The gods of war are for turning
The sinking of the Moskva might be the herald of the end of the US empire
One thing that must be troubling Pentagon observers is the loss of heavy tanks and the Russian ship, the Moskva. Experts are wondering whether this means that the tank and battleship are now as redundant in this war as the horse became in previous ones. We will pose a different question: is this how the empire dies?
By our reckoning, the US empire peaked out in the 1960s. It diddle daddled until the late 1990s, and then, with the “war on terror”, began a serious dive to the downside. Since then, by almost every measure you can think of, the US has sunk. But empires do not go gracefully into that good night. They rage… and make things worse for themselves. That is what we have seen thrice this century – in the response to the terrorist threat, in the attempt to prevent a correction on Wall Street in 2008-2009, and in the attempt during the Covid-19 panic to make up for lost output with printed dollars.
The American people understood better than their leaders what was going on. Given a chance, they voted to “Make America Great Again” in 2016. But the slippage got worse, not better. And the only solution the elite could think of was to spend more printed money. This is what led to today’s inflation. And left unchecked, it will lead to civil disorder, war, recession, economic chaos and poverty.
The end of one empire is usually marked by the rise of another – and often accompanied by a decisive battle, in which the gods of war switch sides and the dying empire loses. America has a huge, costly military with a gilded officer class. It was hard to imagine how it might be humbled on the field of battle. But the sinking of the Moskva might be a straw in the wind. The problem with going to war with today’s US armed forces is now on display. Too much money begets too many old, slow-moving armies with too much brass and bureaucracy. The US has more tanks and ships than anyone else. But these World War II-era armaments are vulnerable to new, smarter, cheaper weapons. We will be going to war with thoroughbreds, in other words.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban had no navy, no air force, no tanks, no phalanx of lobbyists to angle for more money. The amounts it spent would scarcely be enough to finance the Pentagon’s officers’ lounge. But over 20 years its fighters persisted, and won. The US is loaded up with cumbersome, complex weapons. Its battlefield tactics are built around its equipment. And its equipment is what you get when you have a lot of money and a corps of lobbyists to push for more costly weapons systems. But if its tanks and ships can be put out of service quickly and cheaply, then it becomes obvious that the US hegemon can be defeated. Whether that will happen or not, we don’t know. But the gods of war wouldn’t be especially surprised if it did.
“If left unchecked, inflation leads to civil disorder, war and chaos”