No more Pax Americana

14 April 2007

David Selbourne says that George Bush is losing the war in Iraq as surely as George III lost the war against the American colonists — and that the US imperium has entered on its decline after only six decades

Furthermore, increasingly complex alliances are being formed by America’s rivals and challengers in order to thwart its geopolitical aims. For instance, relationships between Russia and North Korea, Russia and Iran, China and Pakistan, China and nations in Africa such as Sudan and Angola, and even between Iran and Venezuela, make President Bush’s claims to be ‘fighting to advance the cause of freedom around the world’ increasingly vainglorious. As Burke observed, 18th-century Britain faced problems with an ‘extensive empire’ too large to be kept under control. By the last quarter of the 19th century, however, when the British had learnt the arts and crafts of imperial command — and numbered only some 35 million — it ruled a fourth of the world’s population. But it is too late for the US to follow suit. Islam and America’s competitors have seen to that. Moreover, as historical processes quicken, the longevity of empires is diminishing: the American imperium, like the Soviet, has entered on its decline after only some six decades. There will be no future Pax Americana.

Now it is the turn of Islam to assert itself, for the third time in history, across large swaths of the globe. It is a bitter truth that the worst of Islamists, many of whose purposes are ugly and craven, should be crowing loudest over America’s travails. In the 18th century, the American colonists had outgrown the Brits; today, it is clear that Mohammed is unlikely ever to go on his knees to the American mountain. And in these travails, George the Second of America has proved no wiser than George the Third of Britain.

David Selbourne is the author of The Losing Battle with Islam.