A Feeble Superpower Argument

Re “In an Era of Only One Superpower, We’re All Safer,” Commentary, March 13: I will accept Arthur Herman’s argument that having only one superpower is a good thing on one premise: that he will accept the one superpower if it someday becomes China, North Korea, Russia, Japan or Pakistan.

Christina Waldeck

Torrance

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I must strongly object to Herman’s analysis regarding the alleged benefits of the U.S. status as the world’s single superpower.

He cites as a precedent more than 100 years of “peace, prosperity and stability” that reigned when the British were the only global superpower from the early 19th century.

For whom was this a century of peace and prosperity? For the Indians crushed under British colonial authority? For the Burmese suffering the humiliations of British cultural ignorance? For most of Africa, from Cape Town to Algiers, forced to endure the yoke of European political domination?

To call an era of world history defined by European high colonialism in Asia and Africa a period of peace and prosperity is a gratuitous insult to the hundreds of millions of people who suffered under the arrogant domination of the “enlightened” West.

Is it not precisely the reverberations stemming from that era of British dominance that continue to fuel much of the frustration and instability found throughout the contemporary world?

George Dutton

Assistant Professor, Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA

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The single foremost purpose of the British naval fleet was to defend and perpetuate its colonial holdings around the world, rather than “tug the world in a new progressive direction” and provide “support of national determination.”

The vast wealth pouring in from the colonies guaranteed Britain’s economic might, which in turn ensured its military hegemony.

Sardul Minhas

Anaheim Hills

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Herman’s article is without a doubt one of the finest examples of twisting history to support a specious premise I have ever seen! The way he completely ignores vast abuses of power to pluck out just the ripe parts of fruit from the garbage is awe-inspiring!

The completely unsubtle swipes at France and the way he works in the phrase “new world order” without cringing are worthy of propaganda god Joseph Goebbels himself.

If you had only managed to work in one comment about Americans as the new master race, the article would have been perfect.

His conclusions are all completely ludicrous, of course, but such mental gymnastics rate right up there with the finest Olympian.

Randal Snyder

Los Angeles

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Herman declares that after World War I, Britain slashed the size of its fleet to save money, creating a power vacuum that allowed the rise of fascism.

I submit it was American isolationism and European appeasement that allowed the rise of imperial Japan, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, not the reduced size of the British Royal Navy.

Joseph Kaufman

Mission Viejo

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The world has long known that the ideal world is that of a benevolent dictator. But fortunately most of us also remember, though Herman seems to have forgotten, that benevolence cannot be counted on, and the potential for evil of untrammeled power is monstrous.

Ronald Chao

Huntington Beach