by The bigger picture behind Official Washington’s hysteria over Russia, Syria and North Korea is the image of a decaying but dangerous American hegemon resisting the start of new multipolar order, explains Daniel Lazare.… Unipolarity will slink off to the sidelines while multilateralism takes center stage. Given that U.S. share of global GDP has fallen by better than 20 percent since 1989, a retreat is inevitable. America has tried to compensate by making maximum use of its military and political advantages. That would be a losing proposition even if it had the most brilliant leadership in the world. Yet it doesn’t. Instead, it has a President who is an international laughingstock, a dysfunctional Congress, and a foreign-policy establishment lost in a neocon dream world. As a consequence,
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Mike Norman considers the following as important: global change, global hegemony, technological disruption
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The bigger picture behind Official Washington’s hysteria over Russia, Syria and North Korea is the image of a decaying but dangerous American hegemon resisting the start of new multipolar order, explains Daniel Lazare.…
Unipolarity will slink off to the sidelines while multilateralism takes center stage. Given that U.S. share of global GDP has fallen by better than 20 percent since 1989, a retreat is inevitable. America has tried to compensate by making maximum use of its military and political advantages. That would be a losing proposition even if it had the most brilliant leadership in the world. Yet it doesn’t. Instead, it has a President who is an international laughingstock, a dysfunctional Congress, and a foreign-policy establishment lost in a neocon dream world. As a consequence, retreat is turning into a disorderly rout.This is not just official Washington but the entire Anglo-American and European power structure — "the Atlantacists" — that has dominated the global beginning in the 16th century. Could have another world war over it as the Atlanticists struggle to maintain position. They realize that position cannot be maintained statically but must be advanced through expansion of control. These are parlous times for humanity with the world brisling with WMD and not just nukes.
See Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History for the rise and fall of civilizations.
Also Oswald Spengler.
Spengler predicted that about the year 2000, Western civilization would enter the period of pre‑death emergency whose countering would necessitate Caesarism (extraconstitutional omnipotence of the executive branch of the central government).This also coincides with the work of Strauss and Howe, and also Ravi Batra, under the influence of Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar.
While historical trend analysis is far from precise, it provides a framework for thinking about issues that are complex owing to reflexivity and involve emergence that necessitates adaptation.
This dynamic is a whole lot bigger than the Thyucides trap between the US and China.
Many forces are converging now — natural forces like climate change, social forces like conflict of value structures and competing ideologies, and artificial forces like technological disruption brought by the "third, fourth and fifth industrial revolutions," which also have military implications.
"The times they are a-changin'."
Consortium News
The Dangerous Decline of US Hegemony
Daniel Lazare