Can Uncle Sam afford the permanent beans BT, There is a rumour in the news this weeks of trillions of unaccounted for dollars having slipped out of the pentagons hands over the last decade I believe it was. No US forces can't stay anywhere unless they clamp down at home and tighten belts to support Afghan freedom and democracy. They will need help developing all those goodies though.
How much will it cost to save the Philopeens and encircle China at the same time, at least combining the two seems efficient and may save some money, if no aircraft carriers are lost, like the last time.
The United States has been transformed. I guess it's been in the process of transformation for decades. It's only been since 2001 that the transformation has become apparent. Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of JFK. I look back at that time and of the zeitgeist of the Americans. I compare it to the prevailing outlook today. The transformation is undeniable. In many ways I've stopped thinking of myself as an American. So perhaps I am not the best person to ask the questions you posed. But here goes.
It's not possible to maintain the American Empire. The costs now exceed the benefits. The United States is in the process of systems collapse itself. One of the casualties is the collapse of the national security consensus. I was once a national security hawk like JFK, George Meany, Scoop Jackson and Ronald Reagan. But I have come to believe that most of what I supported for decades was false. That conclusion is being embraced by millions of former hawks, now turned neo-isolationists.
Russia and Israel, and Saudi Arabia and Israel are now in talks about the post-American order in the Middle East. America is through as the ME hegemon. The longstanding war between Sunni and Shia has been reactivated with the end of the American era.
In East Asia and the Western Pacific the US is losing the ability to act as arbiter. Within a decade the US would lose a naval and air war in that region to China. Most of the nations of that region have figured out what is happening, and taken the breakdown of Pax Americana into account for their own survival.
The most alarming element of all this is the hatred of American for fellow American. This enmity will not turn out well for either the American left or right. Something new is coming. I can't tell what it will be, but I do know that when dynamic equilibrium can no longer be maintained collapse occurs. When a vacuum occurs new forces will rush in to fill the emptiness.
The change that's coming for America will have profound implications for Canada. It is not possible to be so closely aligned with a failing polity and not experience some of the consequences.
