Decline and Fall of the American Empire

The most important thing about social change in contemporary, i.e. Imperial America or the New World Order, in my view does not concern its foreign policy. It is only tangentially connected with domestic policy. The main factor is cultural and the Empire USA propagates this change around the world with the efficiency of Coca Cola and Hollywood: the American icons of yesteryear.

Modern world society divides the world into two races, which I denote, following
H. G. Wells as Heloi and Morlocks. Namely, in the New World Order, the only social group of value is politicians, bankers, top lawyers and media figures, including ubiquitous Washington commentariat. The rest are "losers," Morlocks. They are disposable and lead grey lives nobody cares about.

I must emphasize how strangely different this picture is from what we had experienced in not-so-distant (for me, old man) past. In 1950-60s, Wall Street banker or CEO of a large company also was much wealthier, though a measly 10-40 times, not an absurd 100-10000 times than Los Alamos physicist or a rocket scientist from NASA. But in terms of social prestige there was no question whom society considered as its more valuable member. Vice versa, the higher income of the first was sometimes considered a fair compensation of the workplace drudgery against the excitement of the second.

Standard justification of the insane salaries of bankers and top managers is that they take enormous risks for which they are compensated. Nothing can be further from the truth: a simple inspection of the boards of major corporations suggests that even without complicated background checks, ~40% of their members are either political beneficiaries of revolving doors(officials, congressmen, staffers, lobbyists, etc.) or family members of the large stockholders [Comment 3]. Another significant fraction are investment bankers or private equity moguls who bought the seats on board with other people's money. In fact, in a recent book "Distress Investing", two semi-retired Wall Street sharks suggest the complete risk avoidance as a main feature of modern capitalism (all the gains are accrued to white-shoe lawyers, hedge fund managers and other types none of whom invests her own money into the venture).

Another feature of the modern imperial lifestyle is the proliferation of tabloid press. Forty-fifty years ago when the term "paparazzi" was born, they were considered little more than petty crooks. Forty years ago there were also tabloids and tabloid stars. But Liz Taylor, Lisa Minelli or Frank Sinatra became tabloid fodder precisely because they already "made it" in Hollywood. Nowdays, the order is reversed: tabloid media and reality shows create celebrities, which then may, or may not demonstrate any potential as entertainers: Paris, Heidi (Mount, Pratt or Klum, who cares), Misha, Lindsey and JonKate or TomCat are only a few who come to mind under an umbrella logo of "TV personalities." This, by itself, is not bad and may reflect only the escape of paid entertainment from the clutches of the studio system and record companies.

To emphasize how deeply this state of things is different from a relatively recent past, one can compare it with Victorian-Edwardian England and with the "Guilded Age" and its aftermath in the United States. In Britain, there was even an expression: "they are in trades" meaning professional members of the society-- not exactly janitors-- but, obviously, solicitors and bankers, which distinguished them from a true leisure class. United States, which did not have its own aristocracy needed to invent it in the guise of the "old money" of the Jazz Age, the ones that should not socialize with the owners of drugstore chains. Relegating the most potentially parasitic members of one's own class to the "socialites" and colonial soldiery, Victorian society used these forms of social sterlization for a successful self-preservation.

The real problem for the public is that "TV personalities" mix freely with movers and shakers and political pandits on "Larry King" and suchlike. The line between celebrities, who can, like George (Bush or Will, who cares), Bill, Rush etc. etc., influence the nation to go to war and send a requisite number of Morlocks to die in a faraway land or who, like Paris or Lindsey can not, became blurred. [Comment 1, from NY Times Magazine, Winter 2008 Fashion, p. 86] Even in the latter assumption one cannot be sure anymore. Disheveled, obese and drunken hog going by the screen name of Alec Baldwin was rumored to be one of the main "convincers" of Bill for the 1999 NATO war against Serbia. Not that the war was not already decided upon by Blumenthal, Cohen and Albright and her coterie of male favorites at the State Department, yet selling this war, any war to the "Waffler-in-Chief" must have been a difficult enterprise.

