'American Military Might is a Myth'

This is a fine article, which I don't necessarily agree with. Excerpts:

A year can be a short time in politics. Surprisingly short, if you compare the stories dominating the media and party conversations this week with those of a year ago.

Then, as now, gallows humor about the frightening incompetence of the Bush Administration, especially in Iraq, was fashionable.

With poetic justice, the biggest loser of 2005 has turned out to be the previous year's most undeserving winner—Mr. Bush. Largely because of the sheer incompetence of the US occupation of the Iraq, confirmed by the even greater incompetence displayed after Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Bush's incomprehensible popularity and mysterious power over American voters have vanished in a puff of smoke, like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.

The rapid decay of the Bush presidency can have broad significance, for it could inspire a profound reassessment of America's global hegemony and its role in the world. After 9/11, and especially after easy invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, America has been widely believed to dominate the world because of its unchallengeable military power. But this year's events in Iraq and Washington have shown this assessment to be simply wrong.

America's military power, at least in the hands of Mr. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, has turned out to be, as in Vietnam, a paper tiger. Yet America is more globally dominant than ever before. The explanation of this paradox lies in America's economic performance, which has been as spectacularly successful and as skillfully managed this year as the military operations have bungled. The US has again had the fastest-growing advanced economy in the world. And this 20-year winning streak is bound to continue as long as Europe entrusts its economic management to institutions even more incompetent than the Pentagon under Mr. Rumsfeld.

In other words, the saying that "the business of America is business" has never been more true. More than ever before, it is the success of the US economy, and the associated strength of its higher education system, rather than anything to do with armed might, that assures America's cultural dominance, even in such pathologically introverted societies as Iran, Saudi Arabia and China.

America owes its global hegemony to the "soft power" that European politicians boast about but are unable to harness, mainly because of Europe's incompetent economic management. Meanwhile, the "hard" military power beloved of braggart neoconservatives turns out to be largely an illusion—and one that America cannot sustain on its own. This paradox is, to me, the most interesting lesson of 2005.



Anatolie Kaletsky

Published in The Times, Thursday Dec 22, 2005 The main title: The truely historic discovery of 2005: American military might is a myth