Although there is a number of countries that still cry uncle, the UK, Japan and a bunch of EU members being the prime example - they do it because they chose so, mainly for their own selfish reasons, not because they feel threatened to comply.
To put differently, in 1945 there was not a single county that could tell Uncle Sam to fuck off and get away with it, even Russia had to be very careful in what it was saying and doing. Today a a large number of what Nixon would term as "pissant" countries can and do tell the US to fuck off without suffering any serious consequences.
Wojtek
On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 4:29 PM, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/10/2010 3:38 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> People say this after every recession or stock-market crash. In the early
>>> 90s everyone was talking about Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great
>>> Powers.
>>>
>> True, and then that receded in the dot.com mania. But maybe the long-term
>> trend is down, obscured by the occasional bubble.
>>
>
>
> To extend your analogy, the problem is how do you construct a consistent
> time-series for this? In 1945 the number of countries whose asses the US
> couldn't kick was 1. Now it's zero. Yet people still talk about decline. So
> it seems like there was a break in the series somewhere.
>
> SA
>
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