The world of Heloi is rather monolithic-- they seamlessly move from investment banking to diplomacy to defense and back, even after completely ruining their previous assignments like Wolfowitz-- similarly to Mao's appointees whom the knowledge of a "little red book" endowed with everything they needed on a job [Comment 4]. Mao's "Red Guardist" could command army division yesterday, operate a cement factory today and move tomorrow to the directorship of an opera theater. American Heloi acquire the true properties of "nomenklatura": after abject failure in one position, they, instead of being sent home packing, usually are being rewarded with positions of fewer responsibilities and more perks. For instance, Bush's Ambassador Vershbow, who was telling Moscow's diplomatic community that soon "they will take care of Putin", so there was no need to adapt to the new realities, was moved to South Korea instead. There he surprised the world and undercut the South' "sunshine policy" by promising to squelch North Korea's Kim Jong Il like a little worm. So irreplaceable he is though that Obama appointed him a political director of the Pentagon.

Similarly, a KGB sergeant developing obvious signs of delusional paranoia was moved from operational responsibilities into a security clerkship, while a KGB Major whose heavy drinking made him unusable as a spy was promptly dispatched to oversee a customs bureau or security staff of an airport. A three-star Army General in the same-- mainly horizontal--predicament was relieved of command but tucked into another department of cartography or military education. Finally, an utterly incompetent or corrupt Central Committee bigwig retired to ambassadorial post or to a second-rate cabinet position.

In complete contrast of monolithic world of Heloi, the current world of Morlocks consists of two distinct groups, which I designate according to the distinction of Spartan military elite between merchant and artisanal subjugated class (Perioikoi; no single spelling) and peasant serfs (Helots). Perioikoi, or former "professionals", unlike Washington nomenklatura, which can equally well manage press relations, international aid or intelligence, are being required ever more stringent proof of their competence for a stagnant or even decreasing pay: degrees, licenses, etc. In constant dollars the starting salary of BS in Engineering thirty years ago was higher than today and the number of positions requiring graduate degrees grows every second.

Perioikoi work ever longer hours and are denied administrative assistance under the guise of "downsizing". Now, with the advent of personal computer, they are saddled with more and more simple clerical tasks formerly performed by semi-skilled staff. They are disciplined in ever more brutal manner: indictment in anything more than the parking ticket, visiting porno sites, telling jokes about the boss or being chronically ill usually terminates the employment. Even the slightest "impression" of racism or sexism, usually, by obviously non-disinterested parties, typically means the end of academic career.

On the contrary, members of the Heloi class wear their much publicized sex affairs, visits to rehab, or criminal indictments, as a badge of honor. If they get into trouble with the law, they tend to get off lightly. Recent conviction of OJ Simpson as well as his spectacular acquittal years earlier, testifies more that he was now dropped from the rosters of Heloi and, hence, was punishable. How many welfare mothers are in jail for the possession of a fraction of the drugs, used for recreation by Rush Limbaugh (his Morlock servants, who delivered drugs to him will do his time). Dick "Dick" Cheney shot a guy in the face, obviously, for fun, to enjoy his absolute immunity. He was not even charged. Not so lucky were the hundreds of Perioikoi who made the bulk of war protesters. Even when acquitted they remain in the "terror lists" and other extrajudicial limbos, which reminisce the harassment tactics, which the moribund Soviet system used against dissidents.

Finally, in the place of the former working classes we have helots, or, "prols" in Newspeak. In full accordance with Orwell they are free, like animals. Unlike the overworked and heavily taxed Perioikoi, nothing exceptional is required of them except for voting, usually against their direct economic interest. Red necks, who typically vote republican could benefit from better public schools-- finally, they are not sending their children to name preps-- and more social programs, at the expense of their favored military, which sends them to distant lands to kill and be killed. Vice versa, usually pro-democratic inner cities could gain from crackdowns on gangs and more pro-business city administrations. Cynical Trotsky once appended ancient Roman formula of "mooeing herd" (i.e. cattle) and the "talking herd" (i.e. slaves) by the "voting herd" (members of the Communist Party after Stalin's purges). The taxi driver does not know the city streets, the plumber puts expensive toilet into a non-fitting hole and then asks the customer what he wants to do, and the secretaries leave the desk one second after 5 PM whether in the middle of a work or not.

In the current American society--as in the Imperial Rome--there is only one institution, which unites Heloi and Morlocks that is the Armed Forces. Unlike the mocking portrayals of the Army-- in the seventies classics ("Animal House", "Harold and Maude", etc.) and circumspect-- in the nineties ("A Few Good Man"), modern US military acquired a saintly status. With a quick re-gentrification of the Ivy League, military soon will become the only ladder, by which the Morlock can promote himself into Heloi. Recent experiences with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suggest that modern American armed forces evolve into a modern Pretorian Guards above any societal criticism and making the law unto themselves. Even otherwise critical TV entertainers such as Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert go out of their way to glorify the military. Will it be long before they try to cash their newfound social authority into a currency of power?

