The Eagle Has Crash Landed - Wallerstein

[Ed George <edgeorge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Eagle Has Crash Landed

Pax Americana is over. Challenges from Vietnam and the Balkans to the
Middle East and September 11 have revealed the limits of American
supremacy. Will the United States learn to fade quietly, or will U.S.
conservatives resist and thereby transform a gradual decline into a
rapid and dangerous fall?

By Immanuel Wallerstein

The United States in decline? Few people today would believe this
assertion. The only ones who do are the U.S. hawks, who argue
vociferously for policies to reverse the decline. This belief that the
end of U.S. hegemony has already begun does not follow from the
vulnerability that became apparent to all on September 11, 2001. In
fact, the United States has been fading as a global power since the
1970s, and the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks has merely
accelerated this decline. To understand why the so-called Pax Americana
is on the wane requires examining the geopolitics of the 20th century,
particularly of the century's final three decades. This exercise
uncovers a simple and inescapable conclusion: The economic, political,
and military factors that contributed to U.S. hegemony are the same
factors that will inexorably produce the coming U.S. decline.

<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2002/wallerstein.html>

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