Empires
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Empires John Walton, a billionaire son of the Wal-Mart empire, died in a plane crash in Wyoming yesterday. He was worth $18.2 billion dollars, they say, and was flying an ultra-light airplane out of the airport at Jackson Hole , Wyoming . I can understand the appeal of flying a little plane above the great granite peaks. The majesty of the mountains must help to put the wild illogic of his part of the retail empire into perspective. He ranked as the 11th richest man in the world, tied with one of his brothers, and just behind another. His mother and sister ranked behind him. The money that makes the family dinner table wealthier than some nation-states came from Sam Walton, the founder, who was the richest man in the world when he lived, though he still died. Young John never bought into Sam’s vision, not completely. He lived his life listening to his own music. He won a Silver Star in combat when he was younger, and never got caught up in the day-to-day running of the company that accelerated globalization and catapulted China into what might become their own private century. The Walton Family fortune represents a sort of transfer tax on the American way of life, moving small town jobs across the ocean, and returning them as bales of athletic socks. The Chinese will get beyond that. They have a vigorous culture and just needed the help in getting to critical mass. There is much more coming across the ocean, bales of dollars, not textiles. Just give it a little time. There are places where the old order is struggling. I am not going to declare the end of American primacy, not yet. But there are boiling pots everywhere, bubbling away. They have something to do with America , siphoning off the products of the mighty engine of enterprise. Great Empires have their cycles of prosperity, and with underlying factors of energy and good earth, can continue to grow and prosper. Rome lasted eleven centuries, after all. In my own short life I have heard men like Henry Kissinger declare that there could be no victory against the Soviet Union , only slow accommodation to the inevitable. He called it Realpolitik, and smart as he was, he was wrong. All it took was a little attitude from Ronald Reagan, and a little confidence. But consistently bad policy can show the limits of national power. Iraq is an interesting problem, and one that could prove to be one of Secretary Rumsfeld’s tipping points. There is another one next door to Iraq , in the ancient land of Persia . I call myself a Cold Warrior, since the bi-polar world of my youth is how we defined ourselves. But in my operational career, literally from my first year, I have been confronted by the boiling spirit of old empires fueled by an intoxicating faith. The hostage-taking in Iran in 1979 was the first time I arrived at the scene of a major traffic wreck, and watched our leaders try to deal with the consequences of the failed policy that seemed to have caused it. I cannot say that it was the abrupt reversal of the Nixon positions on the Shah that did it. The descendents of Xerxes are proud people. But I think it is fair to say that things might have worked out differently if Carter hadn’t pulled the plug on the Pahlavis. Instead, we rolled through the rapids with the Mullahs, and then the minor moderates. They are going to get The Bomb, that seems clear. The question is who will exercise control over it. The President-elect of Iran is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He is a dark handsome fellow of firm belief. That sort of confidence always troubled me. I had hoped that we might see a continuation of the relative moderation of the man he beat in the finals, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Ahmadinejad beat him by a margin of nearly two-to-one, drawing his strength from the religious underclass. People were emotional about this election. Turnout in the primary round was heavy. The result put the former mayor of Tehran in a position to exercise a mandate, arguably a stronger position than the American President who took a narrow plurality and declared it to be the mandate of heaven. The practical exercise of politics seems to have disabused the American Administration on that count, though the President remains serene in his vision. There are limits to the power of man, if not of heaven. The reach of Iran is small, nothing like it was when the Persians conquered all before them. The Chinese only sought global hegemony once, dispatching a eunuch Admiral to lead a fleet of gigantic ships across the wide ocean. The experience seemed to frighten the imperial court. Books were burned, and maps were destroyed. The empire turned in upon itself, and eventually the barbarians swept over them. But the Chinese are a resilient people, like the Persians. The emissaries of the Emperor are abroad again, and they are talking to people like Ahmadinejad. People with vision and a fire in their belly for a world that is not uni-polar. The Chinese are funding activities in Africa, and building telecommunications links with India . They are talking to the Panamanians, and helping rebuild the railway alongside the American Canal . And with oil at sixty dollars a barrel, they are talking to another man of vision, with fire in his belly. He lives in Venezuela and his name is Hugo Chavez. He believes in tipping points, and as others have thought before, he thinks the time of the Yankees should pass away. He thinks he might just be the man to pull Uncle Sam’s beard and get away with it. The Chinese just smile their patient smile. They have plenty of time. It is disconcerting to think that the grin on their faces is the Cheshire Cat vision of Sam Walton. Vic Socotra |
