For spending too much on the military industrial complex, and in deliberately sowing conflicts worldwide by directly training and funding terrorist groups, in order to sustain the industry that only feeds on wars, the US economy has suffered immensely and has never recovered, since the 1960s.
There’s a limit to just how much pain and suffering the world can take, and at least three countries are offering a challenge to the imperial ambition of the Crown, that has a concordat with the US Corporatocracy, and its war machinery.
Assumption of US dominance in the world has ended, inevitable imperial decline is looming
Iran, China, and Russia are challenging the US in the seas and skies. It’s a symptom of America’s declining global influence.
In his new book about the decline of US global power, historian Alfred McCoy writes, that faced with a fading superpower, incapable of paying its bills, other powers will begin to “provocatively challenge US dominion” in the seas and skies.
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This is happening already with what appears to be increasing regularity, although perhaps “provocative” is not the right adjective to describe it.
The American military has been the chief provocateur in the seas and skies for decades, entering foreign airspace and territorial waters with impunity, expecting no retaliation. Now, powers like China, Iran and Russia are more actively challenging the US’s unchecked behavior.
In January, Iran detained ten American sailors overnight after two US Navy boats entered Iranian territorial waters. American exceptionalists were dismayed at Iran’s apparent show of disregard for US power, many blaming the incident on Obama’s “weakness.”
In May, US officials accused Beijing of an “unsafe intercept” when Chinese planes buzzed an American spy plane flying off the coast of China. Later that month, two US nuke ‘sniffer’ aircraft were intercepted by Chinese planes in the East China Sea. In July, Chinese jets again drove off an American spy plane flying over the Yellow Sea. Just last week, a US ship fired warning shots at an Iranian boat in the Persian Gulf after the craft approached within 150 yards and ignored American warnings to stay away.
Those are just a few examples from a spate of recent incidents that have seen US boats and planes intercepted or harassed. Not to mention, Russian and American jets are always buzzing and chasing each other off over the Baltic and the Black Sea.
This willingness to confront the US military may be indicative of the wider, aforementioned problem for Washington: Its global influence is waning, the country and its military are enjoying less respect and clout internationally, and rising powers are beginning to assert their own national interests more forcefully.
The assumption of US dominance in regions like the Western Pacific and the South China Sea has ended. In Europe, Russia has not been shy about challenging the seemingly endless eastward expansion of NATO. In the Middle East, too, Russia has come to be seen as an equal to the US in terms of clout, influence and the ability to arbitrate in regional conflicts. Despite its archipelago of more than 800 bases across the world, the US can no longer dictate to the world in the way it once could.
All these powers, that the US has worked so hard to keep in check, are continuously being pushed toward each other by a common goal: to end US domination and build a more multipolar world.
Most often, these developments are portrayed as “muscle flexing” and “aggressive” by Western media, while American efforts to maintain global hegemony are seen almost exclusively as benign and crucially important for democracy and world peace.
