The Desperate Plight of a Declining Superpower – Truthdig
by Systematic
[…] What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of this predicament?
Anywhere but in Washington, the obvious answer would for it to stop pretending to be what it’s not. The first step in any 12-step imperial-overstretch recovery program would involve accepting the fact that American power is limited and global rule an impossible fantasy. Accepted as well would have to be this obvious reality: like it or not, the U.S. shares the planet with a coterie of other major powers—none as strong as we are, but none so weak as to be intimidated by the threat of U.S. military intervention. Having absorbed a more realistic assessment of American power, Washington would then have to focus on how exactly to cohabit with such powers—Russia, China, and Iran among them—and manage its differences with them without igniting yet more disastrous regional firestorms.
If strategic juggling and massive denial were not so embedded in the political life of this country’s “war capital,” this would not be an impossibly difficult strategy to pursue, as others have suggested. In 2010, for example, Christopher Layne of the George H.W. Bush School at Texas A&M argued in the American Conservative that the U.S. could no longer sustain its global superpower status and, “rather than having this adjustment forced upon it suddenly by a major crisis… should get ahead of the curve by shifting its position in a gradual, orderly fashion.” Layne and others have spelled out what this might entail: fewer military entanglements abroad, a diminishing urge to garrison the planet, reduced military spending, greater reliance on allies, more funds to use at home in rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of a divided society, and a diminished military footprint in the Middle East.
But for any of this to happen, American policymakers would first have to abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower—and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates) to swallow. […]
Read in full Delusionary Washington: The Desperate Plight of a Declining Superpower at Truthdig
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Stephen S. Cohen, a macroeconomics professor at U.C. Berkeley, and his colleague and co-author J. Bradford DeLong offer a complementary analysis in “The End of influence: What happens when other countries have the money” (2010). Written from a point of view largely (though not entirely) free of American self-idealization, it’s remarkably clear-headed and well worth a read.