"An era of state capitalism has dawned, one in which governments are again directing huge flows of capital—even across the borders of capitalist democracies."

I'll say, just look at what the Fed is doing. The conversion to state capitalism is not one that is limited to a few authoritarian regimes with more money than sense. The US is showing that it believes that direct state intervention is necessary, at least with regards to financial institutions, airlines and - quite likely - car manufacturers. They can join the farming sector in their dependency on government handouts.

Meanwhile, the refusal of the US to become more energy-efficient is a large part of the current energy crisis. It's hardly news that the world has limited resources and that the supplies becomes costlier and dependent on more unstable governments as we go along. But for decades, the US has refused to act accordingly. As Bush senior put it, "the American way of life is not up for negotiation". Today, Americans use almost twice as much energy per head as do Europeans or Japanese. If the US would become as energy-efficient as Europe, it would free up as much energy as all of China's 1.3 billion people consume right now. That's without inventing new technologies, bubbah. So don't blame China for the energy shortage.

The globalisation of military knowledge and hardware is most certainly a concern, but again it is hardly something that the US is innocent in. For decades it has supplied arms and training to groups it supported. Remember Reagan's tragic support for the Mujaheddeen movement in Afghanistan or his supply of Iraq with money, weapons and intelligence. It is impossible to ignore the fact that the US is the biggest exporter of weapons and military training in the world - by a very, very long shot. But training and weapon technologies diffuse, and their prevalence forces insurgents, criminals and unfriendly governments to produce better weapons themselves, or to rely on cruder weapons (car bombs, suicide bombers, ...) or crueler tactics (mass murder, terrorism,...) in order to remain relevant.

Most gratingly, the author decries the reduced power of transnational bodies. That is squarely Bush's fault, and it was not exactly unintentional. His administration started out by repealing several international treaties unilaterally, and proceeded to repeatedly ignore and mock internatonal institutions like the UN. They actively tried to cause splits in the EU, abused NATO's charter and generally showed that the US's only interest in transnational bodies is to use them to further its own interests.

Yes, the world is changing, but it is changing because of the way the US has been acting. This isn't a crisis that has been brewed up in Jeddah, Moskow, Peshawar or Beijing. It was created by the well-informed, deliberate decisions taken by the US. The US is leading the way, as it has for decades. It is partially this horrible mismanagement of global affairs that is driving the US into irrelevance.

Bin Laden maybe has succeeded where Bush himself thought he had succeeded i.e. fighting terror beyond the US frontiers. Mr Bush then thought that his guns and riffles could defeat the terrorists and their disturbing strategies, but, alas, he fell into their trap, their "war of Attrition", and the result is there. Mr Bush has certainly underestimated Al Qaeda as a doctrine of terror, and has never thought for a second that Bin Laden’s lieutenants could be a bit smarter.

This is just a view of a foreigner, really curious.

On several occasions OBL explained his strategy in detail: he just wanted to cause the US to spend so much money that it would croak under the financial stress. That is the same strategy the mujahedeen applied successfully to the USSR. At the same time, there was a significant faction in the administration that was itching to project US power while it was still unsurpassed, as a way to solidify the US's position at the center of the western alliance for decades to come. And a large faction believes that government deficits don't matter, or are just a way to "starve the beast", i.e. a way to weaken government. For both of them, OBL was a very convenient excuse to pursue policies they wanted anyway. Consequently, many will see Bush's policies as largely successful. The US military has been shown to be capable of destroying a large, largely modern country in practically no time flat. The US is pretty much invincible, at least in a conventional war, unless you're willing to live off berries in a cave for a decade. Unfortunately, perceived invincibility was not really the issue - no one thought the US was beatable before. The message that has been sent to all governments that wish to maintain sovereignty is clear: develop a nuclear bomb and improve your aerial defenses. Also on the financial front, "Mission accomplished" is not a bad way to put it. The US government cannot possibly think of providing universal healthcare, because it couldn't deal with the costly transitional period. Like all other government programs, Republicans can now easily oppose it by pretending to be fiscal conservatives. While it's a pain that the financial cardhouse came falling down, it's a fair guess that in the coming years regulation will become too strict, and Republicans will again style themselves as the deregulation party. There are some real casualties on the Republican side, like privatizing social security, but all in all, the outlook for the GOP is pretty good. As long as you believe that US supremacy is a given, and that all the setbacks are temporary, things are likely to turn out quite well. Overregulation, government deficits and the push for higher taxes should provide them plenty to rail against for the next few elections.

I appreciated the way you analysed the issue, yet as for...

...The US is pretty much invincible, at least in a conventional war, unless you're willing to live off berries in a cave for a decade. Some reserves are necessary.

