ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

[Seamus Fermanagh]

We could have stayed longer still, but for that at least one Indian cottoned on to the fact that they no longer had cause to fear us. The Japanese then highlighted this fact, and the Americans left us no choice whatsoever, but our empire was still based on fear of us. Once we lost our stomach for enforcing that fear, it was only a matter of time before the colonies started challenging us. It's not such a bad thing to lose that, but it's a matter of political fact. No-one fears the Americans, as everyone knows that they'll never have the political will or the desire to be a country feared by others. For the kind of nation-building envisaged by PVC, you need to have that basis of fear. For all the cotton candy nicey-nicey nation-building in Germany and Japan that the history books like to talk about, that was after you'd destroyed them as nations and left them with no identity but whatever you saw fit to impose.

First off, the allusion in your opening sentence was "cloth of gold" in quality. Kudos.

Of course we smashed Germany and Japan. The fact is we did not do so in Iraq. The only way to nation build with a goodly chance to success involves a level of suppression of the previous culture that is intolerable to modern sensibility. We have and continue to have this capability, we lack the will to be that imperialistic.

Lacking the will to do it properly, the USA should retire from the field.

Quite a bit of my thinking leads me to suggest that we:

Fold NATO; adopt isolationism in international affairs; offer separate defensive alliances to England (likely accepted) and France (likely rejected); end the special relationship with Israel; drop our military to a size no more than half of current levels and preferably smaller -- after all, they will only be deployed at home, in the New World with the request of local authorities, and in England; repeal about 75% of the Patriot Act; Adopt a national language (I would prefer English, but Spanish might be more acceptable); legalize drugs, prostitution, and gambling (regulate and tax -- prohibition fails); cut government functions by about half reverting those functions to the several states; increase NASA funding by an order of magnitude or so with objectives to match.

Ain't gonna happen -- but that's where I think we would trend best.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

We're assuming an independent Scotland, then?

Anyway, while you're doing that the Balance of Power shifts to a catastrophic degree towards China in asia and Russia in Europe.

Without American backing Israel looks like a soft target and a new and bloody war breaks out between Israel and the non-genocidal Levantine States on one side, and everyone else on the other.

Without American leadership military co-operation in Europe unravels into smaller blocks, the UK likely withdraws from the EU as a result, Germany either becomes the axis on which everyone turns, or abdicates responsibility - lots of nasty ways for this to go, including opportunistic Russian Invasion.

China begins to threaten Japan openly - lacking American backing Japan aggressively re-militarise....

All HELL breaks loose.

I sympathise with your desire to downsize your military commitment, but isolationism just ends up dragging the US into the war late, rather than keeping you out.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

We're assuming an independent Scotland, then?

Anyway, while you're doing that the Balance of Power shifts to a catastrophic degree towards China in asia and Russia in Europe.

Without American backing Israel looks like a soft target and a new and bloody war breaks out between Israel and the non-genocidal Levantine States on one side, and everyone else on the other.

Without American leadership military co-operation in Europe unravels into smaller blocks, the UK likely withdraws from the EU as a result, Germany either becomes the axis on which everyone turns, or abdicates responsibility - lots of nasty ways for this to go, including opportunistic Russian Invasion.

China begins to threaten Japan openly - lacking American backing Japan aggressively re-militarise....

All HELL breaks loose.

I sympathise with your desire to downsize your military commitment, but isolationism just ends up dragging the US into the war late, rather than keeping you out.

It is not the downsizing of the military commitment per se which is the issue. Yes, it is expensive but if it is used effectively than it justifies its cost. My objections are to the half-***ed way it gets done. Either commit with the intent to use the requisite force to win, or don't. ALL of our allies -- including the best of the lot which is you folks in the UK -- want to commit the military to various interventions without committing them to win. I'm staunchly in favor of a lot less in the way of interventions while using an Almighty-huge malfing hammer when we DO intervene. Absent that option, isolationism kills fewer yanks.

Dragged in to something bigger later? Quite possibly, but then we might take it seriously enough to resolve it as thoroughly as we did in WW2. Efforts to curtail victory always seem to backfire even worse.