Carefully, seeking moderate voices in the royal family committed to democratic reform. The kingdom is a time bomb — skyrocketing population growth, declining per capita income, rising foreign debt, growing unemployment — all enhanced by censorship, sexual apartheid, cheap anti-Americanism, odious anti-Semitism, and an autocratic elite of about 85,000 which has put nearly 700 billion dollars of capital overseas and out of the hands of the needy. The axiom that dictatorships and autocrats who hate us ensure a friendlier population in the future toward America is quite correct — as the nature of the Eastern Europeans, present-day Iranians, and Iraqi people attest. So constant pressure on them to reform — with a rule that if they continue, either out of fear, blackmail, or spite, to give money to killers of innocent Americans, there will retribution to those responsible as terrible as it will be unpredictable.
Would it be fair to say that there have been other militaries throughout history that have been just as dominant in combat as the U.S. military is today? If so, can you give some examples?
The British navy after Trafalgar was supreme, but even after Waterloo England had nothing like American preeminence on land. Rome did, but the world was smaller and there were formidable powers on her borders that often could prove terrifying. Not so for the United States after 1989. So this is a new era, and the striking thing is that we have proved to be a benign hegemon who does not seek treasure or exact tribute, not to mention does not annex land not our own. We have not seen previously such military power used in positive ways — which explains the angst of our critics who can’t quite put the removal of Noriega, Milosevic, the Taliban or Saddam Hussein in the normal Marxist paradigm. How hard it must be for such doctrinaire and ossified ideologues to berate the United States for removing right-wing killers and promoting democracy, and so how pathetic the attempts are to portray us as imperial oppressors.
There have been frequent comparisons of late between the United States and the Roman Empire. How valid do you think those comparisons are?
Politically they are absurd. We do not send proconsuls to demand taxes to pay for basing troops. In fact we do the opposite — pay lavishly for bases that protect others. The imperial senate was impotent, and civil war was common after AD 200 — we have a stable Congress and little strife. For all the European venom, George Bush is not a Caracalla or even Diocletian. The classical topos of luxus, decadence brought about by affluence and leisure — read Petronius, Suetonius, or Juvenal — well, that is a real concern. Self-loathing and smug cynicism from an elite are the first symptoms and we see that clearly among those pampered and secure, who nevertheless ridicule the very system under which they operate in such a privileged fashion — most notably in the arts, on the campuses, and in the media. A Jessica Lange or Barbra Streisand is right out of a Petronian banquet or perhaps sounds like a Flavian princess spouting off at dinner before returning to Nero’s Golden House. Norman Mailer is a modern day Eumolpus bellowing on spec, and Michael Moore a court jester brought in to stick his tongue out at his benefactors for their own sick amusement.
How do you see the relationship between the U.S. and Europe changing over the next decade or so?
Radically, as we revert to the pre-1945 world of bilateralism with all its dangers. The cold war was an aberration. Note how quickly the Europeans turned on America once 400 hostile divisions were no longer on their borders. They make up a big continent with a big population that deserves pride and power commensurate with their economy and population; so it is time for both of us to recognize that, bring the troops home or redeploy them in more friendly eastern European countries, and as friends let them develop their own military identity. Keeping 200,000 troops abroad to protect a rich continent is unhealthy for all parties involved. We are a different people, and to preserve our common heritage and friendship, we must recognize those divergences and thus it would be safer in the long run to let them defend themselves and not seek such shrillness in lieu of power and independence. We are in a very Orwellian world now where al Qaeda could hit the Louvre or Vatican and do so with impunity — if not for the overseas reach of the U.S. military — and yet the Europeans seem to resent their protectors by reason of their very dependency. Add our frontier experience, our original charter that was antithetical to Europe, our strength in mixed races and religions, our greater allegiances to liberty than enforced equality and it is no surprise that after the Soviets are gone we are rediscovering our differences.
