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America needs to rely upon herself

Brandon Goldner
The Commuter

Monday, April 13, 2009

Brandon Goldner
Brandon Goldner

Since the end of the second World War (or earlier, if you consider the period between the latter half of the 19th century and 1945, before the US became a superpower), America has been critically dependent upon international trade.

Once it was decided that the only solution to domestic overproduction was to find reliable trading partners to whom we could sell our goods, the dominating belief has been that the less trade barriers between countries, the better.

We pushed democratically-elected nations in South America – such as Chile – to adopt capitalist economies which destroyed their social programs and left their middle class destitute.

But little matter, for the pure and unregulated capitalist economics championed by the likes of Milton Friedman (and echoed by those mostly from conservative circles) had become not only our economic policy, but indeed our foreign policy, and its legitimacy was maintained through the wealth and affluence we had accumulated.

Now we have reached a new age in our nation’s history where we must decide whether it’s worth risking the fate of humanity in order to continue down this same path.

The answer to the question of how to maintain economic prosperity – that our well-fed and educated workforce could produce enough to keep us extraordinarily wealthy – seems to have reached its logical end. For what happens when the workforce of another nation overtakes the capability of our own? Where will we find ourselves if we don’t have the raw materials and technology to be able to purchase the building blocks necessary to maintain our empirical dominance?

Unfortunately for the United States, this is the very state in which we now find ourselves, and there is nothing to blame but our own greed.

What we now need most is to re-evaluate what it means to be happy. Is it having limitless wealth? Or is it having the capability to live a rich and fulfilling life, and be able to sustain that quality of life for our children?

If gorging ourselves in an orgy of mass consumption is what we seek, it will not be attainable. We simply don’t (and won’t) have the power we used to hold, as the post-war period of the 50’s and 60’s were merely a mirage formed by the dust settling in soon-to-be world powers in Europe and the Pacific Rim. The fall of the world’s only other superpower, the Soviet Union, provided not an opportunity for peace, but the unrelenting push towards making the entire world clients of the United States.

This will fail for several reasons. As autonomous countries don’t necessarily enjoy being told how to behave, we will continue to meet resistance if our insistence upon twisting the arms of nations unwilling to trade with us continues. We see the beginnings of this with nations such as Venezuela; to say nothing about their culture, it’s important to view them as striving to be independent, and our casting of their role on the world stage as an enemy is both misguided and unfair.

There are also a limited number of natural resources to go around. If it turns out that we are beginning to reach the end of our oil reserves, it could very well turn out that the nations whose borders happen to be drawn around them will become defensive. An ensuring war over these strategic points may prove to be too many and far between for our military to capably engage for an extended period of time.

Finally, we have seen with this most recent economic hiccup that Americans have been living in a fantasy world, wallowing for months or years with the promise of enormous amounts of credit without any hope of being able to repay the debt. This is not a shot at homeowners or individuals with outstanding balances on their credit cards; rather it’s a statement of both this and our nation as a whole, whose debt to a certain Asian country is probably beyond the point of ever being able to rectify it in our lifetime.

The only available option, which will become clearer as time goes on, is to withdraw ourselves – ever so slowly – from both the international stage and marketplace.

By placing an emphasis on production here at home, we may begin to see that having a well-educated workforce and a strong middle class will be helpful in building the infrastructure of the 21st century. This may include the replacing of highways with rail lines, the construction of water reclamation centers, and solar, wind and thermal power generating facilities.

We will also begin to pull our military presence away from permanently-occupied bases in countries such as Syria and Saudi Arabia, as we will see a lessening of the strategic need to remain in these regions to keep a watchful eye over their oil reserves.

In the process, we can re-establish ourselves as a nation of morals, whose hard-working population is not concerned with maintaining worldwide dominance, but rather to set an example for functioning nations to look toward when considering how they wish their own country to function. If we wish for America to inspire feelings of good-will and tamp down those of resentment, a focus on domestic production will do both.

The global marketplace will not be closing anytime soon. And for the foreseeable future, America will continue its reliance on foreign trade and resources. But for the good of our country, our children, and, indeed, the world, the US should begin the process of becoming more self-reliant. It’s an ideal which has remained as relevant and logical as ever, despite its having been out of favor of our decision-makers for these last few generations.

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