
Fall of Saigon
When will historians of the future date the beginning of the decline and fall of the American empire?
The question may seem presumptuous. The idea that the American Century is a relic of the past, and we are entering a "new world order" of divided rather than hegemonic power, is relatively new, and still controversial. There are those who insist it
ain't necessarily so, primarily
neocons of the
second mobilization such as Robert Kagan, who are quick to reassure all right-thinking patriotic Americans that we're still Number One and warn against the fatal lure of committing "
superpower suicide."
To the rest of us, however - that is, to everyone outside the neocons'
cultic universe - the signs of the Great American Contraction are everywhere, most noticeably in the
incomes,
productivity, and general economic
well-being of ordinary Americans. Our own CIA - never a friend to the neocons, but that's
another story - avers this condition is the
single greatest threat to our national security: not
Iran, not
terrorism, but the very real threat of national bankruptcy. Our national debt is over 100 percent of GDP.
I would make the case, however, that the seeds of American decline were planted much earlier, during the cold war era. And if I had to pick a specific date that marked the beginning of the end, I would settle on
January 31, 1968 - the day the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces began the Tet offensive, which was militarily a setback for them, but politically
disastrous for the administration of
Lyndon Baines Johnson.