Re: Strategische Analyse der Asia Times zu den USA.

Geschrieben von Theo Stuss am 31. März 2004 11:02:13:

Als Antwort auf: Nachrichten 31.0304 geschrieben von Zwobbel am 31. März 2004 08:27:17:

So schrieb ich an Stephan Berndt:

Sehr geehrter Herr Berndt,


dieser Artikel in englischer Sprache dieses genialen Strategen, der die Schwächen der USA auf wirtschaftlichem und militärischem Gebiet bloßlegt, muß von Ihnen studiert werden, auch wenn er lang ist. Eine Schwäche, die hier noch gar nicht berücksichigt ist, sind die neuen russischen Interkontinentalraketen mit Zufallskursabweichungen, unbeschadet der Zielgenauigkeit im Hinblick auf die finale Treffgenauigkeit. Zufällige Schlangenlinien der Raketen machen den amerikanischen Abwehrschild wirkungslos. Aber von vielen anderen neuen Waffensystemen ist die Rede und von der StÄrkung der wirtschaftlichen Kraft Russlands, die an Fahrt gewinnt. Lesen Sie selbst. Einer spannensten Artikel der letzten Monate. Er ist lang, aber Sie sollten Ihn wirklich ganz lesen, denn er deckt alle Achillesfärsen der USA auf, wirtschaftlich, militärisch, diplomatisch, so wie die Schwäche des US-Cybernets im Hinblick auf russische Elitehacker.

MfG


China is rising, economically, diplomatically and militarily, to threaten a displacement of the United States as the dominant power in Southeast Asia. Europe is increasingly choosing the course of independence from the US: it currently rivals US gross domestic product (GDP) and is making joint economic and strategic diplomatic agreements with US competitors Russia, China, India, Iran and others, while the US looks on warily.

South Korea is increasingly irritated with the US military presence and diplomatic posture on the Peninsula and is looking ahead to a settlement of the Korean crisis that could significantly lessen, if not eliminate, US presence and influence. Japan likewise is displaying increasing irritation with the US diplomatic posture and military presence in the region and is moving rapidly in the direction of remilitarization, independence and self-assertion, making its own energy-security deals with Iran and Russia over US objections. Taiwan is also becoming more assertive, risking a conflagration with China, and obliging the US to make diplomatic moves toward China, away from longtime ally Taiwan, in an effort to avoid the conflagration, in which the US would most likely be the prime geopolitical loser.

Russia, in the face of proliferating US military presence throughout the traditional Russian sphere of influence, is becoming much more assertive, charting a course often directly opposed to the US. Russia is making strategic economic (oil/gas) agreements and conducting weapons sales in every strategic region of the world, while the US looks on guardedly at Russian political and diplomatic influence on the rise.

The majority of the oil states of the Middle East have adopted a decidedly anti-American stance in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, and consequently, US influence in the region is suffering a very significant setback. In the past year collective international opposition to the US has been consolidating at the United Nations and within its Security Council, marginalizing and isolating the US internationally. The continuing trends are mostly against the US and are even picking up steam in that direction.

In the face of all these regional and global developments, can the United States maintain its current position of global dominance?

Conventional wisdom says the US cannot be displaced from its position of global dominance any time soon, in spite of the current negative trends noted above. Very confidently, those touting such conventional wisdom proclaim that the United States simply has far too much power to be displaced. However, the track record of conventional wisdom is such that we owe it to ourselves to check the assumptions upon which it is based, to see whether they stand up to scrutiny. If they do, then we will have confirmed for ourselves that US dominance is here to stay for the foreseeable future. But what if those assumptions begin to crumble in the face of a logical and factual analysis? Would you want to continue to subscribe to conventional "wisdom" if it were proved to be based on fragile foundations?

Most, if not all, of the negative trends noted above have come about either directly or indirectly as a result of US hegemony, most often exercised with little sensitivity or concern for the interests of its subjugates. The United States has often acted as if everyone else on the geopolitical chessboard is destined to be a subjugate of it, as the last superpower. However, the US is finding out that those "subjugates" do have options beyond mere passive acquiescence to the will of the global hegemon.

A careful examination of precisely how the US exercises power, where that power derives from, is very enlightening in view of the subject at hand.

