As I mentioned in a previous post on ideology, I have been reading The New Asian Hemisphere by Kishore Mahbubani. One of the major themes in the book is that the West must prepare to cede power to the numerically superior East given their increasing economic power and standard of living. Mahbubani states:
"The West will find it difficult.....there is an even more deeply held belief in Western minds that Western civilization represents the apex of human civilization and that any alternative would portend a new dark age. Any people who believe this must also believe they have a moral duty to preserve the supremacy of western civilization."
What scares me about this statement is the notion that we will defend the status quo on moral grounds. If we review recent history, we see that the moral compass of the U.S. government has been broken probably since 1989. If you do not memorize my posts, in a post on Audacious Goals I pointed out that Communism collapsed in 1989. Up until that time a moral philosophy tended to govern U.S. foreign policy as the basis of an ideology to fight communism. After 1989 we had Clinton and Bush, excessive dysfunctional partisan politics in Washington and probably the single most immoral act by the U.S. government in its history--the management of the occupation of Iraq. My view is that when communism collapsed, Washington had few, if any, constraints and we descended into an amoral or immoral way of operating. For example, one school of U.S. foreign policy says that we should not enter into treaties and other legal agreements because we are the only power in the world today that can project military power, i.e. mount an invasion across an ocean, and treaties restrain this power.
Now with the moral compass broken, and no audacious goal to bring us back on course, Mahbubani thinks we will opt for a "moral duty to preserve the supremacy of western civilization". Very scary to think that a Bill Clinton or a George W. Bush type President will be determining what is moral and what we should preserve defend. Equally scary, we elected both of these guys in democratic elections. Where are Eisenhower or Kennedy when we need them?
Also, remember that power is rarely ceded without military conflict. If you read the current thinking by U.S. military strategists, they are preparing for war with China. First of all, there may not be anybody else left to fight, and secondly China is definitely the biggest military threat in the next 20-50 years. Resource constraints will cause the friction as it always does. I do not fault the U.S. military, a very fine institution with a remarkable history. What scares me is the absence of morality in the Washington leadership that controls the U.S. military power.
Dr. Henry Kissinger, a noted historian before he became U.S. Secretary of State and opened up U.S. diplomatic relations with China, said that the U.S. was the first country in world history that did not act purely out of self-interest. Kissinger believed that at times the U.S. acted based on a moral compass. The U.S. desperately needs to find its moral way again before Washington starts talking about the morality of "preserving Western civilization".
Think about this post before you vote in the U.S. presidential elections in November 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020.........If you don't vote in U.S. elections, listen for the phrase "preserving western civilization" from the candidates and when you hear it, you will know its time to sell your U.S. stocks and move to the most most remote location you can afford.
