- Goodbye to the “unipolar moment”…
- The New Spain?…
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Dear Reader,
The semi-war, semi-truce twilit conflict with Iran exceeds 100 days. When will it conclude? And on whose terms?
I do not know. Nor do I know if the United States will retain its vast superintendence over Middle East affairs once the conflict does conclude.
I suspect it will not — not to the prior extent, that is.
Meantime, the United States maintains its materiel support of Ukraine against devil Russia. I do not know when this particular conflict will conclude.
Yet I hazard Mr. Putin will attain the majority of his war objectives. The United States and its NATO understrappers will endure something resembling strategic defeat.
No More “Unipolar Moment”
Thus the “unipolar moment” in which the United States basked after the Cold War concluded is passing into history.
A “multipolar world” is likely taking form.
Yet let us consider the United States’ overall position — the historical position.
As I have argued before: Many believe the United States is the heir of Rome.
Rome is the United States… the United States is Rome. Thus Washington bears the label, “The New Rome.”
Yet is the United States… in fact… more Spain than Rome?
Less Rome Than Spain
A certain R. Taggart Murphy professes international political economy at a Japanese university. From whom:
- Those contemplating the possible demise of American global hegemony most often turn for lessons to Rome… but the parallels between America and Spain are striking.
Striking? You have seized my attention. Please, sir, elaborate.
- Spain was the first global superpower. Obviously, there had been other great powers — Rome, the China of the Tang and Ming dynasties, the vast Mongol domains — but none had spanned oceans and continents the way the Spanish Empire did at its height.
- In the first half of the 16th century, Charles V reigned over vast swathes of Europe; his son Philip II controlled most of the Western Hemisphere as well as a sizable chunk of Asia (the Philippines were named after him).
- Imperial Spain’s maximum territorial reach would only be surpassed by the British Empire in the 19th century, and in the 20th by the informal American imperium, with its 750 overseas bases and network of global alliances.
I must agree. The Spanish reach was vast — as the American reach is vast.
Money and Empire: A Parallel
And as the American empire bosses the world with its dollar… for the present, at least… the Spanish Empire bossed the world with its gold and silver specie:
- The most revealing parallels relate to a different expansionary dynamic — that of money. The key to so much else that happened to both countries was the appearance of what seemed like unlimited wealth but was actually access to unlimited quantities of a universal medium of exchange, craved and accepted everywhere.
- In the late 16th century, the Spanish elite could buy whatever it wanted wherever it wanted with the gold and silver that was pouring into Spain from the mines of Peru and Mexico. Today, the American ruling class can do the same with U.S. dollars created at will…
- That Midas-like power permitted elites in both countries to confuse money with what it could buy, and led to financialization, politically dangerous levels of inequality and the wasting of wealth on endless wars aimed at remaking the world in the image, respectively, of Iberian Catholicism and American democracy.
I believe this Murphy fellow has struck bullseye.
He sketches a parallel very nearly perfect — in my estimation at least.
Mr. Murphy proceeds to inform us that Spain was the most debt-sunken nation of Europe… despite its near infinities of gold and silver.
I might remind you that the United States national debt presently exceeds $39 trillion. And that its debt-to-GDP ratio scales 124%.
Spain Blows It
What, Mr. Murphy, befell Spain and its American-mirrored empire?
- Spain blew it. Already by the middle of the 17th century, under the crisis-ridden rule of Philip IV, the Iberian kingdom “had been left behind by the rest of Europe,” as John A. Crow wrote in his classic study Spain: The Root and the Flower.
- The next question is the natural question: Will the United States steer an identical course?
- Over the past several decades, dollar hegemony has landed the United States in the same position that Spain enjoyed after the conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires. Like Habsburg monarchs of an earlier age, those who manage the American economy are able to run “deficits without tears”…
- But if Spanish history is any guide… all that money tempts you to do what less well-positioned countries would hesitate to consider — because they can’t afford it: namely, wage endless wars.
Endless wars! Do you view the parallel?
Imperial Ideology
Mr. Murphy cites an additional Spanish-American parallel: Ideology.
Spain had its infamous Inquisition, yes.
Yet the United States has run its own Inquisition of sorts — an Inquisition not religious in nature — yet secular in nature.
It has enforced the catechisms of democracy, tolerance and equality.
Its devils are autocracy, dictatorship and in Iran’s case, theocracy:
- The parallels extend from the material substrate to the cultural and ideological realm… Washington [has established] an updated Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition…
- The institutional and technical apparatus that this newly reincarnated Holy Office has constructed to impose orthodoxy and eliminate error would earn the envy and admiration of its Spanish forebears.
- It starts with the ubiquitous diversity, equity and inclusion offices in practically every corporation, university, government agency and civil-society organization…
- It has new names, the “Global Engagement Center” in the State Department being one of the most noteworthy, but the aims remain the same: ferreting out heresy or, as they now call it, “disinformation.”
Can Trump Really Stop It?
Once again I believe there is juice here. The American imperium has borne a very powerful ideological impress.
You may label it “woke,” though the term lacks the oomph it packed a few short years ago.
President Trump has declared loudly against it. He and his subordinates have labored to purge it from government.
Yet can they truly scotch it?
I do not know. Bureaucracies are inert objects. They cling to their imperatives and resist orders they do not like.
They need merely “wait out” an administration hostile to them. In this particular instance, the Trump administration.
Meantime, empires run to their own logic over time.
In conclusion, I believe this Murphy fellow has done capital work… and my applause is like thunder.
Should you seek to find the proper historical parallel to the United States, perhaps you should look less to Rome.
Perhaps you should look more to Spain.
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
