The decline of US power?
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
The US doesn't exert its power for the greater good, it does so for its own economic gain - but world peace and stability are good for the US. It's a very interesting dynamic. It's very subjective if USA's relative waning power is good or bad, but there's a chance we'll see increasing strife in the world as America's power wanes.
edit: based off the ever-changing karma on this comment I'm assuming some people are downvoting this. My comment is meant to be a neutral stance towards a well-respected political theory - how about a response along with the downvotes? I'd love to have some discussion around the Hegemonic stability theory, which I find fascinating.
... in Syria, Iraq, Libya.
If you look at a lot of the big conflict regions since then, they are often places that had conflicts under the surface that were contained either specifically by Soviet influence, or by the combination of Soviet and US influence because, while both may have sought to exploit opportunities from the bubbling conflicts, neither really was prepared to accept the risk of a major conflict getting out of control where they might lose key interests, and neither had enough local influence and power to be confident of attaining a positive outcome.
But the US's level of global influence through hard power -- maintained by military spending on par with the rest of the world combined -- is probably unsustainable, for much the same reason that the Soviet empire was (the US just started the hard-power spending war that was the Cold War from a much better starting point, and was able to carry it out longer.)
... or as successful strategy. Those countries were considered 'rogue states' and enemies. Predictably, they are now failed states in which the diverse ethnic and political groups fight each other. No danger for the US any more. Mission accomplished.
So yes, the current state of peace is unprecedented, though definitely not perfect.
Sometimes you upvote a comment that you don't agree with but see it as genuinely informative or at least insightful.
What you don't is upvoting a comment which is not informative, or even misleading, but still conforming to your views.
But there is practically world peace here in the First World far away from the proxy wars and such, so who's complaining...
US doesn't care about peace, and will take any excuse to start a war, kill millions, make life extremely miserable for additional huge amounts of people (yes, tens of millions easily) if it's worth the goal. Which can be economical, power, or, as usually, mix of both. so many examples of murders of officials, nazi-style staging of attacks to get a foot into war (Tonkin bay, anybody?) etc. No my dear, war is a great business, is you are providing right products or services.
to cover this topic properly I would have to spend rest of evening just writing, and my knowledge of reality is anyway severely limited, as things like Snowden leaks reveal. US is not a single panel or one central brain, but composed of individuals, powerful, twisted, fucked up greedy bastards, who will do anything to get more (power, money) not because they need it, just because they can and their egos get kick from it. then you have the good guys in politics, who are honest, hardworking for people who voted them and not those who gave millions to campaigns to get them where they are in first place... NO. there are no such people, even if they were, they would be discredited easily by first group, or anyhow removed. Most I would say are somewhere in between. If you think army in level of general and higher is anything else than similar politics, think again (it isn't).
Is it in interest of US to have strong states in Gulf area, sitting on biggest oil reserves in this world? I don't think so, command and conquer is a proven strategy for millenia. US tried to help, but selectively, and mostly marginaly (if you help my enemy, you become my enemy is common logic all around the world). I still haven't heard a proper jsutification why US is still in Afghanistan when it lost that war, there is no will of winning it, and daily they are just killing more and more locals. US may conveniently label them terorists, but they are locals, fighting invading force (external fighters omitted).
Or training ukraininans? Just on the border of Russia? That's one hell of a peace move right there :) I am disgusted with US, don't expect anything good in terms of world politics coming out of it, and percieve it as necessary evil. Very happy seeing nations like Chinese rising to power. All empires rise and fall, ours and yours are no exceptions.
http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2014/092814_files/...
page 4.
With those kind of figure bending you can pretty much say anything you want.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagnation_and_reform_of_the_O...
Btw, the western Roman empire ended in 476 AD. The ~200 number you mentioned probably refers to the split of the Roman empire into a western and an eastern part, in 284 AD.
As for saying "empires on average" , i don't think it means anything. Some lasted for more than 1000 years, other less than 5. But we don't have enough statistics to assume anything is "about time".
China has to always pay attention to its neighbours. They can be economic dwarves compared to US or China but are extremely powerful when organized.
I understand that the average case is pulled in either direction from multiple empires but I think it's useful to compare with empires with similar qualities and their longevity as opposed to comparing against the average case.
For example, comparing to Britain wouldn't make sense since the base of power was a much smaller landmass with a strong central governing tradition within the nation proper. Their empire was based on supreme naval and economic dominance, which was outmoded by the natural advance of technology.
EDIT: I've just noted the link below. I wouldn't say that the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist at that point but was perhaps less strong. Is the fall of an empire the decline in strength or the point in which it is no longer deemed an empire?
But I think there's a very substantial difference between empires past and the american one: Cheap, ubiquitous, high speed communications and ditto + safe travel.
Managing far-flung territories in the British and Spanish empires caused major, major friction, in a way that just isn't the case in the present day. Back then, colonial service was a life career, and you'd spend years at a time deployed overseas. Letters took weeks to turn around. Today, if you need the help of a specialist, you pick up the phone, or you could even easily fly one out and he'll be there tomorrow or the day after, and he'll be back home a few days later still.
A lot of American might is still inextricably linked with maritime power, purely because of those aircraft carriers and the support fleet that accompanies it.
In terms of the republic, I think that we're in a dangerous time. But we've been there before and came out ok.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._colonial_possessi...
I suppose the continental USA could be invaded by Mexico or Canada, in which case one would have to see a much more considerable reversal of fortunes than that being considered in the OP.
