The intelligence community says yes. Personally, I think this is good, not just for the U.S., but for the world. No more global hegemonies for any country. They've all caused more problems than they solved throughout history, not to mention the fact that a global dictator is immoral.
No, but they can point to trends and observable movements that give us a good idea of how things will be later on down the road. The facts seem to confirm their hypothesis on this one.
Their analysis is one of polarity, not hegemony. Furthermore, outside of a state-centric international system, US hegemony (unipolar world order) is a myth. Yes, this is provocative statement, but it has theoretical and empirical backing. First, transnational and supranational society has a tremendous role in forming norms, establishing regimes, and creating institutions which alter the behaviors and activities of states. Two great examples are the global prohibition regimes that formed out of the abolitionist movements regarding slavery and piracy. Second, in a globalized world, there are more opportunities for transnational and supranational society to act than ever before. We see this with the rise of terrorism, the proliferation of grassroots protest movements, the continued development of the non-governmental and non-profit sectors, and the increased power of organizations such as the UN and EU. Third, and finally, bearing in mind this strong presence of non-state actors, we can conclude that there is more evidence that we live in a non-polar world order, where no one agent can exert overbearing influence upon the international system. In addition, for those focused on the state, there is already a shift in attitude regarding US hegemony. Take Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World. Unlike these intelligence officials, he feels a multipolar world order is already upon us. The only question is when it will come full circle. He answers such an inquiry by pointing to the rise of the BRICS countries. Just providing some food for thought.
When America hasn't had a hegemony you've seen many more wars. What your advocating is for the world to start fighting again. You may think America is a dictator, and that may be true, but they have relatively kept world peace since WWII. You pull that out and nobody will fill the role that we did so you can expect, not large scale wars per se, but many more conflicts flaring up around the world. This has happened everytime America has practiced forms of isolationism. I could look around the world today and point to at least a dozen areas that are going to go boom if we no longer have hegemony.
The decline of US hegemony is not self-inflicted. It is simply the rise of new global powers like the BRICS, and the continued proliferation of society beyond the confines of a state-centric international system that is making US hegemony relative to emerging actors increasingly less important. In other words, there is little to no decline of the West, but tremendous rise of the rest.
That may very well be true but it doesn't change the end result. I see no other nations willing to be the worlds policeman, for better or worse, and if that role is no longer to be filled by the US it will allow flare-ups, big and small, all over the world. The UN may be able to intervene in some but without major backing from the US its debatable how effective they would be. Look at the Bosnia conflict. Now imagine the US not playing a major role in bringing that to an end. How many millions more would have died without our involvement? I don't think China, Russia, or India would have stepped forward to take a leading role. What your going to see are many more Rwanda's happening throughout the world. When we get involved we prevent things like Bosnia but when we don't you have situations like the million plus that died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. But like you said, the world often changes so perhaps this is just one of those times. I happen to think its more the result of policy rather than any natural course of events but more than likely its a combination of both.
Rwanda was in 1994? Am I remembering correctly? Africa is changing too, you know.. Education is improving.. as is healthcare .. not across the board... but they are taking more care.
Certainly the world was a much better place when the two superpowers were in balance - and, no, it wasn't a good place then either. There was a bit more room to move, however. The present world-bossing gives far to much power to American big business, zionist bullyboys and the like.
Something we agree on. I would also tell any country that has a US base that if they want the base to remain to protect them, then they will have to pay 100% of the cost of the base. If they won't or can't pay, close it and bring our people and our stuff home.
Correct, and you saw what happened when we don't get involved. My larger point was that although we stupidly ignored that one, we have involved ourselves in other areas. If America no longer gets involved in anything anymore you will see many more of these tragedies happening.
ah yes, its the evil jooooooooooooooooooooz isn't it? You jew haters amuse me. I am not a jew, but the hate of them is really a strange thing.
It allows you nazis to pretend decent people are like you, I suppose. Hardly worth all those millions of dead your fuhrer murdered though, is it, even from your point of view, whatever that is?
We cannot be the world's physical or moral police force. If people kill each other in civil wars its none of our business, we should not take side. When we do we usually pick the wrong side. What did our intervention in Viet Nam accomplish? NOTHING. 58,000 americans died for NOTHING.
Like which ones? Let's examine it. And the world has been far from conflict-free in the post-WWII world. There's been a war almost every year since.
Well, they have to want peace as much as we want it for them.. else we get sucked into feeding everyone and the conflicting sides are competing for US foreign aid.
Hmmmm, not sure what you are trying to say. your hatred of jews is because hitler killed millions of them?? I am a nazi because I don't understand jew hate????? would you like to try again to make your point, whatever it is?
Can you take the "dem Jooz" conversation to one of the hundreds of other threads on the subject? This one has been pretty intelligent so far and "dem Jooz" conversations ruin it.
tell iolo, he started the jooooooooooooo thing. I just commented on it. But back to topic. We can no longer be the world's police force and morality enforcer.
Well, that's because we weren't committed to it, and played more by politics than by strategy. BP If we had gone with Lemay's plan of simply sending a tank column up the Ho Chi Minh trail and have them sit there, that would have been the end of it. Thanks to Linebacker II, and the failed Tet offensive, we had already reduced the Vietcong to rabble, and eliminated all air and near-all static ground defenses in the North. Really, I could counter this just by saying "What did we gain in Korea?" A country's that's one of the Four Asian Tigers, an economic power house that, GDP per capita, is second only to Japan? This nation-building business is indeed hit'n miss, and Vietnam was a miss because we were playing by rules external to militaristic realities, had inherited the situation from the French, and thus weren't willing to dictate terms to the South Vietnamese gov't in order to better ensure their stability. So as it turned out, we were fighting a defensive war with little offensive action, lead-from-behind by politicians, for what became a failed state. A disaster all-around. Anyway, despite my dissent, does this mean I'm for doing this now? ... Actually, no. We don't need to. The closest to an antithesis of Western ideas is Islamic Totalitarianism, and that has trouble gaining currency in Turkey, much less the rest of the world. There is no great existential threat as there once was. We can engage in trade with these nations at leisure, and as we see with Vietnam and China, this can also serve, overtime, to make them more free. The innovation and leap of outcomes by freerer, more democratic nations, is too powerful a contrast to ignore. The top-down regimes of old I think simply won't be able to survive the pervasive availability of information. China might have a proto-typical model of a way to get around that, to truly establish the Orwellian state that we've all feared, but it's currently not working nearly as well as I think they'd like. Mostly civil wars, not wars between neighbors. I apologize for the indirect source, can't find the study I'm thinking of.
