[2ndDivisionVet]

What say you?

[jmcenanly]

They were saying the same thing 30 years ago, during the twilight of the Carter Administration

[SevenofNine]

I still miss Ronald Reagan

[GeronL]

There is a lot of bluster in that speech, the fact is the EU seems to matter very little in the global scheme of things.

[DoughtyOne]

Islamabad News...

Well the U.S. may not be as powerful as it was, and I’m not at all convinced of that yet, but the muzzi world sure isn’t going anywhere soon as a result.

Let us know when there’s a car, an aircraft, or just about anything else advanced in your nations other than da bomb, you losers.

[mrsmel]

I don’t know why, because I don’t really see it in this article, but the rise of the 10 kingdoms in Revelation popped into my mind. Maybe something to do with the phrase “multi-polar world”.

[coloradan]

Well, at least as far as the Germans go, I think events will eventually lead to a teutonic shift.

Ba-dump chhhhhh!

[eclecticEel]

Too many inconsistencies. The author asserts (correctly) that the U.S. will remain the world's main power, but then follows that up with a weird statement such as this:

The US security guarantee ... no longer exists

What? NATO has been disbanded? I see no moves from any politically relevant leader in that direction.

[Kakaze]

Obamas 4 or 8 years will cost us a hell of a lot.

How we respond to it in elections and even preserving the union, will be amazingly important for the future of this world.

[roadcat]

Hard to tell what’s going to happen, but it looks like the U.S. will be in decline the next 4 years while China gets stronger. But... I believe the U.S.A. will bounce back due to a backlash against Obama and liberals. And that China will will stumble and falter badly with their own problems. China was and still is a paper tiger. As for Europe, there’s no saving them.

[Darkwolf377]

These prophets of doom seem to forget that there was never a superpower like the US before, and just because the US's power is decreasing on the world stage--temporarily or not--another one of equal power or scale won't step in just because. There is every possibility that other powers WILL become "number one" but that will more likely be by default--they won't surpass the US, but the US may decline.

The US has a unique location, resources (natural and otherwise), and form of government, all of which mean a decline of the US is potential, and potentially temporary. In the meantime, who's going to step into the #1 spot? Of course the French attitude will have all of our former trading and political partners stepping up and doing business with whomever takes the #1 spot, but many of our traditional allies and trading partners aren't going anywhere--Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, others.

The US may slip, but it won't be replaced by another, equal power. It will likely be replaced in that top spot by someone the rest of the world doesn't want there.

[ImpBill]

Interesting read.

Although the author fails to insert the fact that Europe will be part of the Islamic world long before we are and that will definitely cause the split of NATO in that not too distant future. Most if not all the anglo European nations are at or close to zero population growth while Muslims are reproducing like rabbits!

Bottom line is that 911 changed the world in ways my and following generations of Americans will never even begin to comprehend, much less witness.

[marron]

if we want to get things done, such as re-designing the world economic order, or intervening for peace, we cannot any longer just do them within the cosy Atlantic club; we are going to have to find new allies in places we would never previously have thought of. And they will be less congenial and have demands of their own. The recent global financial crisis has made it very plain. If we want a more ordered world at a time of great instability, we are going to have to provide a space at the top tables for nations that do not share our culture, our history, our world view or even our values.

It sounds like his is recommending that Europe turn to the dark side. Not in so many words, but yes, in so many words.

[metesky]

I’ve been reading this story or a version of it every five/six years for over forty years now.

[saganite]

The Europeans do not have the stomach for facing the world without the US. They have been too long inside our protective walls. If the US truly does shift it’s focus elsewhere Europe will likely become a client state of Russia.

[Cronos]

Chinese history is littered with instances when this great nation, as disparate and ethnically diverse as Europe, .

I would dispute that -- China is pretty nearly homogenous: ethnically 90 to 95 % HAN Chinese. All other groups have been assimilated -- there are no real Manchu left, ditto for any number of other minorities, all assimilated, just like the Tibetans and uighurs are now being assimilated.

[Cronos]

One will be a rise in regional groupings – of which history may say the EU was the first, albeit highly imperfect example.

