Shaping a new world order

[bemildred]

Chief among the problems facing the United States today is this: too many obligations piled high without the wherewithal to meet them. Among those obligations are the varied and sundry commitments implied by the phrase "American global leadership." If ever there were an opportune moment for reassessing the assumptions embedded in that phrase, it's now.

With too few Americans taking notice, history has entered a new era. The "unipolar moment" created by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 has passed. To refer to the United States today as the world's "sole superpower" makes about as much sense as General Motors bragging that it's the world's No.1 car company: Nostalgia ill-befits an enterprise beset with competitors breathing down its neck. Similarly, to call Barack Obama the "most powerful man in the world" is akin to curtsying before Elizabeth II as "Queen of Great Britain, Ireland and British Dominions beyond the Seas": Although a nice title, it confers little by way of actual authority.

A new global order is rapidly emerging. In that order, the United States will no doubt remain a very important player. Yet alongside the U.S. will be several others: China preeminently among them, but with Russia, India, Turkey, Japan, South Korea and Brazil also demanding to be reckoned with. (Whether Europe, currently wallowing in disarray, can muster the will and wallet to play in this company qualifies as an unknown.)

Nothing Washington can do will prevent this geopolitical transformation. Politicians may insist that the United States still stands apart — always and forever a "triple-A nation" — but their declarations will have as much effect as King Canute ordering the waves to stop. Indeed, to indulge further in the fiction of American omnipotence — persisting in our penchant for fighting distant wars of dubious purpose, for example — will accelerate the process, with relative decline becoming absolute decline. For Americans, husbanding power rather than squandering it is the order of the day.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-bacevich-multipolar-world-20110817,0,6442079.story

[RKP5637]

1. Excellent article IMO! n/t

[bemildred]

2. Yes.

I have thought this sort of thing was the obvious way to go AT LEAST since the USSR evaporated. We have lost so much ground since then.

[RKP5637]

3. I often wonder how many Americans really get what's going on ... this country

is doing so much to undermine its future, all by itself.

[bhikkhu]

4. I don't think of it as "undermining"...

why shouldn't the various people of the world be in charge of their own destinies, without an overlord of dubious motives? Too often US power has been used for the good of global corporate profits, and at the expense of liberty.

I think a good overview of our history and the world's history would make the decline of US domination a point of opportunity, and as in North Africa now, people are generally willing and ready to manage their own affairs.

[RKP5637]

5. I agree. I should have elaborated a bit more. I meant undermining in terms

of within our borders. I think many citizens today see a pretty dismal future for themselves if current trends continue. Frankly, I would like to see US out of playing the superpower role and trying to be the cops of the universe. And trying to manipulate the internal affairs of practically every country. I would also like to see the MIC significantly cut.

[bemildred]

6. Barbara W. Tuchmann wrote "March of Folly" about it in the 1980s (IIRC).

Before the USSR collapsed; I'm sure she would have had something to say about that too.

And boy has nothing much changed, after all that babble about reform in the late 1970s after Vietnam and Watergate, right back to the same old shit with Raygun.

http://www.amazon.com/March-Folly-Barbara-W-Tuchman/dp/0349106746

[Ship of Fools]

7. Excellent article. You know what the right's response would be?

The writer HATES AMERICA and his opinions are UNPATRIOTIC. They built a whole astroturf movement on this theme.