The end of American dominance.

[mix]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-t-klare/welcome-to-2025-american_b_334310.html

No one seems to be saying this out loud -- yet -- but let's put it bluntly: less than a year into the 15-year span of Global Trends 2025, the days of America's unquestioned global dominance have come to an end. It may take a decade or two (or three) before historians will be able to look back and say with assurance, "That was the moment when the United States ceased to be the planet's preeminent power and was forced to behave like another major player in a world of many competing great powers." The indications of this great transition, however, are there for those who care to look.

I agree with this assessment. I think we are seeing the end of a brief period of American global hegemony, starting with the end of the Cold War and ending with the Great Recession we are now living through. China's and India's ascendancy, along with the EU's, must be factored in too. 9/11, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan occupation, and the War on Terror have also played roles in weakening American power. Our post-9/11 world has been a cascade of foreign policy mistakes whose collective result will be the end of the post-1989 Pax Americana.

The days of the United States acting as a hyperpuissance are over. This country will remain strong, but reduced in power in the coming years.

What will this mean for Americans and life in this country?

[SpiralHawk]

1. "Smirk." - xCommander AWOL (R)

[SpiralHawk]

2. "Up yours, America. Sneer." - xVP Dickie 'Five Military-Deferments' Cheney (R)

[Octafish]

25. No foreign enemy has hurt America more than the BFEE.

Considering just the Plame Affair:

Our nation's security was weakened so Sneer n Smirko could "warn" the gov peeps to keep their wigs shut. They got their wars, power and profits.

Now, after running up the national debt to 21 trillion with nothing to show for it, we're asked to tighten our belts and lower our expectations. Nice.

[whathehell]

3. That's a very interesting question.

I think it will mean good things for both Americans and non-Americans if we stop being an "empire"..At the same time I don't know who I would want to "replace" us.....Hopefully, it will be no ONE power..Could we hope for something like an "euality of nations".

[valerief]

4. An end to dominance means an end to dummynance! nt

[Overseas]

5. I'd say the imposition of George Dubya Bush in the year 2000 triggered it.

His 8 years of war crimes without impeachment by the US Congress solidified the world's understanding that the US government could be taken over by anti-Democratic hard-right forces that ignored even the most basic tenets of its governing documents-- No First Strike, The Geneva Conventions, Haebeas Corpus, and the power of Congress to impeach the president for high crimes.

President Obama has been doing a great job in restoring some of our honor, but there is a long way to go. The world is rationally worried that the same right wing forces could regroup and revoke the same guiding principles they trashed the last time they seized rule.

President Obama has done well in reassuring the world that we haven't forgotten, but as countries turn toward cleaning up the messes of reckless industrialization, waste, and unequal distribution of dwindling natural resources, our country that let corporate power get so out of balance will have to face up to more of its unseemly behavior. Our shameless resource grabbing and pollution dumping have not won us friends, and many right wingers will hate it when our country is called out on that ruthless behavior.

I hope we will support President Obama's efforts toward reducing US carbon emissions and push him to do more. Greening our own country and making more dramatic carbon reductions will demonstrate our good faith as global citizens, knowing we created most of the atmospheric deterioration that has destabilized the climate.

I hope we had enough of a groundswell of green voters for President Obama to keep the pressure on for the USA to use all available tools to reduce its carbon emissions dramatically. If we have to pull out of some of our wars or thousands of military bases to fund it, our national security will be much better served by making tough but exciting changes that benefit the whole planet.

[zipplewrath]

6. Inevitable

Just as Britain could not hope to rule the entire globe from an island nation, or Rome rule the world from a peninsula nation, the US could not hope to dominate the world, permanently, from a "minor" continent. The geo-political reasons that China and India have taken so long to rise to dominance are varied. But ultimately, a country of 300 million or so could not hope to dominate countries that exceed a billion or more. Economically, China and India will come into their own, the question will be the extent to which they utilize their military potential. The US hit their peak after WWII when they dominated western economics, and much of the western pacific was in recovery. It isn't clear that China and India will choose, nor need, to follow a similar path. The question will probably be whether the US can "tolerate" a China that is as militarily as strong as they are, or if they will effectively "start" another cold war. The USSR failed economically. I suspect China won't make the same mistake. To some extent, if we don't get our economic house in order, we could suffer the same fate as the Soviets.

[izquierdista]

8. The fate of the Soviet people

I've lived in the former Soviet Union, and from my observations, Americans aren't up to it. In the post WWII years, the Soviets made sure that their citizens had everything they needed, but the USA opted to let "the market" provide their citizens with everything they wanted. As a result, Soviet citizens were schooled in how to get by on the absolute minimum, in housing, transportation, medical care, utilities, etc. Americans, on the other hand, became spoiled by a glut of consumer products, and get in a tizzy when the store is out of their favorite flavor of ice cream.

When the Soviet Union failed, the citizens didn't have far to fall. They still have their tiny apartments where the electricity and the water work most of the time, and they have plots of land to grow their own vegetables. Americans have a long way to fall, and the capitalist bust part of the boom-and-bust cycle will put them into extreme hurt. As we have seen, the road from new 4 bedroom tract home to homeless encampment can be a pretty short one, especially if your job has been shipped off to China.

