Review: The Limits of Power

March 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

My March book was The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, which is an examination of America’s world view that influences our foreign policy decisions.  How we see ourselves dictates how we see others & our role in the global political arena.  A brief walk through the history of our country, beginning with Manifest Destiny until we were a global super-power that emerged from the carnage of World War II through our abundant natural resources and entrepreneurial spirit.  I do love America & recognize how unique and special our country  and especially our people are, but I by no means think we are superior or have all the best of everything to the detriment of all other countries.  But this exceptionalism has been pounded into our national psyche and we rarely stop to wonder how our country has done wrong or erred in the past.  This desire to be bigger & better was a source of decades of positive growth through the 20th century, but which lead us to a crises of Profligacy. Um, yea I had to look that word up too.  I ignored it the first few times, but it’s the central theme of the book.

profligacy

1. dissolute or immoral behavior.
2. reckless and extravagant spending or behavior.

Profligacy is the main topic of the first chapter which details the careless wastefulness of the United States- both individual citizens and our government in general.  In America, the ultimate sacred tome is freedom.  Freedom above all other things, but what does freedom really translate into?  The freedom to buy everything & do anything you want.  Freedom is buying the biggest house you can, driving the largest car you can, and running up the largest credit card bills you can manage.   The white picket fence in a tree-lined yuppie neighborhood with a 2-car garage and 2 kids is the American Dream that so many chase after.  Looking at the history of our national debt and trade deficits in the US, we are taking in goods & sending money overseas at astronomical rates.  All this consumption drives our need for cheap goods, cheap energy (namely foreign oil), and cheap credit.  In order to secure those things, our foreign policy has been severely misguided by lavish lifestyles and addiction to a capitalistic freedom.  This insatiable desire for the freedom & security has lead us to a political and military crisis.  You know there is something wrong when, instead of asking citizens to sacrifice and support our mission, our President tells the country to continue shopping as we entered the last war.

The chapter on our political crises details the enormous shift of power into the hands of imperial presidents, who have meddled in foreign affairs far & wide of the last few decades.  These forays sent trillions of dollars and our citizens in the military to conflicts principally only to secure the flow of goods, oil and credit into our borders.   I could write at length about how disturbed and disillusioned I have been with our government’s power grab since 9/11 through things like the PATRIOT act, secret renditions & torturing alleged suspects that will never be given their international right to a trail or even the absurdity of the TSA’s security rules for flying on a commercial plane.  The business of fear in the country has gone through the roof & terror sells.  Our government is buying & we are paying for an ever-increasing military-industrial complex as the State Department, the Armed Forces, the National Security Council, the intelligence agencies,  the Department of Homeland Security all grow at a break-neck pace.  Simply, it’s very lucrative to be in the terror business.  There is no accountability or transparency in any branch of government that deals with defense, policing or military activities.  No debate, much less valid criticism, is even allowed to be had about the necessity of this military-capitalistic arrangement- even as we slash benefits & education budgets, no politician or the vast majority of citizens are even willing to take a critical look at the enormous portion of our budgets that go towards defense.
The third main chapter was about the crisis in the military.  He examined the failures and lesson of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.  No matter how revolutionized or advanced we become, war is still a huge unknown that always carries risks and uncertainty.  Yes, we “won” in both of these wars within days, but the real enemy & threat was the underlying cultural and socioeconomic problems that we would end up battling for years into the future.  There were dozens of missteps, miscalculations and plain ineptitude in both of these wars, and the author talks at length about the failure of in our military to have excellent leadership that would have good strategy and a keen sense of global political affairs.  Nobody is talking about how energy-independence would dramatically bolster our national security and make us re-evaluate the need to go into foreign countries to secure cheap oil.  It’s not viewed as patriotic to be debt-free or (semi) self-sufficient, even with something as simple as having your own garden. There aren’t discussions being had about how all the oil and goods we import are funding corrupt and immoral regimes around the world with our dollars.  And yet, we have to spent tax dollars to fight and war with the same countries we are purchasing oil from.  As a country, we are willing to go to war to protect our freedoms & secure our cheap oil, goods and credit, but we are unwilling to make any material sacrifices (raise taxes to balance the budget and fund the war?) or even alter our behavior to decrease our need to go to war in the first place.
Finally, the author suggests a few realistic goals that our citizens individually and government at large should aim our efforts and re-focus our foreign policy goals around.  The first main goal is energy independence that would go a long way towards solving many of our other problems and help us bad rampant consumptionism.     The second goal that he offers is the global nuclear disarmament.  We’ve had a stable global society co-existing with an ever increasing nuclear stockpiles around the world.  Most countries will handle them reasonably (is there even such a thing???), but the real threat to everybody on earth is that rogue dictators or small terror groups will get their hands on this material and be infinitely more likely to actually use it than the countries that currently posses weapons.  Reducing the overall number of weapons around the globe and ensuring they don’t fall into the wrong hand should be a goal that all countries can work towards.  Finally, addressing the threat of climate change should be a priority of our foreign policy since many of the developed world is largely responsible for the pollution and consumption of goods.  Pollution and climate change will forever alter the weather and resource patterns (food and clean water) that would drive many regions into instability through wars and also exacerbate extreme weather conditions like flooding or droughts that cause widespread loss of life and disaster.
All in all, a very heavy book, but a quick read that touched on so many important topics and how they are all woven together.
GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Luckily I got out in downtown Baltimore to do a little exploring yesterday as the forecast for today is rain/snow with a high AND low of 39 degrees.
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