IMHO, you are right. Only Obama can rebuild USA hegemony.
But I fear that McCain's "swift boat" campaing will work. That will not be good.
I'd love to see your evidence that any US President has enlisted the strategy of "going public" internationally, especially going over the heads of European leaders that tend to be massively popular, and effectively inspiring public sentiment in Europe for American ideals? I feel like some of the suggestions you've made in this post need more fleshing out with historical example or more explicit reasoning that Obama can actually do these things you suggest that he can. I see all these points you've written about what the next president must do to be successful, then you say Obama would be better at them, but there is no real reason why - and that is what I'm interested in. Why would Obama accomplish in today's crisis, where McCain or any other US president probably would not? I hope you're right, but I want to know why.
Peter
Why do we need an American Hegemony or Informal Empire?
After WWII the role was sort of forced on us because no one else could do what was necessary. But the post WWII recovery has happened. China Japan India Europe Brazil among others is more than able to protect international peace in their neighborhood, why should we?
Yes we have more than a bit to put our own house in order right now, and a smooth transition will take time and patient negotiation.
One of the things that struck me about the old Empires was the military commitment. To take an example, since the British ruled the Punjab they got the duty to defend it against Pathan raiders. An ugly task that falls to whomever rules the Punjab. Using Punjab recruited sepoys makes sense; it is their home, but why English, Scots and Irish? The Punjab was than more than able to provide enough troops for it’s defense and pay for them. After WWII the overseas deployments were probably necessary because no one else could enforce a peace. But now the regional powers are able to keep the local peace, though Eurpope especially may need the kick of being told it’s their job of and we won’t do it for them.
And a basic fact of current American society is that once we clear Iraq and Afganistan no President will be politically able to launch another major expeditionary force for at least ten years, baring the actual use of Nuclear weapons or similar catastrophe. But pursuing a policy of reestablishing hegemony is the policy most likely to require a large expeditionary force to enforce the hegemony.
While the Georgians paid a very high tuition, Vladimir Putin provided a very apt lesson in the fundamental reality that balance of power and spheres of influence trump most anything. A policy of hegemony would pretty much mean operating in others actual or perceived spheres of influence where the local power is balanced away from us. Defining with others what are the limits and roles of spheres of influence would seem a more positive activity than restoring Hegonomy.
It would seem to me that your core argument is that Obama is better able than McCain to do something we should be getting out of. I’m not sure it is the right question.
Thank you.
Hank, you raise a key question, and I think the best response is found in the inability to stem the ongoing global economic crisis-- as its now moved beyond a credit or even financial crisis to a global economic crisis.
AS the NYT article I cited in the post indicated, so far each nation has taken a every-finance-minister-for-himself approach. The EU has fractured along national lines. Iceland is a mess. Britain has just announced a massive bailout.
What is lacking is a global economic institution that could deal with just such a global economic crisis. The IMF was originally designed for this purpose, the G-7 once did this. But who is there today?
What we're learning is that this crisis defies the ability of any one government to act. What seems to be needed is a global action by governments and international institutions to reassure economic confidence, provide necessary capitalization and liquidity, and prevent the crisis from crossing borders, escaping attempts to contain it.
Iceland is nearly bankrupt! To whom should they turn?
Revitalizing the institutional authority that formed the foundations of US hegemony allow global management of global crises, and we seem to have more and more of those and yet less and less capacity to address them.
Peter
Thank you for your apt comments.
It seems to me thatit is US Hegemony that allowed a “single point of failure” the US mortgage market, to wreck the world system.
When we design a very large computer system we go for multiple redundancy, distributed processing so a failure is just a burp and not a “single point of failure that brings everything down with it, and local systems having enough anatomy to maintain a basic level of functions even if the system goes down. When a catastrophic event happens a centralized control cannot keep up with the event. A Hegemonic system works against these in favor of centralization where every thing is up or down and we have a setup for another round. I realize there is difference between world wide financial systems and computer systems but my guess is that something produced from increased Hegemony will make future events more likely and increase the difficulty in dealing with them. As well as the US getting the blame because the expectation will be that we can do what is impossible.
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