You say: "feudalism?" No. A classic feudal society entailed mutual social obligations. If the primary requirement that the lord, i.e. the landlord, defends the peasants from bandits and the realm from the pretenders was frequently ignored--the social demands of one's own class were enforced by sometimes brutal(duels, judicial combat, private warfare)means. Furthermore, the members of the militaristic ruling class had to systematically prove their worth in hand-to-hand combat. Imagine Bill Kristol and Rush Limbaugh being taken to such task. Feudal lords of old also had to refer important social decisions, sometimes against their will, to a clerical establishment.

Yet nothing is new under the Sun. The described situation--concentration of all wealth in the hands of tiny debauched elites of a few countries unencumbered by the yokes of hereditary military obligations or religious devotion--also existed during the ages. However, three very similar periods in human history--the Roman Empire, Ancien Regime and the Guilded Age [Comment 2]--ended in catastrophes of such proportions that one wonders whether our age should also come to a bitter end made even more unenviable by the modern weapons of destruction.

Claudia Verhoeven, Odd Man Karakozov: Imperial Russia, Modernity and the Birth of Terrorism, Cornell U. Press, ISBN 978-0801446528

Postmodernist account of the "Karakozov affair": the first, 1866 attempt on life of the Alexander II, the Liberator. The author correctly identifies the connection between the birth of the terrorism and modernity meaning the power of public opinion and the media as a major forces shaping society.

As all postmodernist accounts it suffers from a total lack of humanistic empathy or even an understanding of politics as a meaningful endeavor. Consequently, Verhoeven engages in "interpretations" of Karakozov's behavior where there is nothing to be interpreted. He, as his cousin and main intellectual influence-- Ishutin, in whose family Karakozov was brought up as an orphan-- was an obvious schizophrenic. Political conspiracies are frequently the abode of the mentally unstable individuals. Yet, Ishutin's "Organization" was remarkable in that every major figure associated with it (Ishutin, Khudyakov, Karakozov, Nechaev) suffered from serious psychiatric abnormalities. Characteristically and smartly, Dostoevsky, in the "Possessed" split Nechaev's personality between two protagonists: the revolutionary and a con man Verhovensky (pun on Verhoeven!) and repentant sexual sadist Stavrogin, the two even engaging in dialogue probably like the voices in the heads of the members of Ishutin's clique. The name of the Organization's inner circle, "the Hell" suggests that this was more of a cult than a political conspiracy with rational purposes.

Similarly to the actions of Kaligula, Vlad Tepes or Ivan the Terrible there could be some continuity of personal style but it is useless to search for any consistent logic in their behavior. The only underlying factors were total disregard for humanity, impulsive brutality and penchant for theatrical gestures.

For Claudia Verhoeven the intent to kill one of the ablest Russian autocrats, furthermore, the only one who could effectuate change, in order to foment a bloody civil war seems as much of a form of self-expression as eating breakfast or writing a poem. Luckily for us, postmodernist thought rarely informs political power outside of Scandinavia.

James O'Donnell, The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History, Ecco, 978-0060787370, Adrian Goldsworthy, How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower

James O'Donnell produced absolutely uninspiring account pretending to be a "new history." Battles, alliances and political coups, to which the author attributes the Fall of the Roman Empire constitute a little more than embellished chronological table. Certainly, Roman administrators from time to time antagonized the settlers from outside the limes. The question why barbarian hordes, none of which significantly exceeded male population of a mid-size Roman city with a primitive siege equipment could bring down a civilization remains unanswered or even unasked.

Adrian Goldsworthy's "Death of a Superpower" suffers from essentially the same defect, namely a replacement of logical reasoning with narrative. His narrative is more erudite than O'Donnell's but platitudes like that "Emperors forgot what Empire was about" and suchlike do not replace analysis. The proof that any of the late Roman emperors was less competent than Caligula, Nero or Commode, more beholden to the staff, women and freedmen than Claudius, or more superstitious than Domitian is a practical impossibility. Inability to tie up the military-political narrative to the social and economic fabric of the empire makes useless all sophistication of style.

P. Brendon, Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997, ISBN978-0307268297

Absolutely brilliant narrative so awash in grandiloquence as to lose much of its power (816 pages in all). After reading this book I am in much more confusion as to the reasons of its decline and fall than before I took it up.

Read it though-- you will be amply rewarded.

