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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:23
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Okay, not so much of a fall as a descent. 
http://slate.msn.com/id/2112697/
2020 Vision
A CIA report predicts that American global dominance could end in 15 years.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2005, at 2:48 PM PT
Who will be the first politician brave enough to declare publicly that the United States is a declining power and that America's leaders must urgently discuss what to do about it? This prognosis of decline comes not (or not only) from leftist scribes rooting for imperialism's downfall, but from the National Intelligence Council—the "center of strategic thinking" inside the U.S. intelligence community.
The NIC's conclusions are starkly presented in a new 119-page document, "Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project." It is unclassified and available on the CIA's Web site. The report has received modest press attention the past couple weeks, mainly for its prediction that, in the year 2020, "political Islam" will still be "a potent force." Only a few stories or columns have taken note of its central conclusion:
The likely emergence of China and India ... as new major global players—similar to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th century—will transform the geopolitical landscape with impacts potentially as dramatic as those in the previous two centuries.
In this new world, a mere 15 years away, the United States will remain "an important shaper of the international order"—probably the single most powerful country—but its "relative power position" will have "eroded." The new "arriviste powers"—not only China and India, but also Brazil, Indonesia, and perhaps others—will accelerate this erosion by pursuing "strategies designed to exclude or isolate the United States" in order to "force or cajole" us into playing by their rules.
America's current foreign policy is encouraging this trend, the NIC concluded. "U.S. preoccupation with the war on terrorism is largely irrelevant to the security concerns of most Asians," the report states. The authors don't dismiss the importance of the terror war—far from it. But they do write that a "key question" for the future of America's power and influence is whether U.S. policy-makers "can offer Asian states an appealing vision of regional security and order that will rival and perhaps exceed that offered by China." If not, "U.S. disengagement from what matters to U.S. Asian allies would increase the likelihood that they will climb on Beijing's bandwagon and allow China to create its own regional security that excludes the United States."
To the extent that these new powers seek others to emulate, they may look to the European Union, not the United States, as "a model of global and regional governance."
This shift to a multipolar world "will not be painless," the report goes on, "and will hit the middle classes of the developed world in particular" with further outsourcing of jobs and outflow of capital investment. In short, the NIC's forecast involves not merely a recalibration in the balance of world power, but also—as these things do—a loss of wealth, income, and, in every sense of the word, security.
The trends should already be apparent to anyone who reads a newspaper. Not a day goes by without another story about how we're mortgaging our future to the central banks of China and Japan. The U.S. budget deficit, approaching a half-trillion dollars, is financed by their purchase of Treasury notes. The U.S. trade deficit—much of it amassed by the purchase of Chinese-made goods—now exceeds $3 trillion. Meanwhile, China is displacing the United States all across Asia—in trade, investment, education, culture, and tourism. It's also cutting into the trade markets of Latin America. (China is now Chile's No. 1 export market and Brazil's No. 2 trade partner.) Asian engineering students who might once have gone to MIT or Cal Tech are now going to universities in Beijing.
Meanwhile, as the European Union becomes a coherent entity, the dollar's value against the euro has fallen by one-third in the past two years (one-eighth just since September). As the dollar's rate of return declines, currency investors—including those who have been financing our deficit—begin to diversify their holdings. In China, Japan, Russia, and the Middle East, central bankers have been unloading dollars in favor of euros. The Bush policies that have deepened our debt have endangered the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency.
What is the Bush administration doing to alter course or at least cushion the blow? It's hard to say. During Condoleezza Rice's confirmation hearings last week, Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D–Md., raised some questions about the nexus between international economics and political power. Rice referred him to the secretary of the treasury.
The NIC issued the report a few weeks before Bush’s inaugural address, but it serves to dump still more cold water on the lofty fantasy of America delivering freedom to oppressed people everywhere. In Asia, the report states, "present and future leaders are agnostic on the issue of democracy and are more interested in developing what they perceive to be the most effective model of governance." If the president really wanted to spread freedom and democracy around the planet, he would (among other things) need to present America as that "model of governance"—to show the world, by its example, that free democracies are successful and worth emulating. Yet the NIC report paints a world where fewer and fewer people look to America as a model of anything. We can't sell freedom if we can't sell ourselves.
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.
