Almost 237 years ago the United States of America started life through an armed rebellion against established authority -- the British monarchy -- which established a revolutionary new model of government "of the people, by the people and for the people". That remains a great and noble goal, and the fact that it has yet to be fully realized hasn't stopped US governments from trying to impose their model on the rest of the world.
Over the course of the last two centuries, successive administrations have adopted a policy of forcing other countries to adopt the US model, sometimes by persuasion and sometimes by conquest. Walt has a little list.
In 1812 the US Congress thought Canadians could hardly wait to join the new republic. Taking Canada from the British would be "merely a matter of marching", said Jefferson. Two years later, with the White House burned and the country nearly broke, Congress changed its mind.
The Mexican Invasion of the mid-19th century succeeded in annexing to the USA a large chunk of the southwest. For some reason, people from further south keep coming into "New Mexico" and neighbouring states, wanting to keep their language, customs and religion. Some folks, especially in Arizona, think it might be better to give the territory back to the Mexicans.
Then came the War Between the States, in which some states had the temerity to assert the right to leave the Union, a right which they thought had been guaranteed by the Constitution. They learned that once you're in the Hotel America, "you can check out, but you can never leave".
Having got that nasty business out of the way, and realizing that the Hispanics were a soft target, the USA embarked in 1898 on a truly imperial war against Spain. The net gain was a handful of tropical paradises (?) --- Puerto Rico, Guam and Philippines -- but hey, America was now a colonial power, just like Britain! The economic and other benefits were, errr, dubious.
What about the World Wars, I hear you ask. [Yes, what about the World Wars? Ed.] Is Walt saying the USA should have stayed out of the War to End All Wars...and the second War to End All Wars? Didn't America save the world for democracy? Well... No matter how many John Wayne movies you watched, America didn't bail out the Allies singlehandedly. And if the USA had come into the wars at the beginning rather than during the second act, the other colonial powers might have been accomplished faster and at considerably less economic and human cost.
But, you might argue, that's precisely why the USA was so quick to jump into Korea. Sorry, wrong again. Omar Bradley called the Korean War "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong enemy". One lesson that might have been learned (but wasn't) is that if you're going to fight, use both hands!
Douglas MacArthur wanted to cross the Yalu and invade Communist China, possibly dropping the Big One for a quick and decisive victory. But "wiser men" in the Truman administration wouldn't let him, for fear of provoking a war with the Soviet Union, for which China was merely a proxy.
Apparently they didn't consider the possibility that the USSR wasn't as strong as it appeared, and might well have been defeated, sparing the world the 40 years of cold war that followed the Korean truce. Even the willingness to call it a draw may now be regarded as a mistake, for the war, which technically never ended, threatens to go ballistic -- literally -- at any moment.
Which brings us to Vietnam, which Pentagon types will tell you is the first war the US ever lost. (This ignores the War of 1812, but Washington's memory is short.) In The Rise of the Chinese Republic (McGraw-Hill, 1989) American historian Edwin P. Hoyt says:
The Americans did not learn fast. It took them still another war in Asia [Vietnam] to learn that what American leaders had said many years ago was true. No statesman with a lick of sense will let the country get involved in a land war in Asia.
There was another lesson that the Americans May not even yet have learned: Anyone who interferes in an indigenous revolution anywhere is a fool, and such interference is bound to fail. In China and in Vietnam the Americans tried to interfere. These actions cost them billions of dollars and far too many lives, and ultimately the revolutions succeeded in the face of American interference.
Mr. Hoyt wrote that in 1989. Since then we've had the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan and (sort of) Libya. These theatres of war are all in Asia, although not the part Hoyt was thinking of. And they're all part of the Muslim world. Walt predicts that 100 years from now historians will lump them all together as "the Middle Eastern War" or "the Great War Against Islam". ("Crusades" has already been used.)
And still the USA cannot or will not learn. Now the Prez -- no Muslim he? -- is making noises (again) about taking action (nature unspecified) in Syria to overthrow a tyrannical dictator, make it safe for democracy, yada yada yada. Haven't we seen this movie before? (Canadians need not feel all smug and superior. "Call me Steve" Harper and his bumboy Baird are very vocal in their willingness to hold America's coat...at least until Uncle Sam's nose bleeds.)
Edwin Hoyt again:
The United States has run out of gas politically and philosophically. Any nation that converts from a dynamic economy to a service economy...finds that it loses that precious quality of initiative. The American government is still posturing itself in the world as the defender of the status quo. It is hard to consider a less dynamic and less appealing posture for a nation that once boasted of its revolutionary spirit.
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