So yes, we can do all this stuff better, faster. It makes for a huge difference in degree and if that difference is large enough by itself it becomes a qualitative difference.
But I think the mistake is to think that a change like that is enough to significantly decrease or increase our ability to build empires or to destroy them because those forces tend to balance out (assuming both sides have roughly equal access to the technology).
That's why none of the other technological advances from the past made a huge difference either, the 'empire' that was expanding brought their technology with them, it became adapted and then was used against them or they simply regressed.
The only times it worked was when the natives were entirely slaughtered or intermixed and those countries typically ended up declaring independence.
Empire building is a losing business in the longer term, and there is no proof to date that a complete and unobstructed view of the world or instant communication are a key element to empire success (or failure).
But since you're framing the argument in terms of ignorance and such I think I'll bow out here.
Its about maintaining an empire, which i think is an important distinction.
I dont see the US waging war against anyone who is trying to dethrone them as a superpower. The ways that other countries are trying to dethrone the US are much more economic.
Economic war can be waged over the internet quite well, without any ships or smoke signals.
But, I don't think the Ottoman, Chinese, Arab, Hitite empires give us any predictive information for the longevity of the later ones.
I mean, history does show pretty convincingly that "stuff ends" eventually. It's got some examples for how, they are usually fairly specific and unclear. Europe has been obsessively theorizing about The Fall of Rome for 1500 years. All those musings really tell us about is the people doing the musings. It was because of Debauchery, Christianity, Tyranny, Civil Strife, Monetary Policy, Cultural Purity, Military Discipline etc. etc. depending on who you are.
I bet you can guess that Victorians suspected orgiastic debauchery while Marxists suspected class structure.
Every generation thinks it invented sex, rebellion, and curiosity.
Also, please explain a statement like "American capitalists helped create China". I think the Chinese would laugh at a statement like that. If anyone "helped create China", it was the Soviet Union.
Regarding creating the "new" Middle East, the 20th century Middle East was created by the UK and France and led to the formation of Israel, the definition of all the borders, and the control of strongman dictators over nearly every nation in the region. We can credit the USA for creating the dictatorship in Iran and destabilizing Iraq, but what's boiling over now is largely a result of nearly 100 years of pent-up shit that America most definitely did not put in place.
The stupidest part of the article, though, was part about young Americans not thinking the US is great. Uh, newsflash: the suggestion that the US is objectively the greatest country in every way has always been absurd. The fact that young Americans now realize this isn't indicative of anything. Again, we could be getting MORE powerful and MORE influential, it still wouldn't affect the absurdity of that statement.
I seriously disagree with that. It's a big shift to go from a highly patriotic new generation to one almost disenfranchised with the whole idea.
Neither you nor the author explain how patriotism is linked to power. I (and your parent) think that's an absurd position. If anything, a realistic rather than jingoistic view of the nation's stance in the world enables a sort of realism that prevents stupid mistakes of hubris -- mistakes that can sap a country's ability to project both military and diplomatic power.
It's linked to the people in power, no? A population that's highly patriotic and supportive of the country they live in are more likely to go along with whatever the leaders of the country do. Like root out people with communist ideas or supposed Japanese spies (and put them in big old camps). Hitler was an expert at stoking the patriotic fires and this helped in immeasurably at the start.
A disenfranchised populous is unlikely to follow their leaders to war and be far more critical (and vocal) about their policies.
Patriotism is an emotion. Emotional decision making can help avoid debates that lead to inaction, but it can also enable horrendously stupid decisions.
It's not clear to me that overbearing patriotism in the general population is a net benefit to a democratic superpower.
The rest of the modern world spent half the past century coming back from the brink after two world wars that left American lands almost entirely untouched. The US had a head start with modern innovation and prosperity but the rest of the world has caught up. Who cares about which arbitrarily defined nation state is "best"? It'sbecoming a great time to be alive in places all over the world, and that's a good thing.
I don't think America is the greatest country in the world, but I don't think any other country truly deserves that title either. It's kind of an antiquated concept really, given how interconnected and global everything has become.
In fact when I had to write copy during my first startup job the founder told me to look at how the DM write to see how to communicate simply.
Most empires do not truly collapse. They just decline and change into something else, often parts of other empires. British Empire is now small part of power structure in its ex-colony. If you join British Empire and American hegemony together, get 400 years of expanding Anglo-Saxon culture with internal power shifts (like different dynasties in China).
In the "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers", Kennedy argues that all Western powers in last 500 years are drawn into strategic entanglements that force them to spend more of their GDP on defense. This leads to domestic underinvestment. First the great power experiences relative economic decline, then its rivals start to challenge it. Then wars bankrupt it.
Are we talking about the power to dictate trade terms or monopolize trade routes? This is a lot less important than in the 17th century. Do they mean cultural influence? I can report as a European that I understand US politics better than my own country's. I watch more US movies than al else combined. Do they mean "highest GDP?" Military power? the ability to be the "world Policeman?"
That third Bush maybe...?
If you are a "skilled" person of foreign nationality would you rather go to the US or China if you would have an option ?
Do you know if China is evolving culturally? The reason I wouldn't want to live in a place like China or Russia is that people there are not socially developed. By that I mean, people there are not pleasant and rudeness is the norm. Hopefully, China will be different in a decade or so.
Well that's a great big lie. It's Democrats who are concerned about giving corporations carte blanche to sue in secret courts for loss of expected profits.