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• The lost horizon of the emperors

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  • R Vaidyanathan
  • I reiterate it will take at least 40 quarters — that’s a decade — for America to recover.
  • I still maintain the US is going the banana republic way what with a national debt of more than $10 trillion, which is more than 80 per cent of its national income. Not only that the budget deficit is skyrocketing; it’s expected to reach more than 10 per cent soon.
  • The expected inflation is going to rip apart the society and the largest selling item in the last quarter was handguns and rifles.
  • I am waiting for the creditrating agencies like S&P to downgrade the US economy like other developing countries and prove their independence from the sole superpower.
  • Unlike the Great Depression of the 1920s, the current crisis for the West is not just an economic crisis. It has a dimension of demography and conflict (ongoing war with radical Islam) to it. Demographic, because Europe is slowly fading away from the global map. It used to have more than 20 per cent of the global population during the First World War, and now has less than 11 per cent. What’s more, it’s expected to shrink to three per cent in as many decades.
  • In the case of US, the crisis is more severe due to its declining savings rate and a long-term tendency to nationalise families and privatise government.
  • Social security and Medicare system in US is classic case of nationalising families.
  • Such a declining Empire is dangerous to deal with. To start with, it does not want to accept the fact that it is a declining Empire.

     

    Plus, it wants to retain its sole power status when it realises that its writ does not any more hold good. It tries to bully India.
  • Islamabad always has a peculiar way of coming to discussion on any issue.

     

    They keep a gun on their own head and argue with others. That is, they always threaten others with catastrophe if money is not given to them. This is the most sophisticated begging anywhere you can see in international relations.
  • The next thing the declining empire does is to cringe and appease. The speech by Obama in Cairo is of that variety.
  • The third thing a declining power does is to pressure others to sacrifice on its behalf to buy peace with bullies.
  • What is in Indian interest is the continuation of civil war in Pakistan for, say, another ten to twenty years — ambient conflict — sort of auto-cannibalism which will be a dynamic disequilibria — situation.
  • Other option is to have at least three or so states created out of that entity.

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