HAS THE USA LOST ITS MOJO?

Mojo is a magical thing. It makes its holder seem bigger than life. More powerful that the rest. Mojo elevates the holder while enervating all opponents. Mojo conveys respect for its possessor and creates fear in all rivals and pretenders. You cannot be the superpower of anything if you lose your mojo.

The Wizard of Oz lost his mojo when Dorothy discovered he was just an ordinary old man bellowing from behind a curtain.

Following its impressive victory in The Seven Years War, England had a virtual monopoly on the world's mojo. The British navy bullied France, Holland and Spain, disrupting their trade routes. When the American Rebellion broke out in 1776, most of Europe hated England and would gladly have helped out the Americans. But England had too much mojo, so France and its defeated allies kept their powder dry. Then in September and October, 1777, the brilliant maneuvering of General Benedict Arnold and the stout defensive moves of General Horatio Gage resulted in the rebel capture of England's General "Gentleman Johnnie" Burgoyne and his entire army.

The news that a bunch of rebels had captured an entire British Army sent shock waves around the world. Shock waves that drained the mojo out of England and encouraged France to offer the Americans its treasure, its navy, an army and its overall military knowhow. Holland soon began throwing chests of gold pieces at the rebels, and others offered diplomatic and monetary support. Without its prewar mojo, England was doomed to lose its colonies.

General Motors once had mojo, back when it controlled over 50% of the U.S. car market. Back when the government thought GM so powerful that it attempted to break the company into two pieces. Back when Secretary of Defense Charlie Wilson was reputed to have said, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." Then along came Toyota and Honda. A GM president bleated, "You can't make a good small car. You have to take too much quality out." The mojo quickly oozed out of GM.

The USA once had tons of mojo. Back in the 1990s, our mojo conveyed enormous fear and respect around the world. Our economy was unparalleled. Federal budget deficits had miraculously turned into surpluses. We swam in cheap oil and gas. The dollar was firmly ensconced as the world's currency. We were the world's largest creditor economy.

President George H.W. Bush had just led a great coalition to defeat Iraq's Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War. The American military had exhibited extraordinary skill in intimidating the Iraqi air force to flee the skies without putting up a fight. Our army crushed the Iraqi army while incurring minimal casualties. U.S. military hardware so thoroughly defeated the French-made tanks and weapons used by the Iraqi army that a huge world demand for American military equipment arose. At the same time, we were exporting the American culture all over the world through motion pictures, television and the rapidly rising internet. English was fast becoming the world's language of business.

Our only real rival, the Soviet Union, collapsed, leaving a huge power vacuum in its wake. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland were suddenly freed from Soviet domination. Poland became ever more aggressive. The Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other parts of the former Soviet empire broke free. The European Union and NATO quickly pushed into the very frontiers of the new Russia.

By the dawn of the new millennium, the USA seemed to have a corner on the world's mojo. Only the French were capable of bleating about us to any extent. Everyone else was intimidated by a mojo that generated enormous quantities of fear and respect.

That was then. Seven short years ago. Now it is 2006 and things have changed.

The U.S. economy is under attack. China has grown to become the world's dominant manufacturer. India is rising as the world's back office supplier. Good American middle-class blue- and white-collar jobs are rapidly evaporating. The USA is wracking up record trade deficits, which have converted us into the world's largest debtor nation. The current administration, attempting to run a guns and butter economy while lowering taxes, has created massive budget deficits which are threatening the health of the dollar. With the dollar sinking in value against the Euro, nations are beginning to shift their currency reserves out of dollars, thus weakening the greenback even more. The middle class is losing purchasing power while the poor have not received a minimum wage adjustment in 14 years.

But not all is gloom and doom. The rich are doing better than ever and Congress keeps granting itself pay raises. ExxonMobil cannot seem to discover any new oil, but retiring chairman Lee Raymond was given a $400 million retirement package based on "performance." Meanwhile, our cheap oil economy has been bushwhacked by $70-a-barrel oil, which is pushing us perilously toward the stagflation of the Jimmy Carter era.

It is very hard for a debtor nation to retain much mojo.

And things are much worse on the military front. Compared with the glory of the Gulf War victory, we are now mired down in the worst kind of defeat. Repeating the unlearned lessons of the Vietnam War, our soldiers are winning battles but losing control of territory to the insurgents. How many times are we going to take Fallujah? Now the "victory" in Afghanistan is becoming undone by an invigorated Taliban. Instead of leaving Iraq victorious (as we did in the Gulf War), it appears we are trying to sneak out by repeating the Nixon policy of "Vietnamizing" the war. I wonder who will be on the last helicopter out of Baghdad?

Making things worse, our old enemy is rising once more. Russia, its oil- and gas-rich economy propelled by high energy prices, is rapidly reacquiring its mojo. President Putin has rolled back the fledgling democracy, intimidated Europe by threatening to cut off its gas exports in winter, irritated the U.S. by vetoing our policy efforts in the U.N. Security Council and opposed U.S. initiatives throughout the Middle East.

Driven by its need for raw materials, China has penetrated South America and Africa with great rapidity, and even greater success. Not only has China replaced the USA as the most influential player on the two continents, it has shredded the Monroe Doctrine in the process.

With American mojo fast disappearing, many countries are rising up to oppose the USA. It is no longer just the French who are bleating at us. Militant Islamists are attempting to blow us up all over the world. Wahhabi imans from Saudi Arabia are preaching violence in U.S. mosques. Inspired by al-Qaeda, many terrorist groups are springing up inside our borders.

South America has experienced the "Bolivarian Revolution" with the leaders of Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela preaching against the United States. American oil companies are being intimidated and, in some cases, have had their assets expropriated. (Teddy Roosevelt would have dispatched a few gunboats filled with Marines and settled things quickly.)

Throughout the world, surveys show that the world dislikes us to an incredible extent. But this is not entirely new. The world has long resented our economic success and the extravagant exhibitionism shown by many Americans. At the time we were saving England in World War II, many Brits were fond of saying, "Americans are over-paid, over-sexed and over here." The French never got over suffering through four years of losing trench warfare in World War I, only to have the American doughboys charge into the German lines in May, 1918 and wrap up the war in five short months. General, later President, de Gaulle bitterly resented the fact that a defeated France had to be rescued by the Americans in World War II. For decades the American tourist has been seen as "a loud, vulgar man in plaid shorts."

But in the past, the American mojo blunted and silenced most outward hostility.

Now that we have lost much of our mojo, people can openly disrespect us.

A question remains:

Will we lose all our remaining mojo and decline as a nation?

Or, like India, China and Russia, will we start winning some of it back?

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