Winners and Losers: Moving Out of the Superpower Orbit

[AG78]

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0503-23.htm

Of the two superpowers that faced each other down in an almost half-century-long Cold War, one -- the United States -- emerged victorious, alone in the world, economically powerful, militarily dominant; the other, never the stronger of the two, limped off, its empire shattered and scattered, its people impoverished and desperate, its military a shell of its former self. This is a story we all know, and more or less accept. Winner/loser, victor/vanquished. It makes sense. That's the way we expect matches, competitions, struggles, wars to end.

But what if, as I've suggested recently, the Cold War turned out to be a loser/loser contest? That may seem counterintuitive. In regards to the U.S., it would have been considered laughable not so long ago, except to a few scholars of imperial decline like Immanuel Wallerstein, and yet it may be an increasingly plausible thought.

Let me start, however, with the obvious loser of the Cold War, and with the semi-secret -- or at least not particularly well covered -- tale of how the victorious U.S. superpower attempted to finish off its former rival, the Russian remnant of the USSR and its last outlying regions of control, its "near abroad."

[dArKeR]

1. Now on the Front Page of the Asia Times - I'm afraid 99% of Americans

would fall asleep before the fourth paragraph!

http://atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GE04Aa01.html

As it turned out, the Mexican people didn't need Bush's funding or organizational support; nor, it seems, did any other manifestation of "people power" to our south. For what we have been seeing throughout Latin America - as along Russia's border - has been a serial revolt in country after country against the Cold War world and the imperial orders it imposed on its near abroads. Once upon a time, an American administration would have put such revolts down serially, using the CIA, military to military relations, economic power, and aid of various sorts; but, though events in Latin America are finally making the Bush administration sit up and take note, its ability to act is more limited than usual. After all, Iraq is proving a black hole for American power and something of a graveyard for the administration's global ambitions and energies - giving new meaning to that old Vietnam-era word "quagmire".

[bemildred]

2. China better watch it's ass too.

Mr. Schell is an excellent read on this subject, anywhere you find him.

[teryang]

3. Wonderful article!

I think that the archipelago of American bases in central Asian countries are a joke. Suitable for good ole boy great games and little else. They are delusional insofar as they are considered to be an extension of "American power." They are mostly a drain on the treasury and a justification for Air Force fuel and maintenance bills.