Keynez
JF-Expert Member
- Feb 12, 2007
- 2,408
- 3,891
Now, this is an old article but I've had it on my computer since it was first published. I just wanted to share it with you all, especially as Obama is prepared to make a decision on Afghanistan next week.
My questions are, will America fight to the end to hold on to her dominance on the world or will they learn from Britain and disengage quietly? If they do the later, how long do you think it will take them to make such a decision? What kind of event, economic, financial, political, military or otherwise that will tilt the balance of power in favor of America, and thus prolong the status-quo?
Moderator, you can move this thread if it is in the wrong section.
.............................................
The British Empire did not collapse, nor was it overthrown. It simply ran down. The U.S. could learn a lot from its cousins across the pond.
Post-colonial Britain projects soft power. It no longer meets the classic definition of a superpower, a nation with the will and ability independently to project its political, military and economic power around the world.
But it retains influence beyond its size, partly because of its alliance with the U.S. and partly because in a world of globalization, micro-nationalism and non-state powers, where the nation-state, let alone empire, is an increasing anomaly, power is no longer the ability to subject but to exert the soft suzerainty of commercial, cultural and moral ideas.
The ending of World War II left hard global power in the hands of the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The old European colonial powers, of which Britain was pre-eminent, were broken or defeated. The new superpowers were firmly of a mind not to let them rebuild their empires, especially as they had their own emerging ones of surrogates and proxies to consolidate.
An exhausted and impoverished Britain had failing desire and less means to project what little imperial power it still had. At the same time, popular sentiment in the country matched a growing tide of anti-colonial movements around the world. There was, as British Prime Minister Sir Harold MacMillan would put it, "a wind of change blowing."
His predecessor, Sir Anthony Eden, was, in the words of TheTimes (London), "the last prime minister to believe Britain was a great power, and the first to confront a crisis that proved she was not." Once the last thrash of empire--the Suez Crisis of 1956--was behind it, Britain decided to withdraw as peacefully as possible from its empire, and to redefine its world role as the bridge between the U.S. and the rest of the world--an "honest broker" in Macmillan's words.
In place of empire, Britain left a commonwealth of nations: a loose-knit group of countries that share a broadly similar view of parliamentary democracy; police, military and judicial systems based on English common law; and a widespread use of English--all of which arguably have helped many of its former colonies to make their way in the modern world better than former French, Dutch, Portuguese, German, Italian or Russian possessions.
The period of decolonization that followed World War II was the final stage in a half-century unwinding of what had been the largest empire in history. The empire on which the sun famously never set had been 300 years in the making, reaching its zenith at the start of the 20th century, when a political map of the world was awash in British imperial red.
Britannia then governed nearly 500 million people, then one-quarter of the world's population, controlled the same proportion of the globe's land mass and ruled most of waves between. Today Britain's colonial possessions are reduced to a few specs of rock: Bermuda and five island territories in the Caribbean, five in the South Atlantic, one apiece in the South Pacific and Indian oceans, Gibraltar and the British Antarctic Territory.
It was not an empire whose power waxed and then waned in one sweeping historical arc, like the Roman or Aztec empires. It did not collapse, nor was it overthrown so much as it ran down, particularly after World War II.
Even before then, the British empire was no monolith, and imperial administrators showed surprising flexibility. Some North American colonies were lost in the late 1700s, and within a century the remainder, save for Newfoundland, had become semiautonomous dominions (self-governing, including trade and foreign policy where it didn't conflict with British interests, with their own parliaments but retaining the British crown as head of state). The colonies in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Newfoundland had followed suit by 1910.
India, the jewel in the imperial crown, became a dominion in 1947 and a republic in 1950. Ireland was a dominion between 1922 and 1937; it, too, became an independent republic, in 1949. As both these cases remind, decolonization didn't always come without struggle, often violent. Mutiny, revolt and rebellion are part of the imperial lot.
Paul Kennedy, a Yale professor of history, put forward in his 1988 book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers the notion that a great power's economic rise and fall in relation to its rivals was as important to its longevity as its military supremacy. Finance, commerce and the popular arts have extended Britain's sway long beyond its time.
For the U.S., declining economic growth and rising military commitments won't necessarily signal the decline of Pax America unless others become disproportionately richer and stronger. That is why the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia are such threats to American power. And while it is difficult to imagine the U.S. accepting a diminishing status gracefully, it will have to find a destiny in that seam where finance and commerce meet politics and strategy. Post-imperial Britain shows a possible path.
It will require a greater mastery of soft power than the U.S. has hitherto exhibited. Britain's colonial rulers were also deft, like the Romans, Ottomans and Mongols before them, at co-opting their most talented and useful subjects into their imperial systems, and with it went a certain degree of toleration, adaptation and accommodation to the lands they ruled. It was an effective deployment of soft power, which meant the bayonets only came out in extremis.
The U.S., in contrast, has global reach and a global military footprint without having the permanent colonies to provide a mechanism for such co-option. Rough persuasion can impose its economic and military power. But it will need to find gentler ways to exert its ideological and cultural influence.
