Carrol
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: The Eagle Has Crash Landed - Wallerstein Date: Sat, 27 Jul 2002 11:50:40 +0200 From: Ed George <edgeorge at usuarios.retecal.es> Reply-To: marxism at lists.panix.com To: marxmail <marxism at lists.panix.com>
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>