Doing his own misfortune

(translation of Faire son propre malheur)

In 1900, Europe, collectively, was a supreme power. Militarily unchallenged, unsurpassed on the seas, its industry and trade were setting the basis which would be copied by the rest of the world. Culturally, Europe crushed all other civilizations, and its scientists were closing in on the complete control of nature.

Then in 1945, Europe was a small field of ruins, unable to cope alone, and gave the U.S. the scepter of world leadership even before they ask for it. European nations, pushing the stupidity to the hilt, had managed to undo in 45 years what their ancestors had built in forty centuries. All this without outside influence, without divine cataclysm, without demonic manipulation, of their own and their own conceit.

In 1991, the United States is a supreme power: Europeans are fearful like a lame dog, Japan plunged into a suicidal depression, Great Russia is ravaged by alcohol and prevarication. The dollar is king, and stories written in Hollywood lull millions of children worldwide. The U.S. military crushed an entire country in 15 days, losing 250 men, as for a demonstration.

In 2010, the (twin) U.S. deficit is abysmal, its army is bogged down in two senseless conflicts, economic performance collapses, and there remain only two kinds of creditors to buy treasury bonds: "gray " capital, and China, whose trade surplus is growing at the speed of the U.S. deficit. The China of the 21st century is a creation of American greed.

In February 2010, Mrs. Clinton is undertaking a tour of Gulf states to boost their hatred of Iran and lead to further sanctions against the state, pointing at their atomic works. But is Iran a future nuclear terrorist, or merely the largest oil supplier to China?

Much the same date, Canada just approved two new investments in the infamous tar sands of Athabasca, whose majority shareholder is PetroChina: the Yellow Hand reaches the gates of the United States, which for the past ten years were so stuck with a policy worthy of the 19th century that they are unable to respond to a country that still claims to be developing.

Back in 1890, Empress dowager Cixi, pushed by the hawks in the palace, decided (finally) to levy a tax that would build the navy that China needed to resist the Western powers, which, with a couple of gun-boats, held an entire continent. When the results of the tax, a thousand times nibbled, reached the capital, they were so low that Cixi decided instead to rebuild the marble boat that adorns the Summer Palace (still visible). Bartering a navy, and the hope of a people against a nice block of (faux) marble?

The United States are precisely there: taxes from the taxpayer pay absurd bonuses to already wealthy traders, the two ongoing wars are a financial disaster, and every day sees China control more resources, collect more dollars, infiltrate more governments. Sure, the United States still is the dominant culture, military strength, know-how. But soon this country will belong to its enemy without firing a shot.