America as Spain in decline

[Vympel]

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His Majesty's Birthday

By William S. Lind

With the birthday of my rightful Sovereign and oberste Kriegsheer Kaiser Wilhelm II coming up fast on January 27 – Hoch! -- I placed my usual call to His Majesty to offer my felicitations. Somewhat to my surprise, the duty Funker at Zossen said he had been ordered to patch me through to Madrid. Der Reisekaiser must be at it again, I thought, hoping that old tub the Hohenzollern had an easy passage through the Bay of Biscay, which was no sure thing in January.

My surprise was greater when the phone was answered not by our attaché in Madrid but by none other than the Count-Duke of Olivares, the Privado—what we would now call Prime Minister—to King Philip IV of Spain from 1622 to 1643. Those were the years in which Spain, the first true global power, had gone headlong down history's tube. Was the Kaiser trying to tell me something?

Olivares, it seems, was in on the joke. "Your Allerhoechste thought Madrid in my time had more in common with 21st century Washington than Berlin in his day," he said. "The Kaiser, after all, had no ambition to rule everyone. I did. As the greatest historian of Spain, the Inglés J.H. Elliott, wrote of me, I was heir "to the great imperial tradition, which believed firmly in the rightness, and indeed the inevitability, of Spanish, and specifically Castilian, hegemony over the world."

"Is our war in Iraq then the equivalent of Spain's war in the Netherlands?" I asked.

"That parallel is an interesting one," Olivares replied. "After all, the Enterprise of England was undertaken as a way to attain a decision in the Netherlands. Just as you attacked Iraq because you could not get at Osama, so we sent the Invincible Armada against England because we could not get at the Dutch rebels, especially the Sea Beggars. Compare what your President Bush has said about the War on Terror to what the Jesuit Ribadeneyra said about the Armada:

Every conceivable pretext for a just and holy war is to be found in this campaign. . .This is a defensive, not an offensive, war; . . . one in which we are defending the high reputation of our King and lord, and of our nation; defending, too, the land and property of all the kingdoms of Spain, and simultaneously our peace, tranquility and repose.

Unfortunately, neither our enterprise nor yours met with success."

"What were the consequences of the Armada's defeat for Spain?” I asked Olivares.

"It was of course before my time," he replied, "and two-thirds of our ships did make it home. But let me again quote Señor Elliott if I may:

the psychological consequences of the disaster were shattering for Castile. For a moment the shock was too great to absorb, and it took time for the nation to realize its full implications. But the unthinking optimism generated by the fantastic achievements of the preceding hundred years seems to have vanished almost overnight.

"Why did Spain not reform its military and its overstrained finances and recover from its defeat?” I inquired of the man who knew best.

"We tried," Olivares replied. "Our reformers, the arbitristas, put forth many good plans. As soon as I became Privado, I pushed for a great reform program with all my considerable energy."

"What happened?"

"We abolished the ruff," Olivares replied.

"The ruff?"

"You know, that big starched thing we wore around our necks that made it look as if our heads were on platters."

“That was it?"

"That was it," Olivares said ruefully. "The interests at court that lived off the decay were too powerful to overcome. Perhaps you see why your Kaiser thinks there are some similarities between Washington in your time and Madrid in mine."

"Indeed," I said. "We recently tried to reform our Army by giving all the soldiers funny hats."

"There is another parallel, I think," Olivares added. "Our Kings Philip III and Philip IV were, to be diplomatic about it, not quite in the same class as Charles V or Philip II. Your President Bush reminds me a great deal of Philip III. He is not, I think, the fullest oil jar on the estancia."

"No," I said, "but what can we do about it?"

"Were I your Privado I would recommend he be retired to his estate in Mexico, perhaps with the title of Duke of Plaza Toro."

"That will come in a couple years," I told Olivares. "But what is the chance his successor will be any better?"

"Was Philip IV really an improvement over Philip III? In the end, a systemic crisis such as I faced then and you face now requires a change of dynasty. That came, eventually, for Spain, but too late."

"Now, if you will excuse me, I have a desk full of consultas I must read. At least we did not have Powerpoint. But then, I'm not in Hell." With that, Olivares faded into the ether.

I was happy to find that Kaiser Wilhelm has kept his excellent sense of humor. Just as Olivares tried to prevent Spain from committing suicide, so the Kaiser tried to prevent the suicide of the west. Both failed, and we live among the ruins.

Meanwhile, we too write our arbitrios, and hope.

William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation.

[Surlethe]

There are similarities between the US now and any great nation, superpower, or empire in decline: Rome, both the Republic and the Empire; Spain; you name it, and you can find parallels. Hell, I was reading this weekend about Rommel's struggle against Hitler's delusions, and I thought more than once of Bush's insulation from reality. While in Spain's case, some of the parallels are pretty exact, the same lessons are repeated over and over again as any power declines. Overweening bureaucracy, militaries stretched thin in futile wars, a complacent populace, incompetent rulers: these are themes that unite the decay of greatness.

