THE DECLINE IN USA’S MILITARY POWER IS NOT A PROBLEM FOR AMERICANS – ONLY FOR BUREAUCRATS
(from elsewhere)
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/03/31/396604082/dozens-of-countries-join-china-backed-bank-opposed-by-washington
The USA pays for its military through the sale of petro-dollars and debt that it inflates away. It was this technique started under Nixon that allowed the USA to economically bankrupt the soviets via military competition. (Something easy enough to repeat with the Putinista Russians.)
The sale of oil in euros was the first blow that limited future american military expansion. This allowed europeans to cease indirect payment for defense to the USA. The rise of China and demand for american debt sustained american military expansion. The attempt of Iran to create a bourse and take over this tax on world oil production by demanding middle eastern oil in the currency of their choice, is an effort to transfer this power. With nuclear weapons it becomes a possibility for them.
China has set out to replace america as the global power in the current century. But to do so requires weakening the USA’s state department, and to weaken american financial interests. It is more important to weaken the relationship between capital and democracy. So for china, the use of such a bank, will extend its power, and more importantly, eliminate the correlation between demand for credit, demand for commerce, and the corresponding demand for democracy and human rights. In other words, china wants to spread authoritarian capitalism, by improving the standing of authoritarian capitalism.
So in the long term, americans will have to retrench, because democracy is a failed experiment, social democracy a failed experiment, and authoritarianism with limited capitalism (aristocratic capitalism), superior to proletarian capitalism (social democracy).
Americans would very much prefer to withdraw from world affairs. Especially that we are now marginally oil independent. Unfortunately, the left has succeeded in overwhelming americans through immigration, and thereby achieving through population-conquest what could not be achieved through ideas.
But to state that this change in power is a ‘problem for americans’ is simply not true. It’s a problem for bureaucrats. But americans will merely experience a decline in standard of living to european levels of consumption. They will dramatically decrease their public spending on the military. Europe will dramatically increase its military spending on the military. And the world will equilibrate to less variation in purchasing power between nations. And the nations with the greatest purchasing power will be those that possess the best legal systems, with the greatest experimentation, and the least rents. In that race, americans may still win.