SOURCE http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/24/co...power08-cx_pm_0924maidment.html?feed=rss_news
My questions are, will America fight to the end to hold on to her dominance on the world or will they learn from Britain and disengage quietly? If they do the later, how long do you think it will take them to make such a decision? What kind of event, economic, financial, political, military or otherwise that will tilt the balance of power in favor of America, and thus prolong the status-quo?
Moderator, you can move this thread if it is in the wrong section.
.............................................
How To Lose An Empire--Gracefully
Paul Maidment, 09.24.08, 06:00 PM EDT
The British Empire did not collapse, nor was it overthrown. It simply ran down. The U.S. could learn a lot from its cousins across the pond.
Post-colonial Britain projects soft power. It no longer meets the classic definition of a superpower, a nation with the will and ability independently to project its political, military and economic power around the world.
But it retains influence beyond its size, partly because of its alliance with the U.S. and partly because in a world of globalization, micro-nationalism and non-state powers, where the nation-state, let alone empire, is an increasing anomaly, power is no longer the ability to subject but to exert the soft suzerainty of commercial, cultural and moral ideas.
The ending of World War II left hard global power in the hands of the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The old European colonial powers, of which Britain was pre-eminent, were broken or defeated. The new superpowers were firmly of a mind not to let them rebuild their empires, especially as they had their own emerging ones of surrogates and proxies to consolidate.
An exhausted and impoverished Britain had failing desire and less means to project what little imperial power it still had. At the same time, popular sentiment in the country matched a growing tide of anti-colonial movements around the world. There was, as British Prime Minister Sir Harold MacMillan would put it, "a wind of change blowing."
His predecessor, Sir Anthony Eden, was, in the words of TheTimes (London), "the last prime minister to believe Britain was a great power, and the first to confront a crisis that proved she was not." Once the last thrash of empire--the Suez Crisis of 1956--was behind it, Britain decided to withdraw as peacefully as possible from its empire, and to redefine its world role as the bridge between the U.S. and the rest of the world--an "honest broker" in Macmillan's words.
In place of empire, Britain left a commonwealth of nations: a loose-knit group of countries that share a broadly similar view of parliamentary democracy; police, military and judicial systems based on English common law; and a widespread use of English--all of which arguably have helped many of its former colonies to make their way in the modern world better than former French, Dutch, Portuguese, German, Italian or Russian possessions.
The period of decolonization that followed World War II was the final stage in a half-century unwinding of what had been the largest empire in history. The empire on which the sun famously never set had been 300 years in the making, reaching its zenith at the start of the 20th century, when a political map of the world was awash in British imperial red.
Britannia then governed nearly 500 million people, then one-quarter of the world's population, controlled the same proportion of the globe's land mass and ruled most of waves between. Today Britain's colonial possessions are reduced to a few specs of rock: Bermuda and five island territories in the Caribbean, five in the South Atlantic, one apiece in the South Pacific and Indian oceans, Gibraltar and the British Antarctic Territory.
It was not an empire whose power waxed and then waned in one sweeping historical arc, like the Roman or Aztec empires. It did not collapse, nor was it overthrown so much as it ran down, particularly after World War II.
Even before then, the British empire was no monolith, and imperial administrators showed surprising flexibility. Some North American colonies were lost in the late 1700s, and within a century the remainder, save for Newfoundland, had become semiautonomous dominions (self-governing, including trade and foreign policy where it didn't conflict with British interests, with their own parliaments but retaining the British crown as head of state). The colonies in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Newfoundland had followed suit by 1910.
India, the jewel in the imperial crown, became a dominion in 1947 and a republic in 1950. Ireland was a dominion between 1922 and 1937; it, too, became an independent republic, in 1949. As both these cases remind, decolonization didn't always come without struggle, often violent. Mutiny, revolt and rebellion are part of the imperial lot.
Paul Kennedy, a Yale professor of history, put forward in his 1988 book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers the notion that a great power's economic rise and fall in relation to its rivals was as important to its longevity as its military supremacy. Finance, commerce and the popular arts have extended Britain's sway long beyond its time.
For the U.S., declining economic growth and rising military commitments won't necessarily signal the decline of Pax America unless others become disproportionately richer and stronger. That is why the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia are such threats to American power. And while it is difficult to imagine the U.S. accepting a diminishing status gracefully, it will have to find a destiny in that seam where finance and commerce meet politics and strategy. Post-imperial Britain shows a possible path.
It will require a greater mastery of soft power than the U.S. has hitherto exhibited. Britain's colonial rulers were also deft, like the Romans, Ottomans and Mongols before them, at co-opting their most talented and useful subjects into their imperial systems, and with it went a certain degree of toleration, adaptation and accommodation to the lands they ruled. It was an effective deployment of soft power, which meant the bayonets only came out in extremis.
The U.S., in contrast, has global reach and a global military footprint without having the permanent colonies to provide a mechanism for such co-option. Rough persuasion can impose its economic and military power. But it will need to find gentler ways to exert its ideological and cultural influence.
SOURCE http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/24/co...power08-cx_pm_0924maidment.html?feed=rss_news
nahuu ndio ukweli ila hamukumuelewa
marais wote waliopita baada ya vita baridi hawakua vyema na Russia 
