Comment by dustingetz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dustingetz | Hacker News Reader

USA's power stems from having coasts on both oceans, which gives the USA unique naval advantages, according to a book:

> The United States Navy controls all of the oceans of the world. Whether it’s a junk in the South China Sea, a dhow off the African coast, a tanker in the Persian Gulf, or a cabin cruiser in the Caribbean, every ship in the world moves under the eyes of American satellites in space and its movement is guaranteed—or denied—at will by the U.S. Navy. The combined naval force of the rest of the world doesn’t come close to equaling that of the U.S. Navy.

> Having achieved the unprecedented feat of dominating all of the world’s oceans, the United States obviously wanted to continue to hold them. The simplest way to do this was to prevent other nations from building navies, and this could be done by making certain that no one was motivated to build navies—or had the resources to do so. One strategy, “the carrot,” is to make sure that everyone has access to the sea without needing to build a navy. The other strategy, “the stick,” is to tie down potential enemies in land-based confrontations so that they are forced to exhaust their military dollars on troops and tanks, with little left over for navies.

-- Friedman, George. The Next 100 Years (p. 45). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Basically he says that the USA can spend recklessly, be astoundingly inefficient, etc and still remain in power due to this.

I've also read Friedman's work and tend to agree with a lot of his points. However, what we've started seeing for some years now is a severe degradation of the US's soft power. The hard power is still there and the US will probably make more and more use of it in order to keep other countries (or its own population) under control.

For the rest of the world (and for a significant part of the US population) this will make life more unpleasant, but at the same time will help dispel any lingering illusions about the benevolent or fair nature of American power.

what is soft power vs hard power?

Carrot vs stick. In practical terms, it is the ability to convince (often often buy at a reasonable price) vs the ability to bomb or sanction.

Soft power: Influence, prestige, money, persuasion.

Hard power: planes, tanks, ships, spacecraft.

Could this, almost word for word, once have applied to the British Empire?

yes and he goes through what happened in the book

"The USA is so powerful because the USA is so powerful". That's empty.

So was Afghanistan a burgeoning naval power that threatened our hegemony?

Afghanistan was never burgeoning power in recent history. However it was a strategic land-locked asset to other great and super powers throughout history. In the late, Cold War period Afghanistan, once an asset of the Soviet Union, was converted into a land-locked asset to the U.S. following the invasion by the Soviet Union in 1979. The U.S. provided weapons to mujahideen forces fighting against the invading Soviet forces, which ultimately forced their withdrawal.

Unfortunately, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, what had been a useful asset to the U.S. cold-war strategy of containment converted over time into a real threat to U.S. power, (by air, not by sea), as it served as the base of operations by a former mujahideen fighter, Osama Bin Laden, who planned and directed the 9/11 attack against three targets in the U.S.

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