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Spiffor
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CPA - Evil Clone brigade
Nov 2001
time: 06:23
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quote:
Originally posted by Oerdin
US, Canada, and Mexico if in an EU type union would be the lead economic power. |
I strongly doubt the US would ever agree to sharing their power (losing sovereignity) to an extent that ever looks like what the average EU country is doing. For a North-American style EU, you'd need to have no federal countries (Canada, Us and Mexico) but plenty of independent States. As it currently is, the US will never accept a political integration such as the EU, and your partners will feel less than enthusiastic being your vassals.
And in this day and age, free-trade zones don't change much, because tolls are already very low. Should we abolish tolls altogether between the EU and NAFTA, there would be some increased commerce, but nothing comparable to what a free-market area brought in post-WW2 Europe.
For the west to unite against the Asian threat, the West has to feel a sense of unity. 9/11 could have been a strong symbol of such unity, but it has been completely wasted by Bush's war. I don't think there will be any political nor popular will to have a sense of unity until the Asians become a serious threat. Once they do, however, we'll feel to be the same very quickly.
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BlackCat
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Nothing new in tihis.
When 5.7 Bill people are aiming at the same productivity and development level as US, they of course will outcompete 300 mill americans.
Americans may think they have an advantage in skills level, but they don't (the same goes for the europeans). The current low level countries are just skipping through those hard earned levels - It's just like that SP in SMACX called Planetary datalinks - it just are more effective on planet Earth.
US has only one advantage, and that is the implementation of the knowlededge into a powerfull army. Only problem is what to do when others get the same capabilty.
I can only find one solution to this problem, and that is to turn as many countries into democracies as possible - as far as I know, no democratic countries has ever gone into a war with another democratic country.
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Wycoff
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quote:
Originally posted by Spiffor
I strongly doubt the US would ever agree to sharing their power (losing sovereignity) to an extent that ever looks like what the average EU country is doing. For a North-American style EU, you'd need to have no federal countries (Canada, Us and Mexico) but plenty of independent States. As it currently is, the US will never accept a political integration such as the EU, and your partners will feel less than enthusiastic being your vassals. |
It wouldn't be look like the EU. For this to happen, the Canadian provinces would simply have to petition the US for statehood. Canada would cease to exist as independent, it would simply be part of the US. Don't see it happening.
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Wycoff
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quote:
Originally posted by Last Conformist
s regards the "democratic peace", the UK and Finland were technically at war during WWII, altho little or no actual fighting took place.
I submit that the chief reason democracies have rarely fought one another this far is that they've generally been on the same side. That will sooner or later change if democracy continues to spread. |
I think that the most important factor is wealth. I don't think that democracies with a large majority of relatively economically comfortable people go to war with other democracies that are comprised of large majorities of relatively economically comfortable people. The incentive isn't there, especially since the economically advanced democracies could put up very tough fights with each other. However, give the democracies extended periods of time with 30%+ unemployment rates and hyperinflation and I guarantee that you see a few wars between democracies.
Remember, Weimar Germany was a Democracy. Though it technically did not go to war against anyone else, enough people democratically supported the Nazis, a party that explicitly stated that it would go to war against other states, to allow them to gain control of the government. Though technically Germany was a Fascist dictatorhsip when it went to war, it initially became such a dictatorship largely through democracy. Germany slips through a loophole here, in that it wasn't democratic when it went to war. However, its a situation that I could easily imagine seeing played out in a few developed democracies should they face times as tough as those faced by Weimar Germany.
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BlackCat
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quote:
Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
And lo, the threadjack shall begin soon. |
I don't now how this thread is to be jacked, please tell me how.
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BlackCat
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quote:
Originally posted by Oerdin
US & Mexico in 1846? Of course Mexico was a weak democracy run by a guy who always got reelected but still. |
I admit that those countries may be called democracies, but seriously ? Let's keep it into the next century.
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VetLegion
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One could argue that Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Serbia have been democracies when they waged wars against each other.
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BlackCat
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quote:
Originally posted by Admiral
I'll bite.
It comes down to where you draw the line on war. The US was interfering with a number of South American democracies during the cold war, which never quite ammounted to war because of the gross disparity in power. But the intent was there. |
By war, I of course mean real war.
As far as I know, there has not been interference unless needed (and no, Chile doesn't fit into this - thats a story of its own).
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BlackCat
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quote:
Originally posted by VetLegion
One could argue that Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Serbia have been democracies when they waged wars against each other. |
No. They were not democratic units when Yuoguslavia broke up.
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19-02-2005 03:54
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