The problem for nations is that they operate within pre-existing narratives which may or may not have much relation to the truth. The narrative tells a story which is smaller and easier to understand than the truth–which can be quite complicated.
The U.S., like all nations, develops a perception of itself, we stitch together details of events and create a story which fits our preconceived notions of the world. This varies from head to head, but broad themes emerge and this is how we define ourselves. The narratives are largely shaped by vested interests in Washington and the corporate world, with spillover stuff from academia. It is those with access to the corporate press who shape the narratives. Most of the rest of us merely take a position within a competing view.
This happens in all nations. In the U.S., the narrative is of a nation which has achieved ideological supremacy through competitive free markets, limited government, and recognition of the vote as representative of democracy.
The superiority complex which accompanies the power broker shaped narrative leads us to impose our “superior” ways on other nations which have their own history, and which have developed their own narratives, which they also suppose to be superior to the narrative of other nations. These differing narratives come into conflict, and due to the global narrative which accepts competition as the eternal order of things, it naturally follows that nations attempt to resolve their conflicts through war.
This is particularly true in the U.S. as the size of U.S. investment in military assets far exceeds that of any other nation. The U.S.’ annual military budget exceeds the annual military budgets of the next 10 nations combined. This investment has robbed the Nation of other assets, e.g., education, infrastructure . . . which could have provided the U.S. with sustainable, acceptable growth, in a world more prone to peace. Rather, the Nation resorts to the asset most readily available, the U.S. military, to achieve its international ideological and economic objectives. In the process, soldiers and civilians are sacrificed on the altar of a narrative which presumes our ideological supremacy–not a price I’d want to pay.
Perhaps a nation’s military aggressiveness during its youth, while never justified, might be understood, but a mature nation should not behave this way; it is imperialistic. Mature nations should display wisdom, act as an example: steer the world to a better place. I feel like the U.S. may have lost this opportunity somewhere between the mid 1980s through the 1990s, when a cooperative U.S. effort to bring forth peace and global well-being might have, due to the U.S.’ relative economic strength and the lack of a legitimate competitor, been obtained. Rather, the U.S. engaged in expensive military buildups so as to enable a bullying effort against international competitors.
Rather than ditch the competitive ideology which a wise, maturing nation might have done, the U.S. doubled-down. Culturally, competition became even more idolized–manifested by the extreme growth in competitive sports. Competition, of course, is the bedrock of the capitalist economic order.
The U.S. has spent lives and trillions of dollars in military efforts to maintain and expand its global power and ideological network. Had this money and human capital been invested in a manner which promoted international development, regardless of a particular nation’s ideological approach, we would likely not be a nation perched on the edge of world war today; the world might well be at peace.
Not that the American public is unprepared for war, quite the contrary; the system has groomed us towards war. Decades of free market distributed violent video games, entertainment, and actual war, have shaped the American consciousness to accept violence as the inevitable way of life. Even the physical body of the current American shouts “warrior” when compared with the American body of the 60s and 70s.
Instead of discarding our competitive ways, we have continued to rely on competitive private markets, despite the private market’s characteristic concentration of wealth, environmental destruction, and poverty left in the wake of its dynamic outward growth.
So here we find ourselves in a world of international conflict inspired by competing economic blocks, each trying to resolve internal economic problems, which are themselves the result of the private competitive markets from which they seek a cure–much like an opioid addict seeking their next fix.
So what do we do? We need to develop a new narrative, teach a new ideology, which emphasizes cooperative efforts both in the international and domestic realms. This will require new accounting systems which measure different things, i.e., the total social and environmental impact of private and public sector activity.
This is an ideological leap. But the consequence of rejecting ideological growth, the failure to rewrite the narrative, will be our downward spiral into more and more war, likely ending in nuclear hell. We may already be too late: it will take a concerted effort of peace-determined people to change the dark path we currently journey down.