'It's the economy, stupid!'
The essence of US global power is its economic wealth. Every other form of its power is a derivative of that wealth. The US has been able to influence all the other players on the geopolitical chessboard because it leads the global economy, and historically, it can therefore greatly reward or severely punish in ways and to an extent that no one else can. This fact endows the US with tremendous political and diplomatic power and influence. It can develop and deploy the most awesome and effective military machine in the world, enabling the projection of its power around the globe - all because it can "afford" it economically while no other nation can. The standard of living and the freedoms enjoyed by its people give the US tremendous social and cultural influence across the globe - all rooted in its economic prosperity. In every way US power derives from its economic capital.

Even the enemy terrorists realize the truth of this. Hence they attacked the very symbolic heart of America's economic power on September 11, 2001, in an effort to damage the real source of US power. If that true source of power is ever spoiled significantly, or if the US economy could be throttled by an outside force, then the last superpower will see a decline in the potency of all its derivative forms of power and influence. As a matter of fact, the evidence strongly indicates that decline is already happening. How so?

It has been correctly noted that oil is the very lifeblood of the industrialized economy. Completely opposite of popular assumptions circa the late 1990s and up until around 2002, during this most recent period in which global oil prices have rebounded and are currently soaring, the US economic engine is still exceptionally vulnerable to oil price shocks. It is now well known and appreciated that in the past 30 years, since the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74, every global oil price "shock" has been followed closely by a US economic recession. The link between the two is indisputable. What applies to the US economic engine also applies to the global economy as well. However, US economic vulnerability to the global price of oil is now significantly greater as compared with the vulnerability of most other economies. How is that true?

The US has been steadily transferring its economic wealth and the power that goes with it to other nations, directly as a result of its enormous debt. The US is frighteningly dependent upon foreign cash inflows to finance its huge deficit. This increasingly places the very solvency of the US economy in foreign hands. The US currently runs an account deficit of 5 percent of its GDP, a record high, which cannot be maintained indefinitely. Crude-oil imports account for a sizable portion of this current account deficit, and become increasingly significant as the global price of oil elevates. An orderly decline of the dollar by about 40 percent, far greater than the overall 8 percent (about 20 percent against the euro) seen so far, would be required to help shrink the dangerous current account deficit. However, such a decline presents a range of other problems that are considerable in their impact and risk.

As the dollar declines, oil producers, which currently price their exports in terms of US dollars, seek to hedge against the lessening of their real profits resulting directly from the dollar decline. They do this by pegging the price of exports to a more stable currency with fewer structural problems, the euro. Evidence compiled by James Turk, founder of Goldmoney.com, strongly indicates they may already have established a de facto but undeclared peg to the euro. As a result, oil producers artificially inflate the price (in dollars) of oil to hedge against a weaker dollar, and that puts increasing upward pressure on the US current account deficit, which puts further downward pressure on the value of the dollar. A vicious cycle has already ensued. The likely effect is an eventual not-so-orderly decline in the value of the dollar. This can have a catastrophic impact upon the US economy and upon the global economy as well.

In fact, the only reason the decline of the dollar has not been disorderly (or even catastrophic) already is the fact that the Asian economies, most notably Japan and China, have so far continued to purchase enormous amounts of US debt in an effort to keep their own currencies from escalating out of control against the dollar. Notably, private investors who formerly purchased US debt have mostly abandoned that practice out of fear of holding too many dollars, and that slack has, so far, been taken up by the Asian central banks. The entire situation for the US economy is very unstable and filled with risk. The fact is that there currently exist so many imbalances, many firmly centered in the US economy, but extending outward to affect the global economy, that no one can say with any authority precisely what all the risks are, or what the future holds, with much accuracy. However, one thing that is certain is that because there exist so many deep structural weaknesses and very considerable risks, the US economy no longer commands the global respect and confidence it once did.

In fact, doubts about the stability and permanence of US wealth are deep and wide. The dollar is in steep decline over concerns about the structural integrity of the US economy. The rest of the economies of the world are increasingly concerned about having their economic security hitched so permanently and intimately to the US economy alone. "The neighbors are beginning to talk" about the need to pursue a course of increasing economic independence from the US. What they are saying is evidence that the formerly unquestioned economic power and earned global trust of the United States is in serious decline.

As everyone knows, economies operate on trust as a foundation. The US foundation is already seriously damaged, as evidenced by global nervousness and fear of a serious, or even catastrophic, US dollar decline. The US is doing very little, if anything, to reassure the world and calm the jitters. In fact, it is continuing to spend itself into an indebtedness "oblivion", spending on hugely expensive domestic programs, on an ever-increasing military budget and on hugely expensive military invasions and nation-building. All the while, deep tax cuts have also been enacted. How much longer can the economic charade continue, while the United States refuses to make needed reforms and to take other required actions to strengthen, rather than weaken, its own economic strength?

