> then it wouldnt be long before it was invaded by Russia or China
I would be lying if I claimed I hadn't dreamed of being liberated by a foreign power with more cultural competence at governance (which excludes Russia, obviously, but they probably at least aren't worse), but realistically anything but a slow scale-down in military power would probably entail the bloodiest world (and civil) war in history. Maybe nukes, too.
But, there's a fork in the road. We can choose to scale down our military presence (and control of trade) today, and figure out how we actually want to exist in a global community outside of letting our corporations swing their dicks freely... Or we can blow trillions of dollars continuing to make fools of ourselves rampaging through other countries rather than building high speed rail before we lose our grip on hegemony anyway as a matter of pure economics.
Or, I suppose, we can just murder anyone who disagrees with us until we're just miserably exploiting each other inside of high walls armed with automated guns. Something tells me that's the option we're going to pick.
I would be lying if I claimed I hadn't dreamed of being liberated by a foreign power with more cultural competence at governance (which excludes Russia, obviously, but they probably at least aren't worse), but realistically anything but a slow scale-down in military power would probably entail the bloodiest world (and civil) war in history. Maybe nukes, too.
But, there's a fork in the road. We can choose to scale down our military presence (and control of trade) today, and figure out how we actually want to exist in a global community outside of letting our corporations swing their dicks freely... Or we can blow trillions of dollars continuing to make fools of ourselves rampaging through other countries rather than building high speed rail before we lose our grip on hegemony anyway as a matter of pure economics.
Or, I suppose, we can just murder anyone who disagrees with us until we're just miserably exploiting each other inside of high walls armed with automated guns. Something tells me that's the option we're going to pick.