Blacken - Fair enough, there were plenty of things I hadn't considered, as I expected, as I didn't put a whole lot of thought into the matter and I'm not keen on doing political research (both my house mates work at state treasury and I'm a whore for live radio feeds of federal parliment, I'm freakin' sick of hearing about the asnine crap that goes on in Australian and international politics, would kill myself or others if I had to actually get in-depth). Nonetheless, I do have a couple of counterpoints to the ones you raised. Given the increasingly international nature of corporations, the increasing irrelevance of millitary hardware, the rising economic power of a certain couple of Asian countries/EU and the sharp decline of positive exported culture, I'm still of the opinion that the USA superpower isn't likely to be 'the' superpower much longer.
Before you get all huffy over my apparent ignoring of your well-written points about the millitary and culture -
Large conventional armies aren't really much use anymore, say all you want about how great supercarrier groups are or how tough the M1A1 is or how super-effective superfighters are, the fact of the matter is that they're all pretty worthless in the event of a nuclear war (MAD doctrine is called such for a reason, after all - fleets aren't much use if home is a burning wasteland) and the era of large scale conventional combat is pretty well over thanks to the nuclear stockpiles built up around important parts of the world. The last 60 years have pretty much been spent on policing actions and kicking the crap out of countries with armies so poorly organised as to barely deserve the name. The few major invasions undertaken by western armies since the Korean war have pretty much (besides being almost entirely avoidable and voluntary exercises by the invading governments) exclusively ended in failure when it comes to their original objectives, not because the military was incapable of physically achieving victory in conventional combat but because... well, they were *only* capable of achieving victory in conventional combat. You just can't win by shooting shit anymore, politics and perceptions are about the only things relevant in the big picture when undertaking policing actions. F-35s don't win wars. Granted, it's taking quite some time for people to catch on and in the meantime the USA is still getting pretty good contracts to build 'em. Just saying, using an argument of military superiority is pretty flawed, given modern history.
As for culturally in the context of media - that's also entirely relevant. Because Australia is a democracy, our politicians will pretty much only do what gets them brownie points with the faceless masses. The faceless masses tend to just go with the flow of hearsay and themes, usually provided in the form of popular media like movies and the evening news. It used to be a rather sad little undercurrent of a message about how great it is to try and emulate our bestest English-speaking friends, the USA or that you guys were our brothers in spirit or some overly simplistic crap like that (Yeah, I'm also simplifying it further and making it all rather stupid, I know). However, with that message gone, the whole invasions thing, your fantastically retarded sounding public political discourse and a Prime Minister in office who is busy trying to suck up to countries that aren't the US, the undercurrent of anti-Americanism is free to prosper. Of course, while only a marginal effect, a country that used to spend its diplomatic efforts trying to become bum-buddies with the USA is now pretty well indifferent, which I'd say is a major deal. Especially as we aren't the only one. After all, my entire direction here is about perceptions, because perceptions and images are what condition people's actions towards things, and people's actions have a tendency to push the reality of a situation towards their preconceptions. That may come in the form of poorer sales for Corporations that identify as American (prompting further internationalism), more business taken to other hubs and economies, public outcry should our government decide to spend money helping you guys out of some crisis in the future... plenty of actions could be influenced by perception.
I'd better stop typing now. It's very late and I'm not entirely certain I'm writing anything that's even vaguely useful to any argument anywhere. There's bound to be dozens of logical potholes in this completely speculative little theory I have going. So, sorry if I've managed to write complete shit, feel free to post counter-arguments. I like learning. Also screw you guys who hate long posts, they're what make threads worthwhile, one-liners get boring after a couple of pages :p
Author
Topic: Ignornce is Strenght (Read 41398 times)