A Strong People

pessimist over at the Left Coaster has a long post on what's at stake in this election. Please go read the entire post but I'm going to cut and paste some good historical background he has near the end of the post.

There's another aspect of this 'strong people' meme that disturbs me. Every time a nation follows that path, many of its citizens pay with their lives in a losing cause of attempted dominance. They all want to be Imperial Rome, when the conditions that made Rome possible are long gone. Julius Caesar had no nukes, no air power, no firearms or explosives, no mechanized armor, and certainly no telecommunications, and neither did his enemies. What he had was a strictly disciplined army which fought as a unit and not as a rabble of individuals, which was often the main reason he and his successor generals won their battles. As each of these 'advances' in military power came about, the possibility of creating such an empire - which stood for 'only' 500 years or so - became much less likely. Hitler's Thousand Year Reich lasted 12 years, yet he had weapons and technology that Caesar would never have understood.

The difference? All of Hitler's opponents had studied Caesar also, and they had equal access to technology, and thus were far better prepared to face the onslaughts arrayed against them than were the barbarian hordes against which Rome marched. But even barbarian hordes can learn to win, as the history of Rome will attest though their ultimate triumph over the Caesars. It thus works also for Napoleon, for Mussolini, for Stalin, for most of the 'strong people' leaders of history.

As one power grows to threaten the rest of the world, the rest of the world bands together in mutual protection, generally around a major military power. China is now that power the world is edging up to as opposed to the United States. Australia has recently conducted joint naval manouvers with the Chinese Navy. This week, the EU constitution was signed, which will enhance efforts already underway to create a joint European military command intended to replace NATO and end US participation in the defense of Europe. Many of these European nations are following Australia's example, and are in discussions with the Chinese to establish areas of cooperation on many levels.

It is the same in South and Central Asia, and in Africa. Everywhere the United States has had almost unchallenged hegemony, China is now appearing to woo those nations to enter its sphere of influence, and they are usually successful.

This is where 'strong people' should become smart people. Allowing for variances, the US population is about 290 million people in a world population of well over 6 billion. Rounding off to simple numbers, that makes us about 5% of the world's total population. Where do 'strong people' think our ability to dominate the 95% of the rest of the world is going to come from?

As the United States attempts to use it's military power to create an empire China may be quietly doing so by using cooperation. But of course those in the Bush administration don't have time to read history, they are too busy trying to make it. And history they will make but not the history they had in mind.