"It has been assumed that the old bipolar world would beget a multipolar world with power dispersed to new centers in Japan, Germany (and/or 'Europe'), China and a diminished Soviet Union/Russia. [This is] mistaken. The immediate post-Cold War world is not multipolar. It is unipolar... American preeminence is based on the fact that it is the only country with the military, diplomatic, political and economic assets to be a decisive player in any conflict in whatever part of the world it chooses to involve itself."And such was the attitude of their minds that a shocking crime was dared by a few, with the blessing of more, and the passive acquiescence of all."
Tacitus, Histories: Book I, XXVIII, The Murder of Galba
"And what rough beast, its hour come 'round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born."
W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming
If America wants stability, it will have to create it... We are in for abnormal times. Our best hope for safety in such times, as in difficult times past, is in American strength and will— the strength and will to lead a unipolar world, unashamedly laying down the rules of world order and being prepared to enforce them."
Charles Krauthammer, The Unipolar Moment, Foreign Affairs, 1990
"It is not a choice between preeminence today and preeminence tomorrow. Global leadership is not something exercised at our leisure, when the mood strikes us or when our core national security interests are directly threatened; then it is already too late. Rather, it is a choice whether or not to maintain American military preeminence, to secure American geopolitical leadership, and to preserve the American peace...
Information systems will become an important focus of attack, particularly for U.S. enemies seeking to short-circuit sophisticated American forces. And advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.
This is merely a glimpse of the possibilities inherent in the process of transformation, not a precise prediction. Whatever the shape and direction of this revolution in military affairs, the implications for continued American military preeminence will be profound....the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."
Project for a New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses, September 2000
"Japan, whose claim to power rested exclusively on economics, went into economic decline. Germany stagnated. The Soviet Union ceased to exist, contracting into a smaller, radically weakened Russia. The European Union turned inward toward the great project of integration and built a strong social infrastructure at the expense of military capacity. Only China grew in strength, but coming from so far behind it will be decades before it can challenge American primacy... Today, American military spending exceeds that of the next twenty countries combined. Its navy, air force and space power are unrivaled. Its technology is irresistible. It is dominant by every measure.
The result is the dominance of a single power unlike anything ever seen. American dominance has not gone unnoticed. During the 1990s, it was mainly China and Russia that denounced unipolarity in their occasional joint communiqués. As the new century dawned it was on everyone’s lips.
The third effect of September 11 [2001] was to accelerate the realignment of the current great powers, such as they are, behind the United States...
Multilateralism is the liberal internationalist’s means... (the moral, legal and strategic primacy of international institutions over national interests) and legalism (the belief that the sinews of stability are laws, treaties and binding international contracts)—are in service to a larger vision: an international system in the image of domestic civil society. The multilateralist imperative seeks to establish an international order based not on sovereignty and power, but on interdependence.
The greatest sovereign, of course, is the American superpower, which is why liberal internationalists feel such acute discomfort with American dominance. To achieve their vision, America too—America especially—must be domesticated... This liberal internationalist vision—the multilateral handcuffing of American power—is, as Robert Kagan has pointed out, the dominant view in Europe...to be expected, given Europe’s weakness and America’s power. But it is a mistake to see this as only a European view
Trade agreements with Canada are one thing. Pieces of parchment to which existential enemies affix a signature are quite another. They are worse than worthless because they give a false sense of security and breed complacency. For the realist, the ultimate determinant of the most basic elements of international life—security, stability and peace—is power.
The future of the unipolar era hinges on whether America is governed by those who wish to retain, augment and use unipolarity to advance not just American but global ends, or whether America is governed by those who wish to give it up—either by allowing unipolarity to decay as they retreat to Fortress America, or by passing on the burden by gradually transferring power to multilateral institutions as heirs to American hegemony. The challenge to unipolarity is not from the outside but from the inside. The choice is ours.
To impiously paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: History has given you an empire, if you will keep it."
Charles Krauthammer, The Unipolar Moment Revisited, The National Interest, Winter, 2002/3
"We now station over half a million U.S. troops, spies, contractors, dependents, and others on more than 737 military bases spread around the world. These bases are located in more than 130 countries, many of them presided over by dictatorial regimes that have given their citizens no say in the decision to let us in...
The purpose of all these bases is force projection, or the maintenance of American military hegemony over the rest of the world. They facilitate our 'policing' of the globe and are meant to ensure that no other nation, friendly or hostile, can ever challenge us militarily.
The crisis the United States faces today is not just the military failure of Bush’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the discrediting of America’s intelligence agencies, or our government’s not-so-secret resort to torture and illegal imprisonment. It is above all a growing international distrust and disgust in the face of our contempt for the rule of law.
I remain hopeful that Americans can still rouse themselves to save our democracy. But the time in which to head off financial and moral bankruptcy is growing short. The present book is my attempt to explain how we got where we are, the manifold distortions we have imposed on the system we inherited from the Founding Fathers... Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us."
Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, 2006
Nuland: ...So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing [Ukraine regime change] and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, fuck the EU.
Victoria Nuland, US senior diplomat, Robert Kagan, Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call, BBC, 7 February 2014
Please do not imagine that what you read here is some sign that the American
people are 'waking up.' They are not waking up. They are as confused,
divided, manipulated, and distracted as ever, seeing little and loving only themselves. And I am just an old man, deeply overshadowed by the strength of evil, and the weakness of man.
Perhaps by circumstance,
perhaps by design, every impulse to change seems to be easily turned towards the darkness.
These are love letters to the Truth, mimeographed and thrown off balconies, scattered into empty university hallways, hoping that someone might pick one up and read it.
Sixty years ago the blood-dimmed tide was loosed, and the ceremony of innocence was drowned.
Perhaps change will come. Perhaps the light will break through at last, and dispel the deepening gloom.
But if not, God grant that we, who want to love and serve him, will never bow before the gods of evil.
And perhaps that is enough.
Please make a copy of this for yourself, and as many copies as you can and distribute them.
