What we're actually observing now is an ironic reversal of the strategic equation that led America to the status of global hegemon. Beginning with World War I (and arguably before that), military intervention overseas both enhanced America's position in the balance of global military power and fueled its economic engine. American has essentially maintained a wartime economy since World War II, the conflict that made the United States the military and economic leader of the free world. Throughout most of that period we have maintained a full time professional force and augmented it with reservists, militiamen, conscripts, and mercenaries. We have also maintained permanent deterrence and first response forces in Europe and Asia as a cornerstone of our Soviet containment strategy.
Ah yes, our Soviet containment strategy. As if the Soviets were ever going to invade the U.S.? Oh, wait. That was before. Back in the days when they were commies.
Oh, and that leader of the free world status? That's what happens when war is not waged on a nation's own soil. But war was waged quite fiercely in Europe (especially in Russia). We didn't have to rebuild anything, merely retool somewhat -- but certainly not retool entirely. The wartime economy has morphed into the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Infotainment-Prison economy, where our major exports are weapons, pot and porn. Oh, and maybe complicated financial schemes.
Meanwhile, on another continent:
The Chinese are keen students of the entirely scrutable history of western civilization and know full well that the Middle East is the traditional graveyard of occidental superpowers. They have been delighted by our folly in Iraq ...
China watched with amusement for decades as the Soviet Union, with its inferior economic model, tried to compete with us in an arms race. Now, the Chinese spectate from the skybox as we pursue an arms race with ourselves, pour national treasure down a sand dune, and continue to depend on a form of national power that has become antithetical to our national interest.
You'll listen to the nattering class babble on the infosphere about how our present economic woes came about as a result of deregulation, and to some extent they'll be correct.
But what you'll actually be hearing is what it sounds like when your country is losing the kind of war that takes place in the brave new world order it created.
