[Great read!] Geopolitical analysis: Waving Goodbye to Hegemony

Thanks for sharing, tm1. It's an eye opener and there's so many insights that could be discussed.

I think the writer dismisses India and overlooks Japan's relationship with the US. Russians might be declining, but with their nuclear and missile knowledge, they'll still be a relevant power.

Also, you can game globalization up to a certain extent until it morphs into another unforseen paradigm. As competition heats up, free trade will become a veneer. Ideology will make another comeback despite the universal incentive of greed. It's in our bones....

I found it interesting when the writer described the processes liberal W. Europe took to shape up their house but neglected to mention that some would consider those intelligence and security moves Big Brother-ish. Hopefully, the unforseen paradigm won't be the Orwellian scenario.

 

David Gergen in Davos...

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Excellent read...passed it on to my boss.

 

Great read. The writer really nailed the EU attitude.

 

long but very very interesting.

 

I'm still thinking about this piece and would this convince people for them to support the North American Union?

 

A truly excellent read, tiger. Thanks! I don't agree with all of it, but certainly agree with the bulk of the column. Without directly saying so, the writer makes as strong a case against the foreign policy of the Bush Administration, and its long term consequences, as I've seen in a long time. I especially liked the suggestions of how to repair the damage, reform and reorganize our assets abroad, create new ones, and find our place in a changing world without losing completely our power and influence.

My father used to work every summer for USAID, back in the 1960's and '70's, in countries as diverse as India and Pakistan, Libya and Nigeria. I was able to go with him to India one summer and saw first hand how he, and the other American professors he led, created friendships of long standing, while making a real difference in the country involved. The year I went he was in Bangalore and the aid program he was in charge of was teaching the colleges there the latest in technology and how to teach it. That's just the sort of thing we should be doing today.

I wish the author had mentioned what I consider one of the greatest foreign policy blunders of modern American history, one that contributed mightily, in my opinion, to the situation we find ourselves in today. After 9/11, the members of NATO offered to invoke Article 5 of the NATO Charter, an article intended to insure America would come to the aid of Europe in the event of an attack by the Soviet Union. For Europe and our other NATO allies to do this was not only unprecedented, but they had thought hard about it, and were busy coming up with plans for meetings between the various military planners as to how they could use their military assets to help us find and defeat those responsible for 9/11.

Bush, to their astonishment, told them they weren't needed. Simply unbelievable. Had we accepted their offer of help it could have led to a very different scenario than what faces us today.



Impeach Bush.

 

Robert Kagan, the untelegenic neocon, has a new book out with the same title as this essay. In it, he argues for equal to stronger presence in world affairs, if only because were we to withdraw, we'd have to get back in under tougher circumstances. I think his points are more realistic, but he operates under the assumption that the US and Europe are static cultural and economic states.

It is not the Cold War redux. It is more like the nineteenth century redux.

End of Dreams, Return of History

Haven't checked out the book yet. The taste of Iraq and neocons wouldn't let me devote too much time on it.

 

Good article by Parag Khanna. He's done some extensive research on U.S. hegemony. I like this piece that refers to Europe as a "metrosexual superpower", and as such that the rest of the world identifies better with Europe than the U.S.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=4366

 

Bush is living in the past. The USSR was never on our level anyway, the Chinese will be because of their economy and so will the European Union.

Also, I find the European Union a classic example of why the Iraq comparison to WWII is even further ridiculous, but that's another essay.

 

I just read the essay...a neo-con he is but his realpolitik is hard to debate.

 

I found the whole concept to be backward looking. It is all about old ideas and old technologies. Oil? Natural gas? If we are still concerned about access to 19th century fuels by the time the EU or China become a major threat to American supremacy then we have failed big time.
How about looking forward to new frontiers, developing areas that the others are not even scratching the surface of like the sea and space? If America had total space superiority, would it matter that China had greater access to Uzbekistan?
We are already dominant militarily. Now we need to focus on becoming totally independent, so that our military dominance cannot be taken away from us. Then we can start to develop resources that other countries can't even get to, including the ability to deny other countries access to those resources.
Under this guys plan, we are putting ourselves at the mercy, not only of China and the EU as some sort of one world triumvirate, but also at the mercy of such superpowers as Venezuela and Kyrgyzstan.
We will not maintain hegemony by subsuming our will to those of others, but by winning, be it through playing the current game better, or starting a new game that makes the old one irrelevant.
At least, that is the direction I would go.

 

I got a good laugh by giving the voice of the essay writer a distinctive lisp....


I think Khana gives too much credit to soft power and Europe's influence to punish other countries through economic or diplomatic incentives. With China and Russia continuing to subvert American international institutions, we and the Europeans don't have as much teeth as we had ten years ago.

Without hard power to back up your threats, you'll eventually become exposed as the paper tiger you are. You know it; they know it; everyone does...but your diplomats will do whatever means necessary to keep whatever pride or prestige that appearance has left, even if it means looking away from another Rwandan genocide while allowing the media to report its savagery to the liberally free public.

I liked the old relationship, where US and Europe played good cop and bad cop. They held the carrot while we wielded the stick. There will be no easy answers in the coming years, but mending the trans-Atlantic alliance should be one of the top priorities. An honest paradigm shift from foreign policy of the last 20 years should be another.

 

this thread was prophetic