India Is in the Process of Making an Impressive Statement in Space — by Sending a Probe to Mars — and Implicitly Adding that — “Earth ain’t America’s oyster, no more”

06 November 2013

We are no longer the only big guys in the pool

Some events dramatically symbolize the continual sorting of the global pecking order. Take, for example, India’s Mars mission, launched yesterday:

The Mars Orbiter Mission took off at 09:08 GMT from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the country's east coast.

The spacecraft is set to travel for 300 days, reaching Mars orbit in 2014.

If the satellite orbits the Red Planet, India's space agency will become the fourth in the world after those of the US, Russia and Europe to undertake a successful Mars mission.

Some observers are viewing the launch of the MOM, also known by the informal name of Mangalyaan (Mars-craft), as the latest salvo in a burgeoning space race between the Asian powers of India, China, Japan, South Korea and others.

Even if the trip fails to put a satellite into orbit around the Red Planet, the attempt serves as a noticeable indication of how much American hegemony is waning, especially as the two Asian superpowers begin to flex their building economic and technological muscle.

Deeper significance?

I mention the Indian Mars launch because Professor/Colonel Andrew Bacevich and I (among many others) have been trying to awaken the American public to the fact that the United States is no longer in a position to dictate much of anything to much of anybody. Insofar as we continue to try, we bleed our troops’ blood and drain our economic hopes for the future.

Dr. Bacevich has been especially eloquent in making the case that hubris is a geopolitical, as well as spiritual, flaw:

As a prophet, [Reinhold Niebuhr] warned what he called “our dreams of managing history” — born of a peculiar combination of arrogance and narcissism — posed a potentially mortal threat to the United States. Today, we ignore that warning at our peril.

[R]ealism and humility have proven in short supply.

Hubris and sanctimony have become the paramount expressions of American statecraft.

Whether the issue at hand is oil, credit, or the availability of cheap consumer goods, we expect the world to accommodate the American way of life.

Simply put, as the American appetite for freedom has grown, so too has our penchant for empire.

© 2008 Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2008) (extracts, taken from pages 7-9) (Bacevich sources the Niebuhr quotation to The Irony of American History (New York, 1952) at page 91)

Anyone who has read Professor/Colonel Bacevich, or the website you’re on now, has no lack of proof for the demonstrated validity of Professor Neibuhr’s admonitory hypothesis.

Only sheep with ostrich-heads, buried in the sand, can continue to think that the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars have been anything but geopolitical setbacks of sizeable proportion. To say nothing about the continued unsustainable over-extension of American military power abroad.

The moral? — Times are changing — We Americans can introduce ourselves to humility, or someone else is going to do it for us

One of the aspects of the Asian space race that regularly catches my attention is the enthusiasm with which the participants pursue it — especially in comparison with the lazy ennui that Americans view the same endeavor.

Significant in this, is that athletes and combat troop know that motivation is the foundation for victory and survival. The United States is not doing especially well in the enlightened enthusiasm department these days, with significant credit to our too often clay-footed President and contemptible Congress.

All the more reason to take a closer look at ourselves and whether what we do in the larger picture makes rationally evaluated sense.

PeteFree.com

India Is in the Process of Making an Impressive Statement in Space — by Sending a Probe to Mars — and Implicitly Adding that — “Earth ain’t America’s oyster, no more”