DALE FRANKS: From Legacy to History: The End of the Post-WWII Era.

America’s appetite for debt has ballooned dramatically, leaving us with $36 trillion in national debt, and an additional $55 trillion (at least) in unfunded Social Security obligations. Interest on the national debt now takes up $1 trillion annually. At this point, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and debt service cost more than all the tax revenues the US government collects every year. Every penny we spend on the departments of Defense, Commerce, Treasury, Justice, etc. is borrowed. This unsustainable level of debt is pushing us ever closer to a default on our debt.

If that happens, the US will almost certainly lose its status as the world’s reserve currency, which would cause trillions of dollars in cash, currently held in foreign hands, to come flooding back into the US. This could spark massive inflation, perhaps hyperinflation. The inevitable resulting cuts to, among other things, defense spending, means that the US guarantee of global freedom of the seas and trade will have to end, because we’ll be incapable of providing it. But, even if we avoid that, the only option open to do so is massive cuts in government spending, which again, will have to fall greatly on defense, since it’s the largest portion of discretionary spending, by far. Either way, we aren’t going to have a Reagan-era 600-ship navy to patrol the seas and secure global trade routes.

Nor is there any immediate prospect of anyone stepping into fill our shoes. There’s no globe-spanning Royal Navy, for instance. Without the threat of military retaliation, chances are high that other states, or even non-state actors, will move to make global trade less secure.

In very short order we’ve moved from the bipolar order of the Cold War to a unipolar order (circa 1991-2009) to a multipolar order — and it looks like we’re headed toward nonpolar disorder.