> Just as the dollar, made the global reserve currency by the
> sword, has allowed Washington to run an empire on budget and trade
> deficits, the American Language, an inheritor of the linguistic
> estate of the British Empire and its colonial subjects, has allowed
> Washington to manage the empire on foreign language education
> deficits, sparing it the costs of establishing a British-style
> colonial civil service.
Not so. The US built and maintained a vast imperial superstructure called the military-industrial complex -- hundreds of overseas bases, millions of troops, academic thinktanks and area studies programs, etc. all financed by outlays equivalent to 8-10% of US GDP for nearly 40 years.
The spread of English is just like the spread of the media culture, or the cell-phonization of the global periphery -- not necessarily a bad thing, in fact, it can be a stepping stone to all sorts of good things.
-- DRR