US unwittingly participates in its own decline
The United States is helping to create severe problems for itself by participating in the transfer of its wealth overseas, and at the same time, by pursuing a militarized foreign policy that alienates it from traditional friends and allies, and which creates an atmosphere of distrust of its real intentions and its underlying motives. The US is therefore helping to marshal opposition to itself, helping to consolidate such opposition and continuing to give impetus to collective moves on the part of its friends and rivals alike, designed to limit US power and intensify their own. In essence, the US is unwittingly causing the accelerated creation of a multipolar world, where US global dominance is no longer desired, no longer accepted as inevitable. Now, the US is finding that it no longer possesses the influence among the global community of nations that it once had.

The US is also working to undermine international confidence in its economy as it facilitates corporate fraud, a la Enron, WorldCom and many others, seemingly without end. These scandalous, gigantic corporate failures have a serious effect on investor confidence worldwide. There are other places to put one's money, and when such monumental failures occur in the heart of the US economy, investors are forced to hedge their bets, to diversify their investments for fear they will lose everything in the US system. They have already begun to put their money elsewhere, on a large scale. Unfortunately, few in the United States understand, or even see, such trends. But they are continuing briskly, even accelerating, thereby weakening the US economy by undermining international confidence in it.

Strategy to counterbalance the US in motion
While all the aforementioned trends and problems continue apace, certain other players on the geopolitical chessboard are apparently arranging an economic "check" (if not also eventually a "checkmate") of sorts of the United States by controlling the global availability and price of oil and gas. At the center of those efforts is Russia, which is working very diligently to extend and solidify its control over global oil and gas production and transport.

Already Russia is the world's second-largest oil exporter behind Saudi Arabia, with which it has signed a wide-ranging cooperation agreement on crude-oil production. With Saudi Arabia's de facto control over all of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia's growing monopoly over oil and gas production in most of Europe and Asia, the two partners are already in effect controlling the global price of oil by tightly managing production levels. Russia is also making moves to bring Japan under the shadow of dependence upon Russian oil. Rather than building a proposed oil pipeline to northeastern China, Russia has virtually decided to build one to the Pacific coast to serve Japan. This is a wise strategic move on Russia's part. It already has China firmly under its shadow. Now it seeks to bring Japan under the same shadow of energy dependence. Japan has very little choice but to seek oil where it may be acquired, since it must import about 90 percent of the product.

Notably, US oil companies have recently decided that the environment in Iraq, which possesses huge proven reserves of oil, is too unstable for their involvement at present. They will hold off any significant involvement for at least a year. However, the Iraqi Governing Council has already sent strong signals that it is interested in wide-ranging agreements with Russia for oil production and marketing. Ironically, with respect to control of Iraq's oil reserves, Russia appears to be coming out the winner instead of the US. Russian oil companies are poised and ready to come into Iraq in a very large way. But that is not all.

In a strategic move, Russia is now significantly extending its already considerable control over world gas production, engineering a monopoly over that energy resource in addition to its currently growing crude-oil monopoly. Iran has huge known deposits of gas, and Russia has entered into strategic cooperation agreements with Iran to explore, produce and bring to market that resource. Russia and Iran account for at least 49 percent of the world's known gas reserves. Further, Russia and China have very recently signed a strategic agreement with Saudi Arabia for the exploration, production and marketing of its similarly huge deposits of gas. Other Arab oil states will no doubt soon follow suit. The loss of US influence in the region is becoming painfully evident in various ways, not the least of which is its access to energy resources and energy security. Globally, gas is playing an ever-more-important role as oil becomes more expensive and harder to obtain.

If we simply stand back from a distance and observe the clear overall pattern of these energy-resource developments, we can see a distinct and indisputable blueprint emerging. It is a blueprint of economic encirclement of the US by means of an oil/gas monopoly. A monopoly over the very lifeblood of industrialized nations, namely oil and gas, is at the same time an effective throttle on the economic wealth of a nation, even of a superpower.