[Liberal_in_LA]

12. fate of UK also. They were once the superpower

[Igel]

10. Which is usually something that's overlooked.

Take the angst over having other countries "beat" the US in sports, in discoveries, in Internet connections, etc., etc. It's inevitable--unless we like permanent and massive inequality.

Often having other countries surpass the US is framed exactly right. We don't change; they do. So I recently saw an op-ed piece that talked about the US high-school drop-out rate and how we have to remedy it--and return to the way it was a few decades ago when the US was preeminent. Except that the high-school drop-out rate hasn't changed very much at all for the last 50 years. (That always comes as a shock.) *We* haven't changed; *they've* changed.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

26. Well put. Complacency breeds failure.

We are the most complacent and vain country on the face of the earth. Nothing is sadder than people who allow themselves to be told by the Hannitys and Limbaughs that we have the "greatest healthcare in the world" while 40,000 a year die due to lack of coverage
(LOC). That makes us third world in my opinion, since we spend more on war(death) than life (health).

[Curtland1015]

14. Exactly. I have fights with people about this all the time.

Nothing lasts forever. We aren't "fated" to be the greatest anything. We had a run at the top and now it's ending.

[lib2DaBone]

7. The War On Terror is an inside job.. until people realize this.. there is no hope for this country.

[NoSheep]

21. I ain't holding my breath over here.

:-(

[HughBeaumont]

28. I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 yesterday.

Even though I think he could have gone far deeper than he did (a good start would be Paul Thompson's 911 Timeline), everything that happened from November 2000 to September 12, 2001 was the base, the catalyst, of this crapcake. It all comes back to the fact that we never had proper independent investigations of either Heist 2000 or MIHOP 2001, which would have blown the roof off of the Corporate/Republican Takeover of the Government to do their bidding at the expense of the rest of the population.

[keep_it_real]

9. What about the chinese sub that poped up in the midst of Americans wargame ships

Undetected

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-492804/The-uninvited-guest-Chinese-sub-pops-middle-U-S-Navy-exercise-leaving-military-chiefs-red-faced.html

[mix]

17. that was interesting, thanks for posting that

[lonestarnot]

23. Whoa are we ever fucked.

[Vickers]

11. *grabs dictionary to look up "puissance"*

:P

[mix]

15. on the google machine, see hyperpuissance

:thumbsup:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knroQ2GjKdY

[Canuckistanian]

13. "hyperpuissance" - good word

Did you make that up?

[mix]

16. no, it is a good word though,

It was said by the French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine in 1999 to describe the sole superpower status of the USA after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was first coined by Zbignew Brzezinski to describe the unique power of the USA that had simultaneous military, cultural, economic, and technological supremacy.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpuissance_%28politique%29

[coalition_unwilling]

27. I prefer "hyper-pissant" -- the world's

greatest military machine just got shellacked by a rag-tag body of irregulars (aka "terrorists" or, more politely,"enemy combatants").

[mix]

29. America's post-WWII military record is abysmal.

Poor leadership, civilian and military, has squandered our strengths.

[AllentownJake]

18. America won't react well to this

We've been spending the past 30 years running around screaming at anyone who is within ear shot that we are the fucking best thing that has ever happened to the world or ever will happen to the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mCDZMWVWuc

[Nikki Stone1]

19. It depends on what you think the next step is.

Are we looking at another superpower taking over (like China), are we talking about a conglomerate of powerful nations, or are we talking about a de facto world government (which the G-20 seems to be)? The currency will tell, I think. I'm watching the value of the dollar and how oil is priced.

[The Traveler]

20. "Benign Hegemony"

That neo-conservative wet dream ... a unipolar world, "the end of history", a final resolution of age old conflicts in the favor of a very narrow interpretation of free market based ideologies ... sure, that wasn't going to work out. America filled a power vacuum left by the collapse of its preeminent rival. We could have used that period of time to our good advantage, or we could have wasted it with ill considered and arrogant actions.

Well, we all know how it went down. Instead of coming out of this period of relative ease in a good geopolitical and economic posture, we're up shit creek and the boat is leaking. As John Wayne once observed: "Life's tough ... but it's a lot tougher if yer bein' stupid."

Now, we have to play it smart ... which does NOT (and I'm speaking at you, Messrs Bolton and Cheney) mean we have to be vicious. Smart. Creative. Determined. The ante has been upped. We better get to work.

Trav

**Updated for spell check**

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. I've pointed to the end of empire

more than once.

And I fear the country is so damn polarized that we will a civil war and break up of the country. All I can do is wait for the other shoe to drop, and hope I am on the RIGHT side of the border when it happens.

[mix]

24. The empire's end could be a good thing, but

will the military-industrial complex allow it, or fight to hold on?

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. There is nothing in my estimation they can do to stop it

They might be able to delay it, but stop it? We have way too many signs that the big kid on the block is not the US any longer.