End of Western Civilization Watch: The Winner’s Dillemma Part III
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America suffers from victory disease. We have been so successful for so long that we are frozen into patterns of behavior that no longer fit the current world scene. Worse, when we’re wrong, we’re aggressively wrong. Change is not impossible. However, change is hard. We must live with uncertainty since we can’t predict exactly how we’ll need to change in order to adapt. However, we can take comfort (and hints, if extracted conservatively) from the example of past American eras.
First Era of Intervention (1841-1861): While completing consolidation that aimed to provide a margin of safety against European invasion, America embarked on a series of foreign interventions to further destabilize the circle. While foreign interventions went back to Jefferson’s vendetta against the Barbary States, interventions were undertaken with youthful exuberance by the US as its power increased and as leaders sought to distract America from worsening sectional conflict. Several adaptions:
- John Tyler opened relations with China with designs on Pacific territory and acquired Texas to protect it from British imperial designs.
- The most successful president in American history, James K. Polk, finagled away Oregon and forcibly purchased Northern Mexico, to keep it out of the hands of the Europeans.
- Gold was discovered in California which provided a huge boost to the nation’s wealth.
- Milliard Filmore sent the Black Ships under the command of Commodore Matthew C. Perry to open Japan to American commerce.
- America launched its longest foreign commitment with the Yangtze River Patrol (1854-1941).
- America launched its largest oversees expedition when it launched an expedition against Paraguay in 1858.
- America built up the largest merchant marine in the world at the dawn of the era of Reconstruction.
Era of Reconstruction (1861-1891): After a youthful burst of interventions, long festering sectional tensions ripped America apart. After a bloody civil war, the richest part of the Union antebellum, the American South, was reduced to an internal colony and America focused on internal reconstruction to restore the massive loss of wealth in its civil war. Some adaptations:
- America went de facto on the gold standard in 1872 to better attract foreign investment.
- America built infrastructure like the Transcontinental Railroad to further consolidate the Union.
- Behind its protective tariff and using the Federal government to suppress progressive reform, America built the world’s mightiest industrial machine.
- For the most part, America eschewed empire building during this period, passing up opportunities like Santo Domingo.
- Rebuilding its merchant marine after it was shattered by commerce raiders like the CSS Shenandoah.
- America let in foreign immigrants to build its population.