On one hand, invincibility of an army is not eternal and, thus, no one can pretend detain this as a property, for ever; it can often be challenged and I can cite as example of a recent past when the Emperor Napoleon, Hitler and Hirohito did enjoy the defeat their "invincible" armies. And on the other hand, don’t you think that this could be one case among others that might accelerate the fall of the American empire?

Or maybe things are not as dark as that.

Just a premonition of a foreigner, really curious.

Technically, Napoleon, Hitler and Hirohito were all beaten in non-conventional wars. The first two were arguably defeated by guerilla warfare while trying to occupy Russia (which is by far the largest country in the world), the third by nuclear bombs. They also didn't have a huge advantage over their eventual adversaries. Napoleon didn't have exceptionally large armies, or significantly better weapons. The axis armies had a technological advantage at the start, but in a year or two the allied armies had more than caught up.

The US spends more on its army than the rest of the world put together, and directs much of its engineering skills to improving its weaponry (as you can tell from the quality of its cars and the state of its infrastructure). The result is that they can crush any army, and destroy any country, as long as it does not have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to places the US does not want to lose.

It may be that this changes drastically. After all, Russia lost most of its military capabilities in the economic chaos of the nineties. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Even if they slash funding by 80%, I figure that the US military will remain top dog for a decade, perhaps two.

Apparently, I am, I should admit, facing a well-educated person, and for the first time on "Slate"; and I hope I wouldn’t be misunderstood, because all I am seeking here is enriching knowledge and that light should be focussed on all topics, without any form of chauvinism, and as openly as possible of course.

A defeat is a defeat be it the result of a conventional war or not.

The only difference is that those who possess a nuclear arsenal often tend to use it when they feel their army is on the brink of a bitter defeat, if not humiliating, the case for USA when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki is more telling; it’s a mere act of revenge, or at least that is my perception of how the U.S. responded to that act, Pearl Harbour’s Perfidious attack.

A foreigner, really curious.

I agree that a defeat is a defeat, but I only claimed that the US could not be beaten in a conventional war ;).

Fortunately we don't really know when governments decide to actually use nuclear weapons. Only the US has decided to use nuclear weapons, and arguably in a case where it could have prevailed with conventional weapons. However,

1. the full effect of nuclear weapons, and in particular their long-term horrors, was not known.

2. the main reason to use the bomb was probably to make a point to the USSR.

3. while it's likely that the US could have defeated the Japanese armies in a conventional fight, it is quite possible that that would have cost more lives than flattening Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Yes, there was no love lost for the Japanese, but I don't believe Truman used the bomb as an act of sadistic revenge.

I apologise if I quoted you,

*The US military has been shown to be capable of destroying a large, largely modern country in practically no time flat.

You certainly mean Iraq, don’t you? Who is defeated here, Sadam or the Armed Shiite factions? I hope you might see what I meant by this.

So why, then, use “unproportional” military force if it can’t have the expected success? Defeating doesn’t certainly mean "Mission accomplished"

*I only claimed that the US could not be beaten in a conventional war ;).

I think Vietnam can’t be denied its victory over USA. You might say it had logistical support from China and USSR.

*Also on the financial front, "Mission accomplished" is not a bad way to put it.

As far as I know, this military campaign requires a substantial budget, and the longer it lasts, the more money and blood will continue to drain.

Once again what does the US try to prove by invading a Country whose only blame was launching a couple of Scuds on Israel? Was that really enough to put it in the famous list of axis of evil? Personally I don’t think the reason behind US campaign is/was Oil or WMD, nor was it meant to fight terrorism (Islam). Are you able to give other meanings to this?

A foreigner, still curious.

The US flattened Saddam's army and destroyed a relatively prosperous country. I don't think it intended to turn Iraq into an ally of Iran, but that was more or less inevitable. I think that the US will be able to do this for the near future - it can simply bomb entire countries into the stone age.

Why use disproportionate force? To "eliminate a dangerous enemy". Gulf War I is a better example of how that can be done without sliding into an unconventional war.

I'm just saying that Vietnam wasn't a conventional war. The communists certainly won that one. I believe that in the end, the US will lose in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that's because in both cases it allowed the war to get into an unconventional stage.

I don't think attacking Iraq made any sense - then or now. But Iraq did do a little more than launch scuds towards Israel. It attacked Kuwait, the regime WAS brutal and they did try to assassinate Bush senior. I do believe that many people in the Bush administration simply wanted to get rid of Saddam and thought that Iraq could be turned into a model state. Others simply wanted to send a warning to leaders of Islamic states. It was more incompetence than malice, I think. The only good thing was that Saddam got deposed, although the world would have been a lot better off if they had shipped him to the ICC in stead of letting a kangaroo court hang him.

