In his fifth voyage, Sinbad came across a taciturn old
man inhabiting the island where the Arabian Nights sailor was marooned. This
worthy hopped on to Sinbad’s shoulder with his tacit consent and then refused
to let go of his seat. Finally, according to Scheherazade, Sinbad had no
alternative except to get his tormentor drunk and stone him to death. http://bit.ly/17FCKJL
Ever since the US of A usurped the role of World
Supremo – did it happen in 1898 when it declared war on Spain and with the
Paris treaty wrested virtual suzerainty over South America and the Philippines?
– the mantle has rested heavily on its shoulder.
In the wake of Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905,
President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched his Great White Fleet of 16 battleships
with assorted escorts on a 14-month global cruise in order to demonstrate his
country’s naval capabilities and preparedness. (Remember Nixon and Kissinger
sending the US Fifth Fleet post haste to the Bay of Bengal in 1971?)
Once you’re on the superhero/superpower throne, it’s
not easy to abdicate. You’ve got to keep on playing the role, like it or not. (Lord
Acton’s axiom: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Great men are almost always
bad men." Note: Italics mine.) America did try to keep aloof in
the Great War till Germany used U-boats thus forcing President Woodrow Wilson’s
hand in early 1917. America’s entry on the Allied side in World War II too was
belated: it only entered the theatre after the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbour
on 7 December 1941. (By the way, by a strange twist of Fate, Captain America
had become Marvel Comics’ top selling title at around this time clocking a monthly
sale of as many as one million copies. Point to ponder: Why is a majority of comicbook superheroes
born in the USA?)
What has always surprised me, though, is how Uncle
Sam never got his fingers entangled into the Great Game – the on-going strategic
rivalry for supremacy in Central Asia between the British Empire and the Russian
Empire (and, after 1918, Soviet Union) – during its heyday. The American
intervention in the Afghan Civil War was in fact as late as in 1979 as a Cold-War
related retaliation to the Soviet initiative in the region and later directly
when the Russian withdrawal left a power vacuum there. After the World War II victory,
there have been many more episodes in the overseas adventures of Uncle Sam in
his Captain America avatar: Korea, Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Gulf
War, Iraq, and now maybe Syria – apart from his several covert interventions on
the side of Banana Republic chief honchos. When you have the world’s biggest stake
in armaments, covet the world’s oil reserves most avidly and have always fancied
yourself in the role of World Supremo, you don’t have much of a chance. Or, choice,
for that matter. You’ve got to carry your burden, trudge with it and like it or
lump it. Unless you decide to emulate Sinbad’s “carved in stone” example…
