Nile Gardner recently wrote about the lack of American political support for the UK’s problems with Argentina. He asks, what thanks does Britan get for fighting alongside the US in Afghanistan? Of course, it may be not obvious that Gardner’s article is an attack on the Obama administration. And that might be forgiven. But the comments by readers are troubling, because they see this as an american problem, not a problem of the Obama Presidency. And I see it as a problem of anglo civilization. So maybe this is a topic worthy of discussion.
The Obama Administration Is Not The Country
The Obama administration hates the west. But the administration isn’t the population. The USA is a big place with many coalitions. The administration never represents the people, just some accidental alliance of coalitions necessary to obtain power at that point in time. So if you want open political support just help us get rid of him.
US Material Support Of The UK Is Unwavering
Verbal support just feeds the Argentinian domestic cause. It’s better to stay quiet and carry a big stick. Public discourse just feeds the populations nationalistic support for the government. It’s all talk anyway. Material military support of the UK is unquestioning. If there is any action anywhere in the world against British interests, the USA will defend it like it’s our own. Perhaps more so because its without political taint if we exercise our military for someone else’s good. The sanctity with which Americans treat the UK is a product of our American religiosity for heritage. Just look at the Royal Family’s approval ratings. The Queen hovers around 80%, and Charles at something just below 70%. If they could run for office in the states
UK Military Support Of the USA Is Political Not Material
As insulting as it may be, UK support in Afghanistan is political not material. That is not to disrespect those solders who fight or dishonor those who have died. It is to state the simple truth that their presence is not material to the outcome, and their absence would not affect the outcome. The value for the UK in military participation is entirely self serving. It helps the UK to maintain its capability as the only remaining military force in Europe, and it further exercises its military supply chain. This is a valuable investment for the UK’s future. An un-exercised military is a weak one. And the UK, while in comparison to the US is weak, in comparison to Europe, South America, Russia, the middle east and Asia it is strong. This matters because the UK is a financial nation with highly distributed international interests, as well as a partly diasporic population.
The UK has had to ASK to participate in military maneuvers despite the fact that the US command structure believes that UK military support is no longer viable enough to warrant the additional costs of cooperation on anything other than intelligence. In the most recent example, the UK literally begged to be involved in middle east naval patrols after the USA stated that it would not be useful. The problem the UK has long term, is that it’s a financial economy (the UK is the world’s Switzerland) and that economy is dependent upon the anglo alliance with the states. The US alliance guarantees UK financial independence from appropriation of UK wealth via European regulation, and provides security to the rest of the world’s investors precisely because the UK has the power of the USA behind it, but is separate from the USA and therefore third parties cannot be manipulated by the USA through the UK financial or diplomatic system.
US Is Following A Long Term Grand Strategy
The Afghan war was conducted for the purpose of punishing that state, and for threatening other states, for failing to control their jihadists. The Iraq war was in response to daily antagonism and the economic and geopolitical impact of that antagonism. Because of these actions, the world no longer has the perception that Americans will not apply violence. The inverse is now true. But there was a belief in the past that the USA would not spend blood and treasure to defend strategic interests. That belief has been eradicated. The world is now concerned that the USA is all too willing to act. And that reputation has tremendous value.
The objective in war is not to win the battles or even surrender, it is to win the strategic objective. The strategic objective is simple: the Ottomans were militaristic agrarians who could not modernize. They were a dying but antagonistic civilization and were conquered. And unlike India where a state emerged along with rationalism and law, colonialism was a failure in the Ottoman empire in every respect.
During the communist era, the USA was simply trying to prevent adoption of communism and an alliance between the oil states and the communist states. Radical islam is just the new instantiation of communism under a different flag, but it is still just anti modernism. So the strategy is the same: Islamic civilization has not matured such that it can adopt consumer capitalism. (Assuming it is possible may be the underlying problem with the strategy.) The usa is trying to prevent the accumulation of power by any state capable of becoming a core state for Islamic civilization, when that core state could both concentrate capital, control oil prices, and adopt Islamic and Ottoman military expansionism, or any other form of organization other than consumer capitalism.
