One of the strengths of the United States of America is its military power, with a global reach unlike any other country in the world. But could that power wane to fulfill a vision of what President Barack Obama and other countries have for the country?
On Hugh Hewitt’s Thursday radio program, National Review columnist Mark Steyn, who has a forthcoming book called “After America,” explained the United States won’t be able to maintain its military prowess and create a social welfare system on par with Sweden at the same time. And he suggested Americans get used to the latter.
“[I] think when you look at what happened in say, the United Kingdom between the early 1950s and the late 1990s – basically the proportion spent on social programs and the proportion spent on defense inverted and flipped,” Steyn said. “And that will happen here. I mean, we might as well get used to it. The idea that the United States can have the kind of government on the scale that Obama and Harry Reid foresee with $15 trillion dollars of debt, adding another $7 trillion dollars of debt and maintain a military of global reach, is simply incredible. You can have one or – you can have Swedish scale government, or you can have the U.S. military, but you can’t have both. And I think if you look at which way Obama or Harry Reid or Dick Durbin or any of these guys would want to jump, it’s pretty obvious which way they’re going to go.”
As for the financial crisis hitting Europe, Steyn explained this was inevitable with such a hodgepodge of nations with different interests. His suggestion: A northern version of the Euro.
“I think the Euro should probably retrench to a northern Euro,” he said. “But you cannot have a currency that embraces Germany and Sweden on the one hand, and Greece and Portugal on the other. You place enormous strains, because simply put, nation-states no longer have the freedom to make the economic decisions, make the tough economic decisions, when they’re wedged into an artificial currency. The U.S. dollar, by the way, didn’t really take off as a national currency until the mid-19th century. For the first, whatever it is, 75 years of this republic, all kinds of currencies floated around, according to local conditions. And that’s because in a way, a national currency is the last piece of the puzzle. And you don’t want to, and what you’re doing is you’re straightjacketing – straightjacketing countries and preventing them from making the tough economic decisions. And you’re risking contagion as we’re seeing in Britain with this massive exposure to Belgian banks, as you’re seeing in Germany’s holding of all kinds of funny debt from Eastern Europe and from Greece. You can’t isolate these things anymore. It’s all going to spread.”