[WS:] The sun finally set over the British Empire quite peacefully as well. As Orwell argued (http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/ghandi.html) this happened, for the most part, thanks to a Labour government to exit India.
While we are at that, I think that there is a significant differences between the Soviet or the British empires on the one hand, and the US empire on the other. In the British or the Soviet cases, the impact of the empire on domestic life was rather limited. It manifested itself largely in the form of overseas careers for a relatively small group of government and military functionaries. Scaling down the imperial ventures reduced these opportunities, but it had limited impact on the domestic economy and society.
In the case of the US, by contrast, giving up the empire will translate into giving up a parasitic and wasteful life style that most of the US population enjoys as imperial spoils, from cheap gas to debt underwriting by foreign investors. As in the new "Alice in the Wonderland" flick, as soon as the head of the Jabberwocky - the bloated US military - rolls, the imperial servants will refuse to render their services the Red Queen, and that will be the end of tribute that the US receives from the rest of the world. And with that will come significant belt tightening - which fill catch most of the US population with their pants down (as demonstrated by a brief spike in gas prices in 2008.)
Wojtek
On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 8:15 PM, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The notion of the USSR "losing" the Cold War is a little weird anyway. The
> Cold War ended in the late 80s, prior to the Soviet Union being dismantled
> (practically the only time in history that an empire has dismantled itself,
> by the way). During this period, the US was giving the USSR aid and trying
> to keep it from being dismantled.
>
> It's like two boxers are going at it, then one guy says, "this fight is
> stupid; let's quit." The other guy says, "OK." Then boxer number 1 has a
> heart attack from his congenital heart condition and boxer no 2 tries to get
> help. Too late! Boxer 1 dies. Boxer 2 doesn't get to say he won the match.
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: "dredmond at efn.org" <dredmond at efn.org>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Sent: Mon, April 19, 2010 3:47:10 AM
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Losing to Win
>
> On Sun, April 18, 2010 2:22 pm, James Heartfield wrote:
>
> > There is a reason that the USSR lost the Cold War.
>
> Russia didn't lose a damn thing. They were poor village-dwellers before
> the Cold War, and poor city-dwellers after the Cold War. If anyone lost,
> it was the US -- the military-industrial complex screwed our economy,
> corrupted our democracy, and spawned successive petro-fundamentalisms
> ("we'll use our big guns to take their oil") and market fundamentalisms
> ("we'll use our big guns to sell them bogus derivatives"), each more
> self-destructive than the next.
>
> The only winning move of the Cold War, to paraphrase the great movie
> "Wargames", was not to play.
>
> -- DRR
>
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