Kevin Phillips on threats to America

Kevin Phillips writes over at TPM Cafe about his new book, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.

Kevin describes his book:

My underlying thesis in American Theocracy is that these are the three major perils of the United States in the early 21st century.

• First, radical religion– this encompasses everything from the Pat Robertson-Jerry Falwell types to the attacks on medicine and science and the Left Behind books with their End Times and Armageddon scenarios.
• Second, oil dependence – oil was essential to 20th century U.S. hegemony, and its growing scarcity and cost could play havoc. And
  
• third, debt is becoming a national weakness – indeed, the “borrowing” industry in the U.S. has grown so rapidly that finance has displaced manufacturing as the leading U.S. sector.

[Bullet points and bolding above are mine. Words are quoted.]

This immediately caught my eye, as these themes sum up much of what I have read and written over the last two years. I would be tempted to add Global Warming and Environmentalism to the list to make it complete, but Kevin is a historian rather than a scientist, and he is focusing on politics and history.

Barnes & Noble will release his book March 21st, so when my next check arrives I will be buying a copy. In the meantime I strongly recommend that you go read his discussion of the book at TPM Cafe and see what you think.

Also, you might be interested in this article in Foreign Policy Magazine from 2002. The U.S. is well into the process of being reduced to just one more nation in the world, much as Great Britain was after WW I. The real question is not whether they U.S. is the single dominating nation in the world, it is how the U.S. will accept its' decline.

The preemptive attack on Iraq was an example of the way the NeoConservatives are handling the decline. It is now clear that the attack on Iraq didn't work.

It just exposed how relatively weak America has really become. Mind you, that is ~relatively~ weak, not absolutely weak. The world seems to me to be moving to a situation in which the U.S., United Europe, China, Japan and India will all be the major powers, with the Middle East, Indonesia and Africa being left out. Mexico, the U.S. and Canada will be a single block, and I'm not sure about Russia and South America.

The next 50 years is going to be extremely interesting.