New American Century
America embarks upon a New Century
We are at the dawn of what is being called a "New American Century"what this means is that America is triumphant and dominant throughout the world. Our economy is the world's richest, our technology is the most advanced, our military is the most powerful and most advanced in the world, our culture has become the world's dominant culture and the rest of the world has essentially adopted our political system and philosophy of government or at least pays lip service to it.
American domination of the world isn't a fantasy or a dream, it's a fact, it's a reality that we're living in. Like it or not, for better or worse America dominates the world. In a way America owns the world. We can't ignore this reality or pull away from it we have to rise to the challenge and use our position to make the world a better place. To use our military might, technological power and economic strength to help the people of the world overcome poverty, oppression, violence, ignorance, war, tyranny, terrorism, disease, hunger and the rest of the monsters that still plague most of the globe's population. We must end the destruction and devastation of the environment, feed the hungry, free the slaves, topple the tyrants, wipe out or at least tame the terrorists and do a million other things.
These tasks won't be easy, they'll be expensive and painful requiring great sacrifice from both Americans and foreigners. Unlike the naysayers in the media and the morons on the left I think America can rise to this challenge and meet it magnificently. As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq prove today's Americans are just as tough, brave and dedicated as the generation of World War II and guess what we're a lot smarter and more sophisticated than that generation.
The next few decades are going to be tough ones for America and the world. We're likely to see more terrorism and violence from unexpected quarters, new diseases like SARS appear, economic dislocation on a vast scale, environmental devastation and suffering caused by global warming and related phenomenons, the depletion of the oil reserves and the collapse of the traditional nation state in many areas of the world, societies we thought stable and enduring will collapse into anarchy, political orders will crumble like poorly built structures during earth quakes, we'll see new barbarism, new violence, new problems everywhere.
Yet we'll see new opportunities. We'll make new friends even as old ones stab us in the back. Old enemies will become staunch allies and old allies implacable enemies.
In particular an opportunity for America to build a genuine new world order. To bring capitalism and democracy to every corner of the world. To help the poor people of Africa, Latin America and Asia get out of the slums to lay the basis for a democratic world government and a just world order. To put an end to poverty, hunger, war, oppression, tyranny and slavery in human history.
It won't be an easy task we'll run into lots of opposition from traditional elites that don't want to loose their power and would be elitists who see us as a threat to their potential power. Fanatics will hate us and try to kill us, intellectuals will bad mouth us and attack us, religious fanatics will call us the devil, political fanatics will brand us imperialists, foreign leaders will pretend to be our friends and stab us in the back. Despots will take our money and use it to buy weapons to use against us.
There will be lots of wars too, but no great wars. Small wars like that in Afghanistan battles in jungles, in mountains and back alleys of cities great and small. There will be no great battles or mighty air strikes, no need for battleships or flying fortresses, little use for tanks and aircraft carriers. There won't be a need for a draft or war bond drives or patriotic rallies. Instead we'll need professional soldiers tough working class guys and gals who make the uniform and the service their career. Fortunately we have plenty of those people in America. We'll need new high tech weaponry devices to see through walls, battle armor to protect individual soldiers, improved rifles and grenade launchers so our soldiers can battle in the streets and the woods. Thankfully America has lots of that stuff too and an ability to bring it to our soldiers as quickly as they need it.
Yet when the dust clears in say 2040 or 2050 we'll be in a better world. A more peaceful world, where the great environmental crises will be over, although I'm sure the scars they left will be around for millions of years. The wars will be over, the terrorists will be history and the world will settle in for a long, long peace. A sort of golden age. Many of us alive will live to see it. A lot of us won't believe our eyes.