Four scenarios for the coming collapse of the American empire

[eridani]

http://www.alternet.org/story/149080/4_scenarios_for_the_coming_collapse_of_the_american_empire?page=entire

Another possibility: the rise of regional hegemons in a return to something reminiscent of the international system that operated before modern empires took shape. In this neo-Westphalian world order, with its endless vistas of micro-violence and unchecked exploitation, each hegemon would dominate its immediate region -- Brasilia in South America, Washington in North America, Pretoria in southern Africa, and so on. Space, cyberspace, and the maritime deeps, removed from the control of the former planetary “policeman,” the United States, might even become a new global commons, controlled through an expanded U.N. Security Council or some ad hoc body.

All of these scenarios extrapolate existing trends into the future on the assumption that Americans, blinded by the arrogance of decades of historically unparalleled power, cannot or will not take steps to manage the unchecked erosion of their global position.

If America's decline is in fact on a 22-year trajectory from 2003 to 2025, then we have already frittered away most of the first decade of that decline with wars that distracted us from long-term problems and, like water tossed onto desert sands, wasted trillions of desperately needed dollars.

If only 15 years remain, the odds of frittering them all away still remain high. Congress and the president are now in gridlock; the American system is flooded with corporate money meant to jam up the works; and there is little suggestion that any issues of significance, including our wars, our bloated national security state, our starved education system, and our antiquated energy supplies, will be addressed with sufficient seriousness to assure the sort of soft landing that might maximize our country's role and prosperity in a changing world.

Europe's empires are gone and America's imperium is going. It seems increasingly doubtful that the United States will have anything like Britain's success in shaping a succeeding world order that protects its interests, preserves its prosperity, and bears the imprint of its best values.

[Goldstein1984]

1. Empires come and go

This may be the first to come and go while all the while denying it was an empire.

[Democracyinkind]

2. Empires fall long before it's apparent.

By the time that the successors have become apparent the empires have whithered away for good already.
Snippet:

"If America's decline is in fact on a 22-year trajectory from 2003 to 2025, then we have already frittered away most of the first decade of that decline with wars that distracted us from long-term problems and, like water tossed onto desert sands, wasted trillions of desperately needed dollars."

I'd argue that American decline set in rather rapidly after the Second World War, being part of a larger trend of the waning of "Western" power.

If you concentrate on economic and social factors then it's hard to argue that the US didn't start it's very fall from the moment it fell for the hubris of being the "worlds leader". At least the British Empire got to enjoy the throne for at least a decade or so.

Call it "victory stroke", "imperial hubris" or "the last phase of capitalism" - the smart ones have been betting on the decline of the US ever since it gained supremacy concerning economic and diplomatic matters.

[NJCher]

3. I was wondering

As I read this piece, I was wondering what kind of background it would take to write it. This professor, Alfred McCoy, sounds like he is eminently qualified:

He is also the convener of the “Empires in Transition” project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings at Madison, Sydney, and Manila were published as Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State and the findings from their latest conference will appear next year as “Endless Empire: Europe’s Eclipse, America’s Ascent, and the Decline of U.S. Global Power.”

I would like to comment based on what I see in my field, which is education. I teach at a university. In addition, I have also taken technical classes toward web certifications over the past decade.

What I see first hand as a university professor is that I have one Chinese student in a class of 24 Americans. This student is here for the year in some sort of exchange program that my university has worked out with China. Even though the class is advertising, I often lace my discussions with my class with references to Shakespeare or the Renaissance. Who is the only student in the class to understand and respond to these references? You guessed it: the Chinese student.

If this student is any example, they're better educated about Western culture than we are.

Second, when I was doing my technical certification class work, many of my fellow students were from India. What set them apart from the rest of we Americans in the classes was their tenacity in understanding, for example, how servers worked. If they didn't understand it, they kept asking for explanations until they got one that worked. They would stay after class and work until they were satisfied that they understood.

In fact in one situation, it took them two classes to understand it. When they still didn't understand it to their own satisfaction, they complained and the instructor was replaced.

The Americans had a different pattern:

--one said she would use an easier software
--another said he didn't care about the technical aspect; he was going into sales, anyway
--there are more stories, but to sum it up, not one American cared enough to stick round and learn. And thus this project (although for the sciences), from the article:

Similarly, Chinese innovation is on a trajectory toward world leadership in applied science and military technology sometime between 2020 and 2030, just as America's current supply of brilliant scientists and engineers retires, without adequate replacement by an ill-educated younger generation.


Cher

[eridani]

4. It pays for the Chinese and Indians to be good. What is the reward for Americans putting in--

---an equivalent amount of effort? They get $100K worth of debt for the privilege of training H1B peole from India and China to replace them.

http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/industries/Machinery-Computer-Equipment/Electronic-Computers.html
Despite the sharp uptrend in the industry's output, U.S. employment in computer manufacturing has been declining since its peak in 1984. Between 1984 and 1995, the computer manufacturing industry lost 32 percent of its workforce, an average annual rate of 3 percent. The computer industry is one of the more highly automated manufacturing industries, and many manual assembly jobs have been eliminated. Other manufacturing and assembly work has been relocated overseas.

As of 2000, computer manufacturing employed 73,730 U.S. workers, about 34 percent of whom were production workers. This reflects a dramatic decrease from earlier years. In 1990, for example, the industry employed as many as 278,500 people, with production workers making up just 25 percent.

Given the ongoing pressure on computer makers' revenues and profits, companies are expected to continue to introduce labor-saving automation and to outsource manufacturing activities to low-cost foreign producers. Furthermore, corporate alliances should moderate the demand for research and development professionals.

While the demand for programmers in the industry was expected to rise slightly, the demand for other occupations will likely fall, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The demand for engineers, for instance, will slip about 3.5 percent by 2005. Likewise, technician and engineering management jobs will fall by 2 to 5 percent. Manufacturing jobs, especially, will disappear. The demand for electrical and electronic assemblers, for example, will likely plummet 55 percent by 2005. Analysts project that assemblers and fabricator positions will decline by about 37 percent, while the demand for production planning professionals will fall more than 20 percent.

[bergie321]

5. I think it will more likely

Go the way of Idiocracy.

[soryang]

6. I don't think the decline is going to take that long

The balance of payment deficit is forcing the militarism and "empire building." But the effort is hardly cost effective, it is accelerating our decline. Hundreds and hundreds of military bases and the associated infrastructure buildout in the worldwide military matrix is making the usual suspect multinationals rich but accomplishing nothing else positive in military or economic terms.

If you take the war in space example, a few well placed garbage can sized payloads of ball bearings or bbs placed in orbit would stop the entire "full spectrum dominance effort." Ground and air based missile defense costing hundreds of billions in development, now being foisted on our new found allies to obtain scarce foreign reserves to repair the balance sheet, are useless in fact and add litte to nothing to our balance sheet at home.

The balance of payments financial crisis, of which the current financial crisis is just the last chapter, will be our undoing. Our foreign policy now consists mostly of selling new wars to the public and more weapons export packages, because we have little else in the way of manufactured goods to sell. Financial "innovation" aka fraud is what we export, outside of war and it's machinery. Our largest banks are totally dependent on fraud, government bailouts, and drug money.

We are ruled by decadent elites, ethically, ideologically and politically incapable of reform and our "collapse" is nearer than these projections foretell.

[eridani]

7. I wish I could disagree n/t