Posted on 07/04/2002 1:28:31 PM PDT by A. Pole
I counted 17 iterations of "hegemon" in its various forms. Give me a friggin' break.
The US effort in supercomputers is at the level of molecular computers, not silicon based designs, I would guess...
When all of this hits, the Japanese designs will be obsolete overnight, just as digital technology wiped out the entire Japanese High Definition TV effort (the Japanese companies LOST THEIR SHIRTS on this!)
There are no barriers to American "hegemony" at this point in history. The only military consideration is China, which is a distant second and could easily be pre-occupied by Russia for a slice of the world pie. With the US at the tip of the pyramid, we could begin an era of benevolent despotism unseen since the Pax Romana. Of course, that would take courage and vision, which are both in short supply in our government. So we will undoubtedly piss this opportunity away, much to the regret of humankind.
All this talk about "American imperial overstretch" is retreaded gibberish. The same decline has been predicted by the same liberal hand-wringers for more than half a century now. And with no greater accuracy than this one. Far from declining, the American sun is the only star in the sky. Our friends should celebrate, and our enemies quake in fear.
Funny, a little over a year ago when the communist Clinton was in office, the US was on an unending rise to power unimagined before, now, suddenly we've become weak, a has been, it's all over but the shouting.
The only thing these guys can do is TALK us to death.
Because, you know, it's never the rich, powerful, populous nations that are "decisive force"s in world affairs.
Never trust anyone who goes on for page after page after page and never seems to get to a point.
Not an accident. Wallerstein has been predicting the end of the United States as a global power for more than twenty years now. He's best known for his "world systems theory". No?
"World systems theory" says that countries fall into three categories - "core" capitalist nations, "peripheral" states that are either weak or controlled outright by core states, and those few states that fall somewhere in between, and act as a buffer between the core and the periphery. And the core states get all fat and sassy because they exploit the peripheral states for raw materials and cheap labor and yadda yadda yadda. If it sounds vaguely familiar, it should - Wallerstein's "big" idea was to imagine the whole world laboring under the 19'th century British mercantilist system, with the predictable Marxist spin to it.
And that's pretty much where this piece comes from, and why he's been writing the same op-ed piece for almost three decades now - he's basically rooting for the world's hegemonic exploiter to stumble and fall for its comeuppance. Of course, if it doesn't, he'll have an answer for that, too, never fear...
Reminds me of the hubbub about Francis Fukuyama's "End of History". Real historians aren't opportunists.
Bad comparison. Fukuyama said that western liberalism had won, and that essentially all of the arguments over what course the future would take were over. We would all merge together into a giant soup of global liberalism. 911 pretty well shot that theory to pieces.
This author is not saying that at all; quite the opposite. Unfortunately most of the people who have posted to this thread are nothing more than yahoos who can't do better than shouting "so's your mother!" at the author. Real problems confront the USA; all countries have declined eventually (often as a result of their attempts to become more powerful, whether successful or not). Shutting our eyes and plugging our fingers in our ears and shouting "nyah, nyah, I can't hear you" are not going to make the facts go away. This author may be full of sh!t, but you guys are not doing a very good job of demonstrating that.
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