Read Online Dinesh D'Souza - America: Imagine a World without Her by Dinesh D'Souza - Free Book Online

and America. Already the Chinese are making huge investments abroad, buying up land and mineral rights, getting their foothold in the same way that the British did a couple of centuries ago. The Chinese are shrewdly exploiting anti-American sentiments to make themselves look like the better alternative. Yet the Chinese want far greater hegemony, and are likely to demand a greater degree of obeisance from others, than Americans ever sought. Ultimately this domination might even extend to us. American presidents of the future may be forced to bow before Chinese officials before they get a hearing.
    Moreover, the Chinese have no interest in shared global leadership. They will share as long as they have to, but their goal is singular hegemony. Here the Chinese motto is Deng Xiaoping’s: hide ourstrength, bide our time. China is building its military power. It is modernizing its nuclear arsenal. China is building a powerful navy. And not surprisingly, given China’s population, it can field by far the largest number of people on the battlefield. In an age of technology, numbers may not seem very significant, but as technology is equalized numbers become decisive. Consider this: while America has 2 million men and women in arms, China is capable of fielding well upward of 100 million! For the American military, half a million casualties would be horrific; if China faced that level of casualties, the nation would hardly notice. Jacques insists—and I agree—that China has no intention of actually fighting a war with America. Rather, its objective is to show that such a war would be absolutely suicidal for America, so that America will succumb to Chinese power without a fight. What the Soviets failed to achieve, China sees as a coming fait accompli . Just as America won the Cold War “without firing a shot,” China intends to win the next war with America without firing a shot.
    The Chinese, the Indians, the Brazilians, and the Russians are all getting richer and stronger due to wealth creation. Yet the leaders of these countries, while they appreciate wealth creation as one way to gain power, have never given up on the conquest ethic as another way to gain power. In fact, they see wealth creation as a way to increase their military power; then that power can be deployed to acquire more wealth through conquest. To see what I mean, imagine if we discovered a new planet rich in minerals and energy but inhabited by peaceful aliens. Would America regard it as right to conquer them and take their stuff? No, we no longer have the conquest ethic. But the Chinese do; they have never given it up. This is why the world still needs America. We remain the custodians of the idea that wealth should be obtained through invention and trade, not through forced seizure.
    In terms of maintaining its leadership and strength, no one can deny that America faces a parlous challenge. Given this, the behavior of the Obama administration, and of progressives more generally, can only be considered surreal. I am tempted to say that they are like the violinists who played music while the Titanic sank. In this picture, Obama would be the strange conductor, obsessed with his tunes while missing the larger reality of the situation. This analogy, however, is unfair to the musicians on the Titanic . Their conduct was entirely rational. They knew the ship was going down and there was nothing else they could do. So they bravely resolved to play and give people what little cheer they could. In America’s case, however, there is a great deal we can do. Yet Obama seems unwilling to do any of it. I am not saying he is ignorant of the global reality. In fact, he knows it quite well. His behavior is also rational, from the progressive point of view. If we think of the Titanic as symbolizing the American era, Obama wants that ship to go down.
    Obama is the architect of American decline, and progressivism is the ideology of American suicide. Here’s a way to think about