the empire wheezes

HARPERS, JULY 2008—Kevin Phillips: A major Republican weakness that doesn’t get noticed is their inability, despite all their macho muscle-flexing, to bring foreign wars to a successful finish. Our whole involvement in the Middle East, from the 1970s through the 2020s or however long it goes on, is going to do for the United States what two world wars did for Britain. It is a disaster. But it never gets examined in this way. ... Luke Mitchell: It seems that all decadent societies decline in the end. That is the story we know. But there have to be at least one or two that had a second act, when the people got it together. KP: There is indeed a second act for leading world economic powers, after they shed the burden of hubris and grandiosity, of being the world policeman and world banker. After thirty or forty years of adjustment, they come back in a less grandiose form. The Spanish and the Dutch and the British are doing pretty well right now. But they did have huge problems witih post-imperial withdrawal symptoms. pp 37-8, 40 “Why the GOP Must Die”