An
Administration of Losers?
In a sense, human
history could be seen as an endless tale of the rise and fall of
empires. In the last century alone, from the Hapsburgs and Imperial Japan to
Great Britain and the Soviet Union, the stage was crowded with such entities
heading for the nearest exit.
By 1991, with the
implosion of the USSR, it seemed as if Earth’s imperial history was more or
less over. After all, only one great imperial power was left.
The Russians were, by
then, a shadow of their former Soviet self (despite their nuclear arsenal) and,
though on the rise, the Chinese were, in military terms at least, no more than
a growing regional power.
Left essentially
unchallenged was the United States, the last empire standing.
Even though its people
rejected the word “imperial” as a descriptive term for their “exceptional”
country—just as, until
oh-so-recently, they rejected the word “nationalist” for
themselves—the world’s “sole superpower” was visibly the only game in town.
Its military, which
already garrisoned much
of the planet, was funded at levels no other country or even groups of them
combined could touch and
had destructive capabilities beyond compare.
And yet, with the
mightiest military on the planet, the United States would never again win a
significant war or conflict.
Though its forces would be quite capable of taking the island of Grenada or briefly invading Panama, in the conflicts that mattered—Korea and Vietnam—victory would never come into sight.
And it only got worse
in the twenty-first century as that military fought an endless series of
conflicts (under the rubric of “the war on terror”) across the Greater Middle
East and Africa.
In those years, it
left in its wake a series of brutal sectarian struggles, ascendant terror
movements, and failed or failing states and
yet, despite its stunning destructive power and its modestly armed enemies, it
was nowhere victorious.
Never perhaps had an
empire at its seeming height attempted to control more while winning less. (The
power of its economy was, of course, another matter.)
Now, its losing
generals—under the circumstances, there could be no other kind—are, as TomDispatch
regular retired Lieutenant Colonel William Astore points out in
his latest column, “Too Many
Generals Spoil the Democracy,” being elevated to positions of
power.
The man doing so only
recently derided their
skills, claiming that American generalship had been “reduced to rubble” and was
“embarrassing for our country.”
At the moment, his
chosen generals are preparing themselves to take over key civilian positions in
the country’s ever more powerful national security state, now essentially its fourth branch of
government.
And let’s add to this
one more curious aspect of the coming age of Trump: a phenomenon until now
restricted to the military and its distant wars seems about to spread to what’s
left of the civilian part of our government.
By the look of things,
Trump's cabinet is being assembled along eerily familiar lines. Its members are
unlikely to have the power to “win” (despite the president-elect’s deification of
that concept), but they will indeed have an unprecedented power to destroy.
They seem, in fact, to
have been chosen largely for their desire to dismantle whatever agency or
department will be in their care or to undermine the major tasks it is to carry
out.
Former Texas governor
Rick Perry, recently picked to head the Energy Department, an agency he
previously wanted to eliminate (and
whose name he infamously forgot in a televised presidential debate), is
typical.
See also Scott Pruitt,
prospective head of the Environmental Protection Agency; Betsy DeVos,
the Department of Education; and Tom Price,
Health and Human Services.
The question, of course, is: Will the civilian part
of our future government, in the end, add another country to the count of
failed states the U.S. military has already chalked up?
As our first declinist
candidate, Donald Trump seems determined to ensure that the once
sole superpower will join that endless human tale of felled empires.
He’s already working
hard to make certain that its government will be hollowed out or simply
dynamited in the coming years, while his covey of retired generals will
undoubtedly do their damnedest to create further havoc on
planet Earth, as they give new meaning to the latest American
"principle" being put in place (see Astore): military control over
the military (and much else).
Tom Engelhardt,
co-founder of the American Empire
Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book is, Shadow
Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World (with an introduction by
Glenn Greenwald). Previous books include Terminator
Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 (co-authored
with Nick Turse), The United
States of Fear, The American Way
of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, The End of
Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, as well
as of a novel, The Last Days of
Publishing. To stay on top of important articles
like these, sign up to receive the latest updates
from TomDispatch.com here.