-Dennis Trainor, Jr
It is easy to forget as we argue over tax cuts for billionaires, or NAFTA-esque labor agreements with North Korea – or any of the additional Obama sell outs to the Right Wing Billionaire lunatic fringe that, in all likelihood, we are simply re-arraigning furniture on the titanic.
Alfred McCoy’s thorough article on Tom Dispatch offers a few sobering perspectives on the possible how’s and when’s of the statistical inevitability of America’s decline as a Global superpower when he writes:
“The American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of World War II, will be tattered and fading by 2025, its eighth decade, and could be history by 2030 (….) Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.”
McCoy’s thesis is not so much buttressed by any nihilistic ideology or conspiracy based paranoia, but by a US National Intelligence report titled Global Trends 2025, that cites:
“the transfer of global wealth and economic power now under way, roughly from West to East” and “without precedent in modern history,” as the primary factor in the decline of the “United States’ relative strength — even in the military realm.”
In my view, we all to often fail to see the forest in the politically polarized trees of our daily discourse to consider the consequences of the inevitable demise of the United States of America as a Global superpower.
Consider that “The American Century” came into being at the end of World War Two. Making the US the first post-nuclear Global Super Power. Old world cartographers changed maps as the result of wars fought with pickaxes. Today, there are enough nukes at the ready in the world to turn the earth into something resembling the regurgitated contents of frat boy’s stomach after a night being hazed by Kappa Sigma.
Speaking of the Greeks, they may have taken down the Roman Empire with a Trojan Horse, but by 2020, according to McCoy, the Chinese will have a the Trojan Horse 2.0 in the form of a “global network of communications satellites, backed by the world’s most powerful supercomputers, (that will) also be fully operational, providing Beijing with an independent platform for the weaponization of space and a powerful communications system for missile- or cyber-strikes into every quadrant of the globe.
As the Chinese economy is on pace to overtake the US as the worlds largest by 2026, it is time for us to imagine ourselves as the little guy on the global stage.
David Swanson, author of War is Lie, asked today by way of a facebook status update: “Why don’t China and Saudi Arabia just fight each other instead of funding the US and al Qaeda?” To which I responded: Interesting, to think that we are just fighting proxy wars for China. Makes you think that the “American Empire” is just a little guy in the next cold war. Karma is a boomerang that way. I hope that, in the next chapter in history (if there is one) I can at least have a radio show. Can you say GOOOOOOD Mornin ViETNAMNMNMNNM!!!!!! ?
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BIO: A freelance writer and performer, Dennis Trainor, Jr has worked as a writer/ media consultant for Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential campaign and served as a contributing editorial commentator for The Uptake and Veracifier. His documentary on U.S. foreign policy, MANIFEST DESTINY’S CHILD, is due out on DVD this January. He is the host of NoCureForThat.wordpress.com. Contact @ DennisTrainorJr (at) gmail.com
