes ya wonder what Conrad’s been spreading on his toast in the morning, doesn’t it?
dashster on Wed, 11th Sep 2013 10:09 am
The United States does not make itself stronger economically by outspending the rest of the world on armaments and spy machinery. But what happens when you are able to defeat the world in a war and get in trouble economically? Who should be more worried about the United States having economic problems – the people of the United States or the rest of the world who could get blamed for their problems by US politicians?
rollin on Wed, 11th Sep 2013 12:02 pm
Was this article written by someone off their schizo meds? Makes moderate sense at first, though how the fall of France and the re-governmenting of USSR fall in the same bucket, I don’t know. Near the end it wanders over the edge into the rabbit hole.
As far as the President in 2016, he or she will be the first to face the results of over 50 years of totally ignorant government policy. It will not be a place for BAU promoters or two-faced fence sitters. If the then president tries to use historical solutions (read as lack of ability and vision) he will fail. We are entering uncharted territory and need people who actually give a crap about how things turn out.
Arthur on Wed, 11th Sep 2013 5:00 pm
Wikipedia tells us that the author of this shoddy piece work is a Conrad Moffat Black, “Baron Black of Crossharbour”, and is a convicted fellon. He was convicted of three counts of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice in a U.S. court in 2007 and sentenced to six and a half years’ imprisonment. There you go, but no worries, his jewish wife as well as ownership of the Jerusalem Post no doubt ensures editorial access to any rag with ‘New York’ in the title.
Where to begin?
“The cataclysmic decline of France, of course, was the result of being overrun by Nazi Germany in 1940.”
As usual, it is conveniently left out that France had declared war on Germany first, on September 3, 1939 and that France had invaded Norway, together with Britain, on April 9 1940, in order to cut off essential iron ore supply, leaving Germany no other choice than smash the country to enforce peace upon the Versailles rapist. Unfortunately for the Germans, the Americans and Soviets were already secretly allied with Britain, France and Poland before September 1, 1939, so Britain had no incentive to make peace with the Germans. Like Assad today, the Germans were just as framed for war and destruction as the Syrians today. But these are truths lost on compulsary liars like Conrad Black.
“But for this administration to redeem its credibility now would require a change of direction and method so radical it would be the national equivalent of the comeback of Lazarus”
Exactly, and as such not going to happen.
“The American public despises Congress, with good reason. Most of the members are venal, politically cowardly, and incompetent; the idea of those 535 log-rolling gas-bags sharing the command of the United States armed forces does not bear thinking about.”
Fascinating, the self-proclaimed democracy champ, hell bent on exporting ‘democracy’ by force to countries run by ‘dictators’, in one breath despises the very same institutions that embodies that democracy. Congress indeed IS despicable, because it refuses to assert itself as the representative of the American people, instead of what it is now: ‘Israeli occupied territory’ (©Pat Buchanan). But the latter no doubt is no problem in the eyes of convicted fraud and ‘Catholic’ Conrad Black.
“the fact that the United States has an inadequate president”
Because the incompetent has not managed to kick off a war yet, any war.
“modestly assisting the opponents of Gaddafi and Assad, (as leaders who had monstrously provoked the West),”
How that? Since 2011 the US led west has sicked tens of thousand of jihadist mercenaries upon Syria. Provocations? And what did Gaddafi do wrong?
“But never in their history until last week have they had a prime minister who summoned Parliament to seek authority to make war and then was denied that authority.”
Parliament is an annoying institution.
This guy probably still has not disgested the demise of the USSR, so much is clear.
“The Grand Alliance of Churchill and Roosevelt,”
He forgets to add Stalin to his ‘grand alliance’. Btw, drunken fool Churchill, the prototype of a corrupt politician, was in the pay by zionist circles connected to the outright communist Roosevelt government. Most of his famous speeches were written by chairman Waley Cohen of Royal Dutch Shell and often spoken by a stand-in, Norman Shelley, because Churchill was too drunk to do it himself.
“The country that could pick up the slack and lead is Germany, but it is psychologically incapable. A third of its voters are communists, eco-extremists or cyber-nihilists calling themselves “pirates.””
Expect conservative Angela Merkel to be reelected in a few weeks time with a convenient majority and that Germany will be the economic powerhouse of the coming Greater European alliance, regardless of what this fraud claims.
“France (though it yet has the superb, often misplaced, feline confidence of a Great Power, and admittedly has been magnificent on Libya, Mali and Syria).”
Read: France carried out the orders from the US through dna-level defined solidarity via Sarkozy and Laurent Fabius, both staunch ‘catholics’, just like Kerry.lol
“Canada could play a role — but first it must acquire an aircraft carrier and the other equipment necessary to project power.”
That remark cost me five minutes of my life through cleaning my monitor from coffee spilled over it. There was a time even fruit fly Holland had an aircraft carrier (the Karel Doorman), but they got rid of it in time. These days these dinosaurs are sitting ducks, waiting to be sent to the bottom of the ocean after the first missiles attack. For Canada it makes more sense to increase the size of the Mounties cavalry.
“The United States is a hard-working, patriotic country with a talented work force”
… and a huge trade deficit. Something is wrong here.
“This will end the suicidal U.S. balance-of-payments deficit, cut the worst terrorist-supporting, oil-producing regimes in the world off at the ankles financially, and drastically reduce the federal government budget deficit.”
This will happen only if the US will be forced to cut deficits, because the rest of the world has stopped accepting dollars. Attacking Syria or even better Iran, could be the point of initiation of such a change of behavior. So what are you waiting for, Conrad?
Conrad Moffat Black = idiocracy in action.