While Americans know they can’t get the welfare benefits they need, their leaders must realise their military can’t give them world domination
In America today, many low-income workers and households can’t get adequate healthcare or pay for food. Depending on who you ask, medical costs are the number one cause or at least among the top causes of bankruptcy for families.
This is despite the United States spending more on healthcare per capita than any developed economy within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and having the most advanced medical science and technology in the world.
Healthcare is one good indicator of social malaise. Another is people’s ability to put food on the table.
Here’s a statement from this week’s The Washington Post: “Families are paying for groceries with revolving debt, which then traps them into accumulating years of interest payments for food they’ve long since consumed.”
According to the Guardian, more than a million children – or 4 million Americans in total – across the US have lost access to federal food assistance benefits in the past 12 months.
Chinese social media posts call such social vulnerabilities in the US the “kill line”, to describe a financial and social tipping point that could ruin middle-class families.
But if there is not enough “butter”, despite America’s awesome wealth, there may not be enough “bullets” for its leaders, despite its unprecedented military power.
Since the end of World War II, the US has repeatedly lost big wars to far inferior forces in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion against Cuba failed almost as soon as it started.
The US can claim a few small outright victories: Grenada in the Caribbean in 1983, Panama in 1989-1990, and, for now, Venezuela, where the Trump regime is exercising neo-imperial control.
The first Gulf war was a big win indeed, but its unfinished business with Saddam Hussein led to the debacle of the second Gulf War.
The US has the most expensive military in the history of the world. But it’s increasingly apparent that it doesn’t deliver bang for its buck, or even dollar for dollar.
The Pentagon, which the US federal government spends the most on after health, entitlement programmes and interest on the debt, seems to have no idea where some of its money has gone. It has failed mandated annual audits eight times, making it the only federal agency never to pass a single review since nationwide audits began. And US President Donald Trump now wants US$1.5 trillion for the Pentagon’s next annual budget. Some people will get very rich.
The need to provide butter and/or bullets is a classic dilemma with trade-offs for nations.
The US has been so wealthy for so long that it has tried to sustain rapidly rising spending on both butter and bullets in recent years.
Most Americans know their country has the most advanced medical care in the world, but it is not necessarily affordable or accessible to them.
Meanwhile, American ruling elites think they have the most powerful military in the history of the world. But either they have failed their military or the military has failed them. Perhaps both.
Trump’s misadventure in Iran is the latest and most obvious example.
His domestic critics have rounded on him over Iran. No doubt he deserves all the criticism and caricature. But he is not the first, only the latest, in a long line of US leaders who have mistakenly thought the power of the US military would deliver what their heart desires.
Here’s an interesting headline from The New York Times: “Trump Seems Trapped by Iran War, Even as He Wields the World’s Biggest Hammer”. The standfirst says: “A president who thought there were no limits to his power has discovered several, leaving him more frustrated and erratic.”
The Times analysis further observes: “Mr. Trump, once confident that overwhelming force would enable him to pursue in Iran what he proudly called the ‘Venezuela model’ – a change of government to one amenable to U.S. control – is now hesitant to plunge back into major combat operations that his intelligence agencies assess are unlikely to work as well in Tehran”. The “Venezuela model”, really? There is a big difference between Iran’s defence capabilities and geopolitical leverage and Venezuela’s.
Just as many ordinary Americans know they can’t get the welfare benefits they need and deserve, it’s time American leaders realise their military can’t give them world domination any more. The sooner they realise their limitations, the safer it is for the whole world.
