Changeover of Empire

Change over of Empire I am currently- or at least when I get back to it- reading of the remarkable and unexpected rise of two major world empires both interacting with each other- Persia (Current day Iran) and Greek Empire and my source books to understand and think about this are Tom Howard’s ‘Persian Fire’ and my own hesitant attempts at translating and understanding the Hebrew of the book of Daniel in the bible. Thus there is as found in the next quote from Patrick O’Donovan’s article ‘The Practical Idealist’ some of the wonder and puzzlement of both Cyrus and Darius in that they had managed to overcome the sophistication of the great in a sense eternal –Head of Gold- Babylonian Empire. And the text of the first five chapters of Daniel reflects this wonderment because just as Secretary General Joseph Stalin had commissioned and written for him personally to read- The Hitler Book. So these chapters are commissioned for Daniel to write explaining the very heart of his interactions with Nebuchadnezzar and then Nebuchadnezzar 3rd in what became the unexpectedly easy fall of empire- with Tom Howard providing the political logic of the Daniel-Darius interaction seen in my current work in Daniel chapter six where Daniel having engineered the support for Darius so that international trade- Jewish Bankers- operating out of olde Babylon can continue doing what they do best in empire and business confidence is vitally safeguarded… Daniel gets thrown to the lions utterly distressing his patron and his appointed President…. I’m getting side tracked into my own thoughts here. The issue is- How did sophisticated Europe lose world empire to brash young USA- Empire State making New York self proclaimed Capital of the World? ‘Behind the brashness there lay the idea that this place was different, that they were unique. At least one English novelist, a Trollope recognized this fact. In a curiously unread novel ‘The American Senator’ he set an American Politician against English country gentlemen. The politician is made uncultivated loud and ignorant. He is a figure of fun tolerated by rural apparatus of squires vicars gamekeepers and workers who know their place. His ideas his clumsiness make nothing but trouble for the rigidly settled and indeed beautiful community. He is humiliated in the end by that effortless superiority. And yet at the book’s end it is clear he is the possessor of an idea and a propose far higher than that of any of his opponents hosts and tolerators. There was and still is an element of the sense of inferiority in the feeling that led to over assertion. The American might feel that the stranger was corrupt and he sturdy and self reliant and free. And there remained the facts of European wealth and power that were not affected by American successes. (The deal which went wrong causing the Oct 1929 stock market crash was in Trans Atlantic steel ownership; And by the end of 1929 the world economy no longer had Europe able to feel superior of American Successes. Take for example the entry of USA into WW2. Rooservelt waited until that historic day -7th of December 1941 when of course as you well know the game changer of the entire world war occurred –On the advice of a Tokyo German spy Comrade Stalin was able to transfer his Siberian forces into Moscow and that history changing day the German forces began to be pushed back- And on that day Japan giving the excuse- USA entered the European War to by `1945 reign supreme in Western Europe having first mid 1941 already frozen all European monies in US banks this European wealth not available to Europe’s elite until 1948! Thus in the first decades of the 20th century the power was shifting in the world economy) There was persistent contempt Europe so often showed America. There was the conviction –quite untrue- that the American ‘plain minded, common sense village honesty approach to international negotiation cost them dearly at every diplomatic contact with the outside world… Today (1964) with the experience of power and the sight of their national doorstep crowed with supplicants, the sense of inferiority has almost gone. It only remains for America generally to discover, as whole heartedly as Europe has the splendor of cultured tradition. The idea because it is a human one and left to humans to execute has proven imperfect. It has however led to the nearest approximation to democracy in the world and this in one of the largest states of the world. And because a very real freedom went with this democracy, it imposed no single discipline but allowed the survival of anomalies and contradictions. Such survival are evidence anywhere of a basic freedom. Too often in the past the sophisticated European looking in on America saw an uproarious history the indifference public decorum and use of loose language in high places – and dismissed it all as rather vulgar. That at least has changed. Europeans now recognize that the United States has the most subtle and complex political system in the world… ‘ (Again we must see this text as rooted in diplomatic discourse of the year 1964 and in fact those next seven years leading up to the removal from office of President Nixon and the Oil Shock of 1973 are in fact the very high point of the US political system. The New Deal of the mid 1930s was still in place and the span between Rich and Poor not as fantastically great as it now in the 21st century has become. Workers in USA were still receiving a wage capable of getting them an auto and having family holidays and owning a detached house…While a book such as ‘The Wrecking Crew’ Thomas Frank 2008 charts before the collapse of the financial system the inherent corruption of a dysfunctional political system. As to what was or was not happening in 1964 in the US political system I defer to the judgment of later to become New Zealand’s Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon visiting on a US State Dept scholarship where he in his book ‘The Young Turk’ marvels that given it’s conflicting complexity the US political system worked at all- and was pessimistic about it.) p 11/12 Time Life World Library- The United States. I may come back to this but I found another book for the next series of posts;