Often when this subject is brought up, the reader tends to think only in terms of the "oil weapon", where by means of an embargo oil is severely curtailed in an effort to crash the target economy. However, what Russia is engineering for itself is much more sophisticated than that. It is currently more of a tool than it is a weapon. It is a tool that is being used to conduct the massive transfer of wealth, and with it, power and influence from one geopolitical "pole" to another. It is also a tool being used to exploit pre-existing weaknesses in the US economy for the purpose of producing increased instability in that economy and in its currency. It is therefore a lever to power for the one wielding it. Though it certainly has the potential for being used as a weapon in the not too distant future, its current adroit use as a tool is very effective indeed, without the likely violent repercussions if used as a weapon.

Russia and its strategic partners
Is it really a case of Russia deliberately positioning itself at the center of such developments concerning global oil and gas production and pricing, developing and executing a coherent strategy with a global monopoly as the goal, or is it merely a very weak and mostly inconsequential Russia reacting to events and trying to make the most of a very weak position?

The "experts" remind us that any such global monopoly will be short-lived as oil-dependent nations develop alternatives under an environment of high oil prices. Consequently, such "experts" tend to discount severely the existence of any such strategy on the part of Russia, and if such a strategy does exist, they discount its long-term effectiveness. In defense of their conventional wisdom, they also like to point out Russia's comparative economic, political and military weakness - they insist that Russia is a mere shadow of the former Soviet Union and cannot, therefore, play any role to threaten US global dominance seriously. Finally, they also point out the many statements coming out of Moscow to the effect that Russia wants to work with the US in a strategic partnership. In summary, they say, Russia is simply unable and unwilling to be a serious threat to US dominance. On the surface, their case seems very solid. But is it?

In the classic story of David and Goliath, the giant laughed at little David, and likewise the United States tends to think a scenario of a serious Russian challenge to US dominance is laughable too. And it is certainly true that Russia is much like little David in comparison to the American Goliath. But swift and crafty little David, despite appearances, was in fact a serious threat to overconfident, unwieldy Goliath, whose defenses were mostly down. In the end, Goliath "lost his head" in the face of David's apparently laughable onslaught. And that is where the danger lies for the last superpower - its deep-rooted tendency toward overconfidence, its underestimating the potential for danger, and its lack of a clear, coherent and workable strategy to ensure the retention of its dominant global position, all combine to put it at significant risk in confronting the array of resourceful and crafty little "Davids" currently challenging its global dominance.

Ancient David successfully wrought his strengths against Goliath's weaknesses. That was asymmetrical rivalry at its very finest. Every giant does have exploitable weaknesses. If those weaknesses can be effectively targeted and exploited before the giant can react successfully, then the entire giant is at the mercy and control of the attacker(s). Very interestingly, when one carefully analyzes precisely what the weaknesses of the American Goliath are, and compares those to the pattern of actions and strategy of "little" Russia and her "little" partners, the fit is remarkable indeed.

What are US weaknesses, and are they really being targeted in a coherent and deliberate strategy? The reliance of US commerce and banking and of the US military upon computers and networks is legendary. Russian hackers are well known to be the global elite, those best able to penetrate and compromise US networks. Microsoft Windows security problems are also legendary, which places the bulk of US commercial and military networks at significant risk. Information (cyber) warfare is clearly a strategic problem, because fixing the current network insecurity will take tremendous effort over a period of many years, and the problems are just beginning to be addressed.

Currently, the US is without wide-ranging and effective network defenses. This situation is far more serious than US officials like to advertise, for obvious reasons. They do not wish to encourage hackers and they don't want to erode confidence in America's commercial/financial and military infrastructure. Both Russia and China have elaborate cyber-warfare programs in place specifically designed to exploit US weaknesses while insulating their own networks from such attacks. In cyber-warfare attack and defense simulations carried on under the direction of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) prior to September 11, the "enemy red team" evidently scored significant successful "hits" against the "blue team", showing up just how vulnerable the United States is. The modern-day little "Davids" have been actively studying the American Goliath's computer-network vulnerabilities very carefully.

US military platforms, while very formidable, are also comparatively expensive, large and unwieldy, and are much like sitting ducks in the face of a whole new generation of Russian-made ultra-quiet diesel-electric attack submarines, supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles, supersonic torpedoes, sophisticated air-defense/anti-missile systems, laser-guided anti-tank weapons and anti-ship and land-attack short-range nuclear-capable ballistic missiles designed for in-theater use. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has described Russian supersonic missiles as the most dangerous on the planet, and for good reason. There exists no effective defense against them. Interestingly, the US has no supersonic cruise missiles deployed anywhere in the world. Current US aircraft-carrier battle-group anti-missile defensive measures consist of ECM (electronic countermeasures) and, at the last few moments, the Point Defense System, radar-guided high-speed, high-capacity machine-guns that lock on to incoming missiles and attempt to destroy them. Such defenses are very effective against incoming subsonic cruise missiles.

