<
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/02/the-american-empire-is-the-sick-man-of-the-21st-century/>
"So what if the American empire is coming apart at the seams? Good
riddance, many would say. U.S. hegemony has been a disaster, spreading
war and exploitation around the globe and poisoning the climate beyond
repair. And that’s true: As Asimov observed, empires tend to fall
because they overextend themselves, spoil their elites, and produce the
preconditions for their own demise. But what we’re seeing is neither a
considered, responsible withdrawal from empire in order to invest in
urgent needs at home nor a revolt against empire by the world’s
wretched. Rather, it’s a drawn-out, decadent collapse recognizable to
any student of Rome or Constantinople. America is the sick man of the
21st century, and anyone who has watched its president bumble through a
gathering of bemused, pitying world leaders knows it."
Via Jim Douglas, who wrote "And I
don’t say good riddance to this sort
of collapse. Even with its flaws, the Pax Americana has been a net
positive for the world for most of the postwar era. If the alternative
is a mercantilist everyone-for-himself world where great powers
increasingly ignore international institutions to do whatever they think
they can get away with, it won’t be an improvement."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://www.xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
http://www.glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
http://www.sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
