Amidst all the warlike talk from some US political figures
and some media talking heads, who are the real enemies of America?
Russia certainly was an enemy during the Cold War years, because
it wanted to export its communist system (which was really just another dictatorship)
throughout the world. But today’s Russia is a shell of its former Soviet self,
with a declining and aging population and an economy about the size of Italy,
and no longer seeks to export its political system. Russia has brilliant
designers of ships and aircraft and tanks, as good as anything the West has,
but can’t afford to build or operate and maintain very many of them and doesn’t
have the industrial base to sustain a major war with the West. They are
certainly a regional power, and their understandable paranoia about the West
(after Hitler’s and Napoleon’s invasions) means that they will continue to
maneuver to gain influence around their borders. President Putin has been
extraordinarily good at punching above his weight in international affairs and
wrong-footing American policy. But Russia is no existential threat to America
despite its nuclear arsenal, and although Russia and America have different
agendas on many issues, there are many other issues on which we can work
together productively.
China is a rising power, though still a regional one. China
historically has been the dominant Asian power, and would like to regain that
position. China doesn’t aspire to control the world, just to control Asia and
be recognized as a major world power. Like Russia and many other countries, its
birth rate is falling as its population becomes educated, and by about 2030 the
population is expected to stabilize and then begin to slowly decline. In
industrial and intellectual power China is approaching the US and may soon
surpass it. There is no doubt that China is fast becoming America’s main
commercial rival in world markets, but that doesn’t mean they are necessarily
an enemy. If China threatens anyone it is Russia, with a thinly-populated Russian
Siberia encompassing vast natural resources beckoning to China’s population. And in fact China has a historical claim to
Siberia, which was essentially taken from them by Russia in the 1860’s, not so
long ago as national memories go. As is the case with Russia, although China
and America have different agendas on many issues, there are many other issues
on which we can work together productively.
Iran has a leadership that uses hatred of America as a means
of maintaining political legitimacy within the country. But this leadership is
aging, and the younger generation of Iranians actually admire America and
things American. Moreover they are largely secular; despite the theocracy
ruling Iran mosque attendance, especially among the young, is very low. And of course
Iran doesn’t have an economy of a size to support a major war; it was strained
to its limit just in the war with Iraq. So although Iran may continue to be a
spoiler in the Middle East mess, it certainly isn’t an existential threat to
America. I suspect that if we just wait
a while, the older generation of theocrats and revolutionaries will die off and
Iran will revert to a Westernized Persian culture, though perhaps a fairly
corrupt one, since the Revolutionary Guards have managed to gain control of
most of the economy to enrich themselves.
North Korea of course has been blustering a great deal lately, as it has in the past. But realistically Kim Jong-il really just wants one
thing – for his totalitarian regime to survive. He doesn’t aspire to take over
the world, or even to take over South Korea. He doesn’t aspire to export his
system to other places. He doesn’t even
aspire to be a serious commercial competitor to the US in world markets, or to
oppose our policies in other parts of the world. He just wants to survive, and
his nuclear program and posturing is aimed only at that – survival. That is why sanctions and international
pressure are unlikely to ever drive him to give up his nuclear program. In the
long run containment until the system collapses of its own inconsistencies and
inefficiency is probably the best route,
though given the effective brainwashing of the North Korean population that may
take a long time – 50 years or more.
The Islamic jihad currently roiling the Middle East will
continue to produce terrorist attacks. But these, while painful and potentially
expensive, are hardly an existential threat to America or any other nation.
There is no mass army, no massive industrial base in this Islamic jihad to
support a major confrontation with America.
Terrorists from this movement will continue to bedevil the world for
decades to come, and stir up a lot of publicity (which we would be smarter not
to give them), but realistically they are not an existential threat to the nation,
even if they were to manage to pull off a major attack, like a dirty bomb in a
major city.
And who else is there who might threaten America, whose national
interests conflict so badly with ours that they might go to war with us, and
who have an economy able to sustain such a war? That’s not to say that there won’t be local
clashes here and there from time to time, but I don’t really see any prospect of
a major war in the next few decades unless politicians badly mishandle things
(though they have done that before, as in World War I).
That’s not to say that we should just sit back. If we want
to shape world events we need to keep our economy strong, our industrial base
healthy, our population well educated and skilled, our military up to date and
well trained, and our intelligence system functioning well (certainly better
than it has been recently).. A nation in decline, whatever the reason for that
decline, invites testing by others who aspire to replace it. But it seems to me all this talk of America’s
enemies is just political fearmongering. We have no serious enemies at the
moment, unless it is ourselves.
Posts