However, in the case of the new Russian missiles, US naval defenses, if they detect the incoming missiles at all (AWACS aircraft are the only practical means for doing so), will have less than three seconds thereafter to shoot them down. They can be launched from aircraft, surface ships, or submerged submarines. They travel at Mach 2.5 (about 2,980 kilometers per hour, or about 830 meters per second), much faster than a high-powered rifle bullet. They skim only meters above the ocean surface, do not give away their presence by emitting any form of radiation as they approach their target, are hardened against ECM, and are nuclear-capable. Russia and India are now deploying and marketing the "Brahmos", a jointly developed supersonic anti-ship cruise missile, based on the Russian design. Russia also possesses a nuclear-capable supersonic torpedo that travels faster than the speed of sound underwater - therefore it cannot be reliably detected and tracked by a conventional sonar detection system, because it travels faster than the sonar waves do.

Russia has also developed and deployed sophisticated air-defense and missile-defense systems capable of managing and destroying scores of targets at once. Russian diesel-electric submarines are ultra-quiet, and can detect enemy ships and submarines at a distance of four times that at which they themselves can be detected. Russian anti-tank weapons in use in Iraq scored a number of "kills" against the most advanced tanks in the world. Russia has sold many of these weapons systems to China and others. Russia and India have also developed an ultra-long-range air-to-air missile designed specifically to attack AWACS (Airborne Warning And Control System) and JSTARS (Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System) aircraft that the US and Israel use in warfare to extend their vision and reach. The downing of AWACS and JSTARS aircraft will in effect blind the United States in any conflict without necessarily having to resort to the downing of the US satellite constellation. This is true because virtually all battlefield assets are managed by the AWACS and JSTARS systems. Without the AWACS and JSTARS aircraft, the ability of the US military to see any air or land target is severely reduced.

These asymmetrical weapons systems are all designed to exploit the vulnerabilities, the Achilles' heel, of US military platforms, limiting US ability to project military power by forcing those platforms to stand off at such a distance that US strikes are either impossible or very risky. Since China has purchased many of these systems from Russia, US naval operations in the vicinity of the Taiwan Strait in any future crisis will be significantly complicated and limited. According to the facts, "little" Russia has proved itself very resourceful in countering the almost overwhelming, yet significantly vulnerable, military power of the US giant.

Other US vulnerabilities targeted
US dependency on oil imports is another very significant weakness of the American Goliath. As noted above, Russia is making strategic moves to extend its global monopoly over energy resources. A practical measure of the extent and effectiveness of that monopoly is the fact that since 1999 (for almost five years now) global oil prices have continued above the minimum level Russia considers to be in its strategic interests - that level is about US$22 per barrel. Russia and its partners in OPEC, especially Saudi Arabia and Iran, have managed expertly to throttle oil production so as to control its price. As the Russian monopoly over oil and gas continues to widen, the global price of oil will remain where Russia and its partners desire it - not where the US Goliath would prefer. As noted above, this energy monopoly is a very effective tool being used to transfer wealth outside US boundaries and control.

Russia and its partners are very effectively exploiting another important vulnerability of the US giant - its unprecedented international political and diplomatic isolation resulting from its unilateralist pursuit of an overly muscular foreign policy. At least since the spring of 1997, in the wake of the crisis in the Taiwan Strait and the US bombing of southern Iraq in 1996, both Russia and China have been making diplomatic moves at the United Nations and elsewhere designed to promote the creation of a more stable world order - the multipolar world order. They have argued publicly and privately that the unipolar world order of the last superpower is inherently unstable, unfair and dangerous.

Unwittingly, arrogantly and very shortsightedly, the US has repeatedly acted to validate the diplomatic message and justify the strategic moves of both Russia and China on this issue. Hence we see an array of trends and events occurring that form a definite, undeniable pattern - the multipolar world is taking shape as the US pole is weakened and isolated, and the other, lesser poles are acting collectively to counterbalance US global dominance. All this is occurring apace, and even accelerating, in spite of the fact that the US giant is still, at this time, the dominant force in the international system. In spite of that fact, the trends and forces are mostly moving against the American Goliath. The little "Davids" know that only by collective action can they hope to bring the giant under control, and consequently that is what we increasingly are seeing - collective moves and action to bring balance to the international system.

