This blog entry is in english. Yet english is not my native language (italian is), so bear some indulgence with typos or grammatical mistakes. Also, I have been told that I write complex things - whether this is good or bad I don't know: but so, if you are unfamiliar with complex prose you may see grammatical errors not only where there could be some, but also where just a prose you're not acquainted with is. Native speakers with an A+ grade in english say my english, obviously not perfect, imports no major issues. Lend a deaf ear to the errors, vocally disagree with my thesis if you want, but enjoy the style all the while.
The trade off between the two main forces substantiating a State, bureaucracy and charismatic leadership (not merely cosmetic executive power, that is), date from Max Weber; but Europe has not learned by him despite he was a German son.
When charismatic leadership is balanced by bureaucracy and bureaucracy is counterweighted by charismatic leadership, both forestall and trammel each other and the equilibrium that ensues ought be called paralysis, not balance.
In such a stalemate what would benefit more is the bureaucracy, because bureaucracy has a flair for thriving on status quo and standstills.
Henceforth a nation has to have both bureaucracy and charismatic leadership, but with a sensible penchant for the latter. This is the USA, whereas conversely a bureaucracy with a penchant for itself is the European Union, for it has no charismatic executive power whatsoever, and the sullen nature of the formal presidency of the Commission is something everybody senses without efforts.
The recipe of the EU is: a non existent leadership, an Euro Parliament staunchly quarrelling on the evisceration of chickens and the slipperiness of bananas, widespread heavy bureaucracy pried as a faith, and sudden sparks form the executive leaderships of the constituting countries that at times seem on the verge of jeopardizing the EU organization with an inherent menace of anarchy flowing from the Tops.
A League of nations that still ill fits together, is still a sour balance of (ex) powers whose each outcome is bound to be tainted by the worst of the errors any true geopolitical thrust dies by: inconclusiveness.
The main virtue of the USA eventually lies in this: conclusiveness.
Friends, Romans, Americans, Countrymen!
It has been said of the United States that we're a country that commits evils like no other, and that we're therefore undeservedly powerful and wealthy since we would have stolen our bread from the mouths of the widows.
But the years when we knew our biggest leaps forward were the years between 1865 and 1890, under the Monroe doctrine shield heydays: no commitment abroad whatsoever!
Our army amounted then to less than 25,000 men, our navy was composed of two vessels and lagged behind Chile and Bulgaria of those times. We didn't participate to any international conference. And when a foreign country wanted to cut expenses, more than a time chose to close its embassy in Washington as a measure.
None the less, exactly in those years we were boosting our coal production by 800%, steel raised by 523%, railway track mileage jumped by 567%, wheat production by 256%, and immigration doubled our population: because our country started with immigration, grew on immigration and still today is open to any immigrant and is composed of roots that are all roots of immigrants.
USA power is entirely a consequence of American virtues; and if lacking them I would indulge myself into begrudge, all I would have achieved and proved would have been not only that I lack them, but that probably I lack them because I never deserved them; as you know and as Tocqueville wrote "the principal reason men lose power is that they were no longer worthy of wielding it".
We have learned on our skins, and we have applied to ourselves relentlessly the awareness that the worst enemy to a country struggling for welfare is self deception into self lenience, and that this foe within a country alone prevents any country from attaining its legitimate hopes.
So USA riches are not a consequence of its power: it is exactly vice versa.
How do you believe alliances are forged?
We have to deal on a daily basis with a whole world inhabited by extremism of every hue, thugs, dictators, sultans and tyrants, and amidst such darkness not every dawn we can make the brightest choice with the dismay rounds at hand: some options, and some Middle Classes, at times simply aren't in the cards.
Like every other nation in the world, we retain a right to misplay a hand, and leave in place a dictator to forestall a by far worse possibility; some real politick necessities have not been either a prerogative or an invention of the United States. But it most certainly has been a prerogative that lies square on American Shoulders sowing democracy, and rebuilding from scratch those very same mortal enemies that other nations and other stories would have taught to us should have been destined to what every defeated nation was destined to until the Unites States of America entered the gruesome scene: pillaging, raping, plundering, ravaging, torturing, burning, and taxing.
But it most certainly has been a prerogative that lies square on American Shoulders freeing a whole globe from a both hemispheres raging fascism. But it most certainly has been a prerogative that lies square on American Shoulders to have granted unprecedented affluence, shared wealth, and permanent peace to a whole continent and populations that for nearly 2,000 years knew none of these things. But it most certainly has been a prerogative that lies square on American Shoulders preventing the real socialist program from overtaking the whole of the continents and from destroying in the senseless clutches of their doctrines and tanks all those nations that under our umbrella spared themselves such experience. But it most certainly has been a prerogative that lies square on American Shoulders to guarantee all of this day after day until to-day.
And if we have not granted all of this to all of the quarters of the world, it has been because it doesn't exist an analogously encompassing American solution capable of enacting the same miracle at once and everywhere in all those quarters of a wide world where grievances cry to the Lord.
Other alliances were to change over time. If my ally allies with my enemy, he is no longer my ally and it cannot be the USA who is to be considered liable for the shift of a course, meanwhile it would be criminal not to shift our course in the face of factual circumstances that disavowed the alliance.
Henry Kissinger once wrote:«The study of history offers no manual of instructions that can be applied automatically; history teaches by analogy, shedding light on the likely consequences of comparable situations. But each generation must determine for itself which circumstances are in fact comparable. (...) there is a vast difference between the perspective of an analyst and that of a statesman. The analyst can choose which problem he wishes to study, whereas the statesman's problems are imposed on him. The analyst can allow whatever time is necessary to come to a clear conclusion; the overwhelming challenge to the statesman is the pressure of time. The analyst runs no risk. If his conclusions prove wrong, he can write another treatise. The statesman is permitted only one guess; his mistakes are irretrievable.»We're not to wait for the clouds to end clustering before arguing it is to rain. And a danger perceived as a danger which is not to come about, is a danger that by this very same fact instantaneously multiplies its chances to occur anyway.
This is not even a surefire recipe for avoiding a catastrophe like 9/11, so the more it is necessary. The fear that never came about in its most malignant predicted form is not a danger that had no basis, but a danger effectively dealt with, with the humanly possible foresight and the American determination we've proved ourselves capable of.
If the best we can do is to argue each other respectfully that we disagree or that we reciprocally consider each other's approaches wrong, what we're actually being left with is abdicating a solution handing over to the brute force of the facts the task of solving our impasse with the blasts of errors or consequences in whose fireworks both of us, wrong or right whatever we might have been, will eventually perish.
This is why, whilst reproaching each other, it is unacceptable to let that facts would unfurl by their own in order to prove who was wrong and who was right. Being right and dead is of no consolation, a living dog is not braver than a dead lion, and being wrong and prey of those wolverines we were so unable to perceive as an actual and present danger, is no longer a lesson to ponder around.
This is why we are allies. Forever.
So the question is not why we are allies: the question is why some seem to contend or act as if we're no longer, or as if we should no longer be such.
In a time of peace we can pursue our goals as we please, but in a time of war we're still bound either to raise or to fall together; and who thinks or -God forbid- hopes otherwise is doomed for the fall.
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