Ashok Dhillon
Aug 22, 20215 min
An overabundance of power leads to carelessness, arrogance, and stunning waste. America’s power, military, economic, and culture, is unparalleled in the world at this time. One could even argue, it is unparalleled in human history. However, it has been apparent that for decades, America has had an overabundance of power, and it has wasted it with stunning abandon, because it has not felt it drain any of its capabilities in any real sense. If anything it has gotten increasingly confused as it has flailed around internationally, steadily losing ground and failing to achieve its much publicized and loudly stated goals and objectives, repeatedly.
Suffice it to say that all the current commentary about America losing its power and position in the world, after another debacle in its defeat and withdrawal from a long and costly war, this time in Afghanistan, though understandable, are all - more than a bit premature.
There is no country, or a set of countries in the world that can match American military and economic might at the present time, even if China is inching ever closer, and Russia keeps out-maneuvering it with a fraction of its resources, just by Putin’s brilliant but foul foreign policy plays and strategies; but no one can match American raw power, because when it comes to the crunch, even China is well aware that it is not in a position to take on, fully, American power. Not only militarily, but even economically, as so much of China’s wealth and economic growth is dependent on selling to America, and its western allies, it simply cannot compete.
Any sustained withdrawal of those markets, as illustrated during the 2008 financial crisis, and albeit briefly, the economic collapse at the start of the pandemic, China will be severely constrained economically (perhaps permanently if it were to last). As for matching America militarily, China is just not there yet.
While America’s cultural power is seldom discussed, except perhaps sneeringly, and in derogatory terms from the older and ‘far superior’ countries and civilizations, yet the people doing it are probably using an iPhone, or a personal computing device, running on Microsoft programs, wearing jeans, listening to American music, while chomping on hamburgers at McDonalds (so to speak). America’s influence on the world is incalculable, as its Coke, Pepsi, hamburgers, jeans, cars, movies, etc., influence people even in the remotest parts of the World, which no other country or culture can lay claim to, or match. And while America-bashing is easy to do, as the Americans go out of their way to look idiotic with the simple-minded or just downright ignorant things they can do individually, and as a country, yet the bottom line is, they are still the most powerful nation on Earth, by far, and the Afghanistan debacle while tragic for the Afghani people, is just another wasteful squandering of its unlimited power which does not in the short term weaken America, but just shows it up to be what it has increasingly become since the Second World War, too full of itself, rash, too political, and downright wasteful. In being all that, America squanders its power.
There are some other other things that are hurting America grievously over the last few decades, and those are – its propensity for embarking on regime changes, which it does very badly; its untruthfulness while holding itself out to be the paragon of virtue (and in a corrupt world, that significantly erodes its moral high-ground); its disregard for the immense suffering, death and destruction its ‘endless regime change wars’ have inflicted on the people of its target countries (including crushing economic sanctions that hurt people not leaders, eg. Cuba, Lebanon, Belarus & Iran), and its playing favourites with certain grossly-misbehaving countries, while accusing and targeting others for the same violations, or even less. The two most prominent examples of its blatant favouritism are Saudi Arabia and Israel.
These consistent and many times hypocritical misdeeds have been damaging it steadily, yet the countries of the world have had no choice but to deal with it regardless of their discomfort with a lot of America’s behaviour, because of its overwhelming military and economic power. And because of that ‘too much power’, America has not had to be more careful, or analytical, or even intelligent, but has bulled ahead breaking entire countries like the proverbial bull-in-a-china-shop.
If it would only correct itself and become more judicious in the use of its seemingly endless resources, it will easily retain its preeminent position in the world for a very long time. If it doesn’t, it will hasten its ultimate demise.
Militarily, perhaps the humiliation of Afghanistan is going to make America more reticent to go rushing into another war, regardless of how much its massive military-industrial-complex and its political arm, the Republicans Party demand it. Additionally, it is hoped this latest debacle will result in serious and intelligent analysis of the wasteful ways it conducts its wars - ultimately losing them. So has the loss of the Afghanistan war made America militarily weaker, not really, as it uses its endless wars to hone, tone and build its extensive war capabilities.
Economically, America has already added the approximately $2 Trillion this war supposedly cost, it to its already bloated (and continuously bloating) balance sheet that is now in the range of $28 Trillion of national debt, which continues to expand under the decades-long wars, and the various monetary and fiscal ‘stimulation’ programs, under both Republican and Democrat administrations.
This massive build-up of debt is worrisome, but perhaps still manageable if the governments exercise extreme caution and use the money wisely going forward. But as generally governments are not prone to using money too wisely (what with all the special interests pulling and tugging on them every which way) the extraordinary debt burden will have an economic impact sometime down the road, but for now, most other countries are in the same debt-laden boat, and so are no further ahead. At least for the time being, American military and economic power remains intact, albeit somewhat humiliated, battered, and shell-shocked.
Where America has lost serious ground is in its overall image as a somewhat infallible super-power that somehow managed to evade serious injury because of its overall capabilities, regardless of its many military and political misadventures.
Decades of untruthful politics, where its leaders lied their way to escalations and defeats in Vietnam (Presidents Johnson-Nixon), Iraq (the two Bush(s) and now Afghanistan (again Bush), America’s credibility as a leading world-leader is seriously damaged, though perhaps fatally. [Iraq was no victory as the country is seriously broken, and now under the control of various militias].
In the near-term, America will suffer the well-deserved slings and arrows of finger-pointing, criticisms and blame for the long, expensive, tragic, and humiliating fiasco that Afghanistan turned out to be. But, if lessons are learnt, and remembered(!), America will become a bit more prudent and smarter in its future strategies. If it does that, and with its undiminished power (at least at present) it has the capacity to come out of this debacle stronger and hopefully the wiser for it (at least militarily). At the moment its greatest threat and weakness is its virulently divided politics, which detracts it from rebuilding itself, internally and externally, effectively; which leaves it as an overpowered machine in incapable hands, which makes it a danger to itself, and everyone else.