Forecast: A move closer to chaos
Such pursuit of geopolitical balance may overshoot the mark, however, actually resulting in a disorderly and rapid decline of US global power. That is especially likely if the United States loses its dominant position in the midst of an international crisis wherein it sustains a significant economic crash, or in a military conflict with strategic partners Russia and China that leads to the US military suffering significant loss of men and assets as a result of dangerous and effective asymmetrical warfare against it.

The real problem with the current international system is that structurally, as it moves toward multipolarity, most factors weigh very heavily against an orderly decline of US economic and/or military power. Immensely important vulnerabilities and weaknesses exist that make a disorderly, or even a chaotic, loss of US economic and/or military power much more likely. Consequently, in such a scenario, widespread international chaos would be the most likely eventuality, since no single power could step into the position of global dominance then chaotically vacated by the US.

Attempts may certainly be made at such a time to seat a collective power, an alliance of sorts, as the geopolitical and geo-economic successor to the US. No doubt that sort of last-ditch attempt to restore and salvage order in the international system would be centered in the UN and its Security Council. However, considering mankind's history, it is extremely doubtful such a solution would be able to maintain its own unity for long, keeping the divergent interests of the parties to that alliance in check and submissive to the need for international order. Rapid geopolitical fragmentation and extreme international chaos, on a level never before experienced, would therefore most likely result if the US is ever unseated too rapidly from its current position of dominance that enables it to retain a certain amount of order in the international system.

Ironically, it is the current global dominance of the last superpower that both invites collective opposition in the creation of a multipolar world (threatening to overshoot the mark of balance and taking the world into uncontrolled chaos, however), and at the same time maintains a semblance of order. This is in spite of a certain level of instability caused by the militarization of US foreign policy since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Hence we find ourselves in an extremely dangerous situation where US-caused instability and the collective counterbalancing (or even anti-US) reaction is definitely on the rise, perhaps bringing the world closer to a nightmare scenario infinitely more dangerous and undesirable than the unpleasantness and comparatively low-grade instability inherent in the current US-dominated system.

The imbalance in the current unipolar system is very dangerous and risky. But the risks of overshooting the mark of geopolitical balance, as a multipolar world order is created by US rivals and competitors at the significant expense of the US, are also extremely great, for no one can expect the US willingly to give up its almost complete dominance over the international system without a fight. And by "fight" is meant military invasion in an effort to reassert and solidify its dominant position if and when it is ever threatened with imminent loss. And in this dangerous mix, we must place international terrorism and the proven ability it has to move nations to resort to extreme measures to protect and reassert control, ostensibly in the name of national security. When the international system is analyzed in the light of these forces and trends, the prognosis is for much greater instability and the proliferation of regional wars.

To avoid the considerable risk of these very unpleasant eventualities, international multilateral diplomatic effort would be required to construct deliberately a more balanced world order and to implement carefully such an order in a fashion that avoids any disorderly loss of power by the US "pole". The longer the US refuses to share its global dominance with other players and the harder those other players attempt to curtail US dominance, the more risk there is of pushing the international system "past center", as it were, resulting in a disorderly or even chaotic reversal of US dominance as described above. In such a crisis, restoring international order and balance would be very difficult, even impossible.

It is extremely important here to resist the tendency to dismiss warnings, based either upon a refusal to face the facts, no matter how unpleasant they might be, or based upon unfounded confidence in the status quo. Just to illustrate, remember that in early 2001, huge and seemingly endless surpluses were forecast for the US economy. The high-tech sector was booming. Things apparently seemed very healthy and bright for the US in an economic sense. But within mere months, it had all evaporated. Where did it all go? A significant amount of America's wealth is being transferred overseas, as noted above. This demonstrates that, even for a superpower, nothing is assured. And as economic wealth and power fade, so do all the derivative forms of power - this truth cannot be refuted.

As an old proverb says, "The scene of this world is changing." Tremendous economic wealth and its resulting power can dissipate very rapidly, especially in a crisis. Certainly that is true in view of the fact that other powers, in a concerted effort to bring about their much-desired multipolar world order, are developing a coherent strategy to weaken US economic power by transferring significant wealth outside of US boundaries, and when the United States itself is unwittingly participating in its own decline.

W Joseph Stroupe is editor in chief of GeoStrategyMap.com, an online global affairs magazine specializing in strategic analysis and forecasting. He can be contacted at editor_in_chief@geostrategymap.com.




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