P. W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolition and the Conflict in 21st Century, ISBN 978-1594201981

I lived through at least three bubbles in the US: dot-com bubble, real estate and banking bubble and now this. All were heavily fueled by cocaine and other illegal stimulants. During the dot-com bubble, the sane people who dared to ask how companies which transacted no business and had neither profits nor assets could command market value in hundreds of millions and billions dollars were christened luddites and other names and ridiculed for lack of understanding that in this new world, gravity and other outdated concepts need not apply.

At that time, I was naive, thinking that I did not understand something these aces of marketplace do. During the real estate-banking bubble I had more stamina to resist believing that mortgages sliced, diced and reassembled in the form of exotic securities can eliminate the risks inherent in investing. Even shakier was my belief that the Bush economics, i.e. overconsumption in the times of war pumped by residential equity loans, can be sustained for long. And again, the likes of poor me who expressed mild disbelief in the ability of Wall Street bankers to create something from nothing, were ridiculed as hopelessly outdated grouches.

In the end, the laws of economic gravity downed the first two bubbles. Yet, their proponents, the people who published books that soon Dow will push a 40,000 plank and other garbage, are doing very well, thank you. And now, thanks to Rummy and his crew, they moved to military affairs. Luckily, to check their projections we need an all-out nuclear war and in that case there will be more pressing concerns.
P. W. Singer in his book, so incongrous that I suspect the influence of the same mind-changing chemicals, which fueled previous two bubbles, proposes that armies-- at least advanced (meaning NATO) ones-- will be replaced by fighting robots. It bears heavy traces of Ramsfeld's tenure at the Pentagon: confusion of experimental technologies, or even proposals, with already-existing capabilities, approval of any screwball idea, no matter how technically odd or tactically unsound and total ignorance of any historic precedents of failed large-scale military programs and ventures. Imagine that they planned occupation of Iraq with only 35-40000 combatants.

Because of adoration of the German military tradition by the neocons, the words Blietzkrieg and 1,000 year Reich (I am not joking, Kagan wrote it, modestly cutting the prospect of American global domination to 500 years), started to fly around Washington. So is the late-WWII propaganda slogan of Wunderwaffen, supposed military marvels created in German laboratories, which can turn tide of the war already lost.
Indeed, some of these designs were truly marvelous, the only problem with them was that there were too many of them pursued simultaneously, no mechanism for setting priorities, no mindset to distinguish brilliant from kooky and, finally, heavy drain of all these new projects on the maintenance of already existing fighting capability. Physicist F. Dyson who during WWII worked as an Air Force science boffin estimated that Nazi ballistic missile program consumed, in terms of resources, about the same as would a doubling of their fighter fleet. Equally British program of heavy bombing consumed, by the end of the war, roughly 25% of war expenditure, yet no study could justify that it reduced German war potential by more than 5-6% (and probably was as little as 1-2%). He called this strategy "a misguided hi-tech."

Somewhere, in his book, Singer mentioned supposed 5,000 robots operating in Iraq or Afghanistan. Whatever is the methodology of his count, assuming that it takes 4-6 people to equip and operate a single robot-- if nothing else to pack it into a crate and supply it with batteries, etc.-- this fleet requires a manpower equal to 8 combat brigades! There are other fantastic things in his narrative: of course, almost every weapon system works when the foe has only light weapons and moves
on donkeys. In fact, operational and communication centers needed to provide armadas of unmanned fighting vehicles with logistical support constitute much "softer" targets than, say, tanks or combat aircraft. Even if information hubs can be located overseas, there is need, e.g. for somebody to launch and collect drones, change equipment, deliver fuel, munitions and arm them.

Finally, new American model of warfare developing under advice of Singer and similar experts, has another weak point. It presumes most of the officers being located far from battlefields in secure bunkers connected by satellite uplinks with the soldiers at the front line, the picture supported by minuscule officer/soldier loss ratio for the US Army compared not only with Russian Army in Checnhya but also with Israeli Army in Lebanon, unless we are yet to hear of another example of covert creativity of Rummy and his successor. Even if one discounts the vulnerability of these links recently demonstrated by the Chinese space agency, there are problems with this approach.

As long as resistance is weak and poorly coordinated, command from behind the Green Line looks fine. Yet, in the face of dedicated resistance cohesion of battle units, especially elated by the sight of their officers partying in Georgetown, cannot be taken for granted. Sergeants supposed to operate units on their own, on behalf of distant officers according to their electronic text messaging, can turn out to be poor substitutes for traditional structures of obedience and loyalty.