The process of conversion has succeeded in the German, Japanese, Sinic and Byzantium regions. We seem to be having a very hard time in African and Islamic civilizations. The arguments to why vary, and will have to be addressed elsewhere. But the strategic objective is to prevent concentration of power in the middle east until middle classes develop in those countries, so that those middle classes may hold power, develop consumer capitalism, and their governments can demonstrate the Smithian international responsibility that comes from consumer capitalism.
This strategy illustrates why the USA will conduct an Iranian war. It will use the threat to israel as an opportunity to pursue the primary objective which is to protect the reserve status of the dollar, without which the USA cannot pay for its military complex, and its ability to police world trade. UK support in these wars is political not material. The entire armed forces of Europe are militarily incapable of material action — as we saw in Libya. And the reason are incapable is that the USA has been paying for european military defense as a postwar necessity we have yet to correct.
Interestingly enough, the world pays for US military policing of trade through the purchase of US debt instruments, the dollars from which are used to purchase oil, whereupon the USA then inflates its currency destroying the debt. This is just a very complex politically tolerable means of progressively taxing the world for US police services in defense of the international financial, trade, and energy systems. Looking at the system in this light, helps understand, global activity in something other than the absurd moralistic terms used by average people, as if nation states are family members were arguing over trivialities of home administration.
The Global Problem Of The English Speaking Peoples In Context
A longer term context might be valuable to UK citizens who do not have the experience of living in the states: The Irish experience, the Scottish secessionist movement, the emergence of the BNP and similar movements, and the evidence of the failure of the Euro, and perhaps the entire European project, is visible to most UK citizens. But it may not be as visible that the USA is beginning a process of similar balkanization along regional, cultural, racial, and tribal lines which is currently most visible in the highly polarized electorate. (See The Nine Nations Of North America.)
The USA is dividing into a version of Europe. Europe will not become a version of the states. It isn’t possible for the reasons the Euro project is failing. Norther and southern european civilizations are substantially different. And we value our differences. For western people, if not all people, smaller states are better states. Getting to ‘Denmark’ — meaning creating the egalitarian state, which is the stated goal of political science — requires getting to small and homogenous states. Large states are empires. Small states can federate. But large states are empires. And members of empires are subjects not citizens.
In this context, the future of the Anglo peoples as a civilization, a culture, a system of government, — and if you consider us a ‘race’, a race too — will be dramatically affected by this century. Maybe anglo nihilism is in full maturity and it doesn’t matter to enough of us any longer whether our civilization continues. But the minority status of anglos in the states, the economic alliance of Australia with Asia, and the conflict between London and the rest of the country is large enough that we must choose some explicit unity, or simply devolve into factions and disappear like the Hellenes before us — The only people in history to which Britain adequately compares.
Personally, as an Anglo American, I’m pretty frustrated with seemingly high-minded criticism of us over here. Especially if we go back and look in the Times, Guardian and Telegraph to 2008, where we were ridiculed on-end for our financial folly in both editorial and commentary … until it turned out that the UK was in even worse shape, and Europe catastrophically so. But you don’t see us ridiculing you over here on your character. (Ok. Maybe the French. Sure.) We understand the north-south divide in Europe and we don’t think it’s solvable. We don’t, because we have the same problem over here.
In Closing
It’s Obama that doesn’t support Britain. And Obama is observably naive, arguably a racist, and inarguably an anti-westerner. He hates everything that the anglo civilization has achieved in the five hundred years that we have spent dragging humanity out of mystical ignorance and destitute poverty. Albeit, we did an imperfect job, using the crude tools and concepts at our disposal. And we even destroyed Europe by trying, possibly wrongly — probably wrongly — to contain our cousins in Germany, who keep proving their cultural model is superior to ours at producing a productive economy. But, it’s not like there was any manual for raising humanity out of ignorance and poverty. We did our best. And the results for humanity speak for themselves.
But no man is a hero to his debtors. And I think it’s about time our complaining UK relatives looked in the mirror to see if they’re just whining debtors too. Or whether the world is full of a lot of nonsense talk, and having succeeded in transforming that world, we should once again focus on some form of unity amongst ourselves, and look to the future we want to create together.
Curt Doolittle