Masters Series: Send Our Troops to Ukraine?
Editor's note: The U.S. has a global empire, supported by an unprecedented mountain of debt. All bubbles need to find their pins. All empires need to blow themselves up.
And Bill Bonner says former American diplomat James Jeffrey is proposing a way to speed up the process…
Bill is the founder of our corporate affiliate Agora, Inc. He's also one of our favorite writers on history, politics, and economics.
In today's edition of our weekend Masters Series – originally published April 21 in the free e-letter Diary of a Rogue Economist – Bill discusses the deepening hole the U.S. is digging for itself. He's convinced continued military involvement in foreign affairs is quickening the demise of the indebted, American imperial war machine…
Send Our Troops to Ukraine?
By Bill Bonner, Chairman, Bonner & Partners
By Bill Bonner, Chairman, Bonner & Partners
Coming off successes in Iraq and Afghanistan, it makes sense that the U.S. should send troops to Ukraine, no?
When we first read this in the Washington Post, we thought it might be a late April Fools' Day joke. Then we discovered the writer was sincere about it. Apparently, James Jeffrey is a fool all year round…
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And why not?
The U.S. has a global empire, supported by an unprecedented mountain of debt. All bubbles need to find their pins. And all empires need to blow themselves up. What Jeffrey is proposing is to speed up the process with more reckless troop deployments.
An Awful Mess
We're with him all the way...
Push ol' Humpty Dumpty off the wall and get it over with... so the U.S. can go back to being a decent, normal country without phony "red alerts"... "see something, say something" snitches... and a trillion-dollar "security" budget that reduces our safety.
But we doubt it will be that easy. Empires do not go gently into that good night. Instead, they rail... rant... and rave against the dying of the light.
They also make one awful mess of things. Empires depend on military force for their survival. And to meet their budget goals.
Typically, they steal things. In the Punic Wars, for example, the Romans filled an alarming budget gap by conquering the city of Tarentum. They then stole all that was portable... and sold its citizens into slavery.
Problem solved... for a while.
The U.S. is unique in the annals of imperial history. It always imagines it will reap a rich reward – at least in status, if not in money – from its conquests. It never does.
President Wilson believed he would be hailed as a great international statesman. Instead, Europeans laughed at him and his 14 Points. ("Even God himself only needed 10," quipped French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau.)
President Johnson imagined a big "thank you" from the Vietnamese. Instead, he got a "no thanks" from Americans.
And President George W. Bush imagined the oil riches of Iraq flowing back to the homeland... only to end up with the most costly and unrewarding war in U.S. history.
It is only because the U.S. is so rich that it has been able to afford this kind of malarkey. But that is coming to an end. For much of the last 30 years, the imperial war machine has been financed mainly on credit – aided and abetted by a credit-crazed central bank.
How long this can go on is anyone's guess. Probably no longer than the Fed's credit bubble can continue to inflate.
In the meantime, the defense contractors, the military lobbyists, and the other zombies in the security industry will continue to push for more meddling – in Syria... Ukraine... heck, wherever...
The bubble must find its pin somewhere!
Regards,
Bill Bonner
Editor's note: To learn how to protect your savings before the bubble pops, we urge you to read Bill's book, The New Empire of Debt. In it, Bill talks about the inevitable boom and bust of the world's empires. He talks about the massive amounts of debt crushing the U.S. economy. And most important – he shows you what to do when America's debts come due… and the U.S. Empire crumbles. Claim your free copy here.