AGain, incorrect -- I would theoretically say that India is the first grouping of South Asian nations -- each state in India is culturally and linguistically (and in many cases historically) distinctive.

[Cronos]

we are reaching the beginning of the end of the perhaps five century long period of the hegemony of western power, western institutions and western values over world affairs.

500 years is not correct. That would put the beginning of western pre-eminence to 1509. That's wrong.

In 1509, the Portuguese and Spanish were exploring new worlds and new routes to India and Asia, but they were not dominant powers.

The dominant power in the Mediterranean was still the Ottoman Empire and that wouldn't change until 1660 and the saving of Vienna by Jan Sobieski III of Poland. The dominant powers in Asia were still Manchu China, Moghul India and the Safavids in Iran.

This position wouldn't change until the mid 1700s and it completely reversed by 1800. Western utter pre-eminence is only about 200 to 300 years old.

[lentulusgracchus]

What say you?

[Article] Such United States soldiers as are left in Europe, are here, not for our defence, but to support their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I say that the article's writer, Paddy Ashdown, errs on this point. The U.S. will always have an Atlantic-centered policy because the country has always had as its key foreign-policy and defense value the protection of its large East Coast population centers from attack, and the large trans-Atlantic trade, which by the way has included a really big chunk of the trade in imported energy.

It's also curious that the writer foresees the growth of protectionist economic policies. Exporting economies have generally been free-traders, as was the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries. The U.S. persists in free-trading, even though it's an importer now.

Therefore, with the rise of Asian exporting economies, I don't see where the author's predicted boom in protectionism will come from.

It's also interesting that this article appeared in a Pakistani newspaper.

[Zhang Fei]

It’s kind of weird that Paddy Ashdown, the former leader of the UK’s ultra left-wing Liberal Democratic Party, is talking about Europe having to worry about security threats. I thought Europeans believed that the period of peace after WWII was the result of European moral virtue, not American military might. Maybe they’re not too coked-up to see reality for what it is, and there’s hope for them after all.

[bert]

.....to have a rather more subtle and sophisticated foreign policy than hanging on to the apron strings of our neighbourhood friend, the world’s only super power......

How's this?

This sentence was chosen for response because seems to make the point. How can a foreign policy that consists mostly of doing very little become more subtle and sophisticated. Perhaps the diplomats can be more decisive in their choices of wine and hor’derves.

Then there is the part about the gathering into groups to project power. There have been attempts in the Western hemisphere that are failures. He left out the Gulf where there is the grouping of the GCC countries that are making steady progress toward becoming a very strong economic force and more important in world affairs than the stodgy Euros.

George Bush changed the world by invading Iraq and destroying the status quo. That action and the results flowing from it removed the Euros from having a voice in the change in the mid east. America, The GCC and Iran are now the players. Israel became less important because the moderate Arabs learned that fighting the Palestinian battle was small potatoes compared to the coming war with Iran. It is better to have an ally you don't like than fight a bad enemy alone.

When Iraq joins the GCC and the might of the military there is honed to American quality, the power shift will be complete. Iran will be isolated and all alone. In ten or fifteen years, there can be a resumption of the ostracicing of Israel except by that time there will be enough trade to temper animosity.

The rise of the Gulf is already a threat to the Euros. Trading companies owned by UAE Arabs and staffed by Indians are making strong inroads into the century old trading relations between excolonial Africa and Europe. Stodgy French trading companies are losing out to fast moving and technically savvy Gulf traders. Plastics and such derived from oil are being made in the Gulf because there are better, newer plants staffed by non union Asians. The oilless Euro petro chemical plants are doomed.

The Gulf states know that there can be extremely rapid progress when American organizational skills, oil money and third world labor are combined. Those forces will be applied by Kuwaiti, Saudi and Dubai companies to cause Iraq to explode with economic capability. Now that the shackles are gone, the pent up power can be released.

This growth will obsolete Europe.

Meanwhile in the Western hemisphere, most will stagnate. Brazil and USA/Canada will do well but the rest will writhe in the slime of the patriarchs fighting against the masses.

Then there is Asia...... India, China, Japan? how will they get along?