|
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
^^^ lame attitude that is the ruin of current society and the propogation of the "me, me and only me" generation.
who cares what happens in the future, we won't be here to deal with it!
back to the topic at hand.
We're witnessing another chapter of "The Decline of the American Empire".
The bankrupt U.S. is going to slowly be reduced to a 2nd tier nation with countries like China and India rising to power. Eventually, the U.S. will join the list of former super powers like Britain, Spain, France, etc.
discuss. |
I agree, but also disagree.
I think we are returning to a state of several major competing military and economic powers, similar to the situation following the First World War. The leading powers then were the United States, Britain, the USSR, Japan, france and Italy to a lesser degree and of course an emerging Germany.
Similar to the British Empire, the American Empire is slowly losing its grasp on the title of "world superpower". The world, or even the "free world", is simply not going to allow Americans to dictate their influence like they have done in the past. China, Russia, India, obviously the EU and even Brazil have their own speheres of influence now and the US cannot possibly act as world policemen anymore. Getting involved heavily in Afghanistan and Iraq without major European allies, save Britain of course, has already overextended the US military and contributed to the growing debt of the nation in only five and a half years. The fact that the Russians basically just walked in to Georgia (also in defence of the Ossetians) and all the US President could do was condemn the action...well it's just another example in a trend that I see continuing. It might be a wild card, but how might the world and the US react when/if (when in my opinion), China retakes Taiwan? What is the US going to do?
The thing that troubles me is that, historically speaking, this kind of situation to which we are currently heading, where you have several "powers" competing for a dwindling amount of resources (whereas there has been more or less an abundance in the last half to full last century)...well it's not usually a good situation. It usually leads to war and that genuninely worries me. I'm a big fan of diplomacy, which is why I'd much rather not see neocons like Harper and McCain representing Canada and the US in potentially increasingly volatile times for foreign relations.
We're already in a global financial crisis...I expect some epidemics and significant food shortages could easily follow if this shit keeps up. Then it won't take long for the states of the world to start bickering about influence and more importantly, natural resources. Oil has already led to a few wars in the Middle East in the last twenty years.
WW2 was supposed to be the last major global war and it has given us a sort of "world peace" in a sense for over sixty years, but so did the conclusion of the fight against Napoleon in 1815. There was not another global war until 1914. It sounds simplistic, but history truly does repeat itself and I personally believe we're going to have another major conflict in the next decade or two. War is as common throughout human history as any other major insitution and we seem about due for another one. To think that we have moved past war as a institution of society is a little naive. It's much harder to win over a public through propaganda these days, but still quite possible (Iraq 2003?).
___________________
"No offense, but you're stupid"
Last edited by Dj Smitty20 on Oct-11-2008 at 08:53
|
