Is Pax Americana over?

[Lemminkäinen]

It is over. The unipolar moment is over. Before 2008 US could start a war almost anywhere on the planet.
Today this is no longer the case.
What keeps US economy from imploding is the status of the dollar. They keep printing greenbacks.
Today US is everywhere-bubble. Stock market bubble, bonds bubble, derivatives bubble etc.
They moved 90% of manufacturing to China decades ago and try to remain on top as a financial empire solely.
This is not going to work. Simply because of the nature of supply chains, strategic flows.
US is losing economic war to China. The same war they started.
Reality being that Americans earn too much for the work they do and they need to adjust their way of life in the new, multipolar world.

Do you mean the same as KirillMazur? He suggested that American living standard is too high an will drop. Can we suggest that USA can't manage the recent level due to the Chinese competition.

[JamesBond007]

Banksters are definitely an issue. Spot-on. America was once a great country, but now not so much. Don't get me wrong but I think the culture in America is toxic.
America was build on the protestant work ethic (and slavery of course). Nowadays I see America is drifting towards consumptionism, individualism and mix that we socialism, helicopter-money. Not a good mix in my view.

I was already discussing this in another thread. America is no longer WASP culturally and ethnically so it is losing its way and possibly balkanizing (e.g. red states vs blue states).

[Voskos]

Yes, and that's Europe's fault and nobody else's. I'm no fan of Yanks but I'd better have them as rulers than some nazi descendant banker Eurocrat and their Greek shoecleaners.

[michal3141]

Do you mean the same as KirillMazur? He suggested that American living standard is too high an will drop. Can we suggest that USA can't manage the recent level due to the Chinese competition.

Yes. Precisely.

[Smitty]

America itself is over, so yes. We will be Brazil within a few more decades. Nation-states are a thing of the past anyway. The elites have their sights set on global power and global subjects. Get ready for one-world government and authoritarianism the likes of which we've never seen.

[JosephK]

The fact that the US was ever a superpower was an unusual event and temporary. The US that many of you foreigners (and some optimistic, patriotic and well-to-do Americans) have of the US being rich, powerful, and militarily strong was based on the fact that a large part of the rest of the world was wiped out and useless following WW II, plus the great lengths the US went through to gain the best minds that Nazi Germany had to offer, the influx of intellectual and educated European Jews, and the concurrent marketing of the US (as part of bailing out and rebuilding Europe) as the Greatest Country on Earth. In other words, coincidence. Times have changed, people have changed, the world economy has changed; the US is following a path that was predicted as far back as de Tocqueville and certainly by people like Sigmund Freud and a plethora of European philosophers and thinkers throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

The US has not fought a successful war since 1945; a trail of embarrassments and quagmires have followed. The only thing that has changed recently is that most people in the world are now becoming aware of this.

[Thunder_shock]

US is still the prime militarily power with greatest presence on every continent/region, by far the most culturally influential, and has the widest alliance system on the planet.

[JosephK]

US is still the prime militarily power with greatest presence on every continent/region, by far the most culturally influential, and has the widest alliance system on the planet.

Yeah, millions of kids with no hope or who need money for college will certainly help with that. Hopefully they'll never have to pull a trigger. We all know what follows when that happens.

[Lemminkäinen]

America itself is over, so yes. We will be Brazil within a few more decades. Nation-states are a thing of the past anyway. The elites have their sights set on global power and global subjects. Get ready for one-world government and authoritarianism the likes of which we've never seen.

So the globalization is one thing in the toolbox of oligarchies to lower our living standards.

[Smitty]

So the globalization is one thing in the toolbox of oligarchies to lower our living standards.

Is lowering our living standards the goal? I think power is, at whatever cost. Our fat and happy way of life in the West has made us apathetic, which gave these elites the space to take over our institutions and push their agendas. Now, chaos must be introduced so they can take that final usurpatory step. After all, soft power isn't nearly gratifying enough for those who would be God.