Reminds me of Ozymandias, actually. I love that poem.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Considering the Spanish Empire was declared bankrupt three times in a row in the space of 20 years in the late 16th century, and managed to limp along for another 250 years and three more bankruptcies, we have plenty of years of Empire left, if we haven't hit our first national bankruptcy yet (though it's probably coming up in a decade).

[Adrian Laguna]

It would seem Surlethe forgot to mention that a major theme in the decay of Empires is that it takes a loooooog time for them to fall. We might be able to see that the ship is sinking, but it's not necessarily a worry for our lifetime.

[Surlethe]

It would seem Surlethe forgot to mention that a major theme in the decay of Empires is that it takes a loooooog time for them to fall. We might be able to see that the ship is sinking, but it's not necessarily a worry for our lifetime.

Good call, though I never meant my list to be complete, especially not at 12:15 am. And even when we're not #1, we'll still be a major player on the world stage: we'll still have plenty of resources and manpower left, as Duchess has pointed out in the past. Oh, and we'll have nuclear weapons, too.

[SirNitram]

America, at the present rate of things, will rather flatulently fall from grace. Ideally, there'll be a sound effect. But it will be temporary. It will be a result of the gang-up of economic disasters of the runaway credit problem, the oil crash, and the failing industry because.. Surprise.. No one's updated any of it since early last century.

To think this will be permenant however, is laughable. Coal and oil shale can keep the electricity running, while the promise of billfolds the size of the Earth's crust will get some solution to the loss of the automobile off the ground in the wake of the crash. Food production will continue to be excellent and a source of export.

In short, it will be a very bumpy ride. But the ride doesn't have one of those catapulting stops that you build in SimPark and fire people into a mountainside on.

Oh come on, I'm not the only one who remembers a theme park simulator and did that, am I?

[Vaporous]

The comparison is apt in another sense- like Spain, our economy is based on finance, specifically in borrowing money. The conquest of the new world made Spain rich, but it also made is a commercial/consumer nation before they had established industry, and what they had established died out. In our case, the ballooning government debt, the policies of the reserve, the spread of credit card debt, and yet moree factors combined to have finance (20.4% GDP) eclipse manufacturing (12.7% GDP) as the dominant force in our economy. Another empire underwent the same transition- the English economy was increasingly in the hands of Financiers by 1920. The difference is that they were a creditor nation, as opposed to a debtor for much of that span.

In short, it will be a very bumpy ride. But the ride doesn't have one of those catapulting stops that you build in SimPark and fire people into a mountainside on.

Oh come on, I'm not the only one who remembers a theme park simulator and did that, am I?

I did that all the time in Rollercoster Tycoon. Powered launch ho!

[Adrian Laguna]

Oh come on, I'm not the only one who remembers a theme park simulator and did that, am I?

Never heard of Sim Park, but you can do that in Rollercoaster Tycoon. I like to have my coasters abruptly end in large bodies of water.

[Pelranius]

I hope that there will be renewed development of the aerospace industry and efforts to explore space after the crash (though how we will get the money is another question).

We can always sell arms and food, I guess.

[Uraniun235]

I hope that there will be renewed development of the aerospace industry and efforts to explore space after the crash (though how we will get the money is another question).

We can always sell arms and food, I guess.

The true economic exploitation of space cannot occur without a space elevator of some kind.

(Well, I suppose it's remotely possible that if we really blew a fuckton of money on it, we might get some robot Von Neumann shit going with a lot of rocket launches, but I'm not really sure how it'd help many people on Earth... unless we got big solar arrays and space-to-Earth power transmission worked out, and even then that's a problem better addressed through nuclear power plants in the foreseeable future.)

Until then, it's just an 'ultimate high ground' from which to perch cameras and sensors and antennas. The space elevator will require an enormous amount of progress in materials science which will probably not materialize in any of our lifetimes; I'm inclined to expect fusion-based power plants to come online before then.

[Drooling Iguana]

I don't really know anything about the parallels between the US and Spain, but I'll say one thing: I've really got to find myself a copy of SimPark.

[FTeik]

Hasn't the time in which an empire rises and falls greatly accelerated during the last few hundred years?

[FedRebel]

Hasn't the time in which an empire rises and falls greatly accelerated during the last few hundred years?

When a nation "falls" is dependent on numerous different variables

The economic "crisis" to come is not going to lead to the collapse of the US, it's just a hiccup.

No one can really challenge the US militarily so it's not like China or Brazil would become overnight superpowers, and the American flag will still be fluttering in the breeze

I will admit that having a President who is as greedy as Nero and has the military aptitude of Hitler, America's 'fall' as it were has accelerated to a degree.

[CJvR]

A bit doom and gloom here. The US is mainly feeling the pinch of the post WWII restructuring that is still ongoing. For a long time the US enjoyed it's cheaply won position as the most powerful and prosperous nation on earth but now prosperity, and with it power, is spreading, diminishing US power relative to the rest of the world.