The fact that the US has spent the better part of a trillion dollars on the Iraq campaign is a good thing, for those that believe in "starving the beast".

I really enjoy your points and I think I have learnt a lot from your analysis than from any other posts, yet -as a curious who’s too demanding- I quote you:

It (Iraq) attacked Kuwait, the regime WAS brutal and they did try to assassinate Bush senior.

By brutality, you certainly mean dictatorship, don’t you? I am afraid, it wasn’t the unique brutal in that region. Then why only Iraqi people benefited this generous treatment and not Libyans, Iranians or Syrians, let alone KSA? As for WB senior presumed assassination, I have no idea about it, really; and if it did happen, then it would prove that the fate of this war had been decided for the sole purpose of punishing Saddam, and with him an entire culture and civilization, for having tried to assassinate GWB senior - which however remains unproven. That means, in my modest opinion, it was an implied sense of revenge.

As for invading Kuwait, don’t you think that Gulf War I wasn’t enough to weaken that regime? Couldn’t be wiser to deal with Iran, instead?

Thanks for helping me see a different side of US views.

A foreigner, for ever curious.

BTW I’m French living in an Arab Country and I think I know how they think of US policies.

Brain, I am sure that Iraq would only have been the first in a long line of regime changes IF it had worked the way the administration thought it would go. Iran and Syria probably would have been already dealt with. They really thought it would be easy.

Now things have been done, and given the current state of U.S. economy, is it still possible for any US administration to carry the Sheriff’s task any longer? , Some Arab and French intellectuals think that the United States are no longer able to engage on other fronts like North Korea and Iran. Could it be possible for the moment?

And what do you think of this article borrowed from Le Monde, french paper?

Russia and China will dominate the manned spaceflight

In preparing to launch Shenzhou VII, Thursday Sept. 25, aboard a Long March rocket, with a crew of three cosmonauts on board, China will continue its manned flight program. At the same time that China intends to consolidate its dimension of space power in its own right, the conjunction of events as diverse as the financial crisis, the invasion of Georgia by Russia and scrapping imminent shuttle undermine U.S. U.S. space supremacy. How? From 2010, all space shuttles should be stored. Until they are replaced in 2014 by the new Ares launch vehicle and Orion capsule, the United States will no longer have any system of manned flight. To access the International Space Station (ISS), NASA will have to pay the Russians for flights aboard the Soyuz. First snag: a law enacted in 2000, the Iran Non-proliferation Act, prohibits the U.S. space agency to trade with Russia because it is transferring sensitive technology to Iran, suspected of wanting to develop nuclear weapons. NASA has obtained an exemption, but it expires in 2011. And the current tensions between Washington and Moscow are making it increasingly difficult its extension beyond that date. For at least four years, the United States could therefore remain nailed to the ground. Russia and China could remain the only to be able to send men into orbit. Thus, while the ISS - involving Russia, the USA, Europe, Japan and Canada - could pitch at the option of international tensions and uncertain funding, China intends to pursue alone its manned flight program to catch up "frustration that the Chinese have always had for having been kept away from the ISS."

Shortsightedness on technological development has paradoxically been a big problem for the US for decades. It has been left to private companies, which have in the end no national allegiance, so they export their technology freely. The excellent graduate programs and post-graduate research systems attracted a lot of talent from all over the world, covering the decline of home-grown engineers and scientists. This is more of a problem in mundane economic issues than in the grand theater of spaceflight. China has a big chip on its shoulder, and its arrival in space is a great source of pride. Good for them. It doesn't actually matter much, as space exploration has turned out to be largely pointless beyond the mere development of the basic technologies. Longer-range missiles and better guidance systems will be available to China, and it will have the ability to freely launch military satellites. These are only important from a military and PR viewpoint. If they make good on their promise to build a colony on the moon, it will be very interesting, but not likely to yield anything new. I believe they will do it because it will allow them to claim a real "first". Russia is not the only nation that can resupply the ISS, as ESA has the ATV and Japan the HTV (next year). But for manned mission, only Russia and China have currently alternatives to the Space Shuttle. It is hard to imagine that China would agree to help with the ISS, after having been shut out from it and planning its own. Some serious kowtowing might be in order. But I don't think Russia will let the ISS down. It will continue providing missions there, although perhaps not for American astronauts. Humiliating for the US, perhaps, but not a real issue.

According to your writings, I guess you're a non-U.S. citizen and this tells why you are so cool and well-mannered. First, I have not detected any ideas be it against or for this or that American policy; your messages do not include any partial views, they are all rational. Finally, you have never used words of outrage up to now. Contrary to some of US interveners, on this Slate.