The World's Sole Superpower in Fast Decline

[marmar]

from TomDispatch, via AlterNet:


The World's Sole Superpower in Fast Decline

By Dilip Hiro, Tomdispatch.com. Posted August 23, 2007.



In almost every measure, the United States is past its zenith. A look at the challenges that are bringing the heyday to a halt.


With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States stood tall -- militarily invincible, economically unrivalled, diplomatically uncontestable, and the dominating force on information channels worldwide. The next century was to be the true "American century," with the rest of the world molding itself in the image of the sole superpower.

Yet, with not even a decade of this century behind us, we are already witnessing the rise of a multipolar world in which new powers are challenging different aspects of American supremacy -- Russia and China in the forefront, with regional powers Venezuela and Iran forming the second rank. These emergent powers are primed to erode American hegemony, not confront it, singly or jointly.

How and why has the world evolved in this way so soon? The Bush administration's debacle in Iraq is certainly a major factor in this transformation, a classic example of an imperialist power, brimming with hubris, over-extending itself. To the relief of many -- in the U. S. and elsewhere -- the Iraq fiasco has demonstrated the striking limitations of power for the globe's highest-tech, most destructive military machine. In Iraq, Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to two U.S. presidents, concedes in a recent op-ed, "We are being wrestled to a draw by opponents who are not even an organized state adversary."

The invasion and subsequent disastrous occupation of Iraq and the mismanaged military campaign in Afghanistan have crippled the credibility of the United States. The scandals at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo in Cuba, along with the widely publicized murders of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, have badly tarnished America's moral self-image. In the latest opinion poll, even in a secular state and member of NATO like Turkey, only 9 percent of Turks have a "favorable view" of the U.S. (down from 52 percent just five years ago).

Yet there are other explanations -- unrelated to Washington's glaring misadventures -- for the current transformation in international affairs. These include, above all, the tightening market in oil and natural gas, which has enhanced the power of hydrocarbon-rich nations as never before; the rapid economic expansion of the mega-nations China and India; the transformation of China into the globe's leading manufacturing base; and the end of the Anglo-American duopoly in international television news. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/audits/60489/

[Crayson]

1. Welcome to a world of diversity...

There are always different ways to do things.

[theoldman]

2. If you read the history of the decline of the Roman and Ottoman

empires you will better understand what is happening now. History is repeated over and over again.

[bemildred]

4. It's amazing watching Bush and the clowns around him how often

I think of the later Emperors in the Julio-Claudian line, even though conditions were vastly different back then.

[bemildred]

3. There is a new term: "mega-nation". nt

[indepat]

5. How would the world's only superpower continue to spend more on its military machine

than the rest of the world combined if the rest of the world no longer financed it? To continue indefinitely on a course that cannot possibly be sustained is sheer folly of an unfathomable magnitude, stupidity beyond comprehension, and incompetence beyond belief.

Edited for question mark

[sarcasmo]

6. We all are living in the fall of Modern day Rome.

[benld74]

7. Because of the idiot savants

who only believe in the bottom line for corps and for 'the good of all'. Bastards

[5fingersurfer]

8. At least something is going well!!!

It's a race to the bottom (where every country in the world has a 3rd world structure - very few haves and most everyone else is a have-not), and the US has taken the lead!

NAFTA, WTO, and the like have sure helped us win 1st place in the race to the bottom.

While most may not like Bush, he is only a more extreme example of what our politicians and large corporations have been doing or trying to do to us for the last 40-50 years (in some cases on a few topics and/or corporations, way longer than 50 years). Bush is just the figurehead of a machine that has been in operation for a long time now and is not interested in the welfare of the common people that make up this country.

Maybe a majority of the common people will say they have had enough before it is too late, maybe not. I like to be an optimist and think that they are turning up the temp on the kettle a bit too fast and all of the frogs will finally realize what's going to happen if we just sit there in our complacency. A bunch of us have jumped out already, but nowhere near enough.:beer: