Story here:
I must say, all that sounds very . . . believable. Any reason to be skeptical?
Any reason to expect neoconservatism to have any life left in it in the coming decade?
If it is reliable, then, based on this picture, what sort of foreign-policy directions should Obama take?
We (in the USA) have had it on top for a long time. But this situation cannot last, because:
-we are broke. We cannot afford to police the world any more
-we are a smaller proportion of the world population (India and China now are >2 billion people)
-conventional military forces are useless ; our disastrous experiences in afghanistan and Irq have shown this
-our government consistently ignores the will of the people; therefore, it is setting itself up for a revolt
Our “leadership” (morally bankrupt and corrupt) is doing everything possible to destroy the USA
Not something touched on by the NIC report . . . You mean, more than electoral revolt? There’s been no real sign of that here since 1865 – not even in the Depression or the '60s (though some people mistakenly perceived revolutionary situations at the time).
I like the part where he says that states are in danger of being taken over and run by criminal networks.
Sorry, buddy, that already happened. See the US for the past 8 years.
I don’t think this follows. What part of forcibly invading a country and forcibly setting up a western democratic capitalist government qualifies as taking the spread of democracy for granted?
I think they’re referring to the whole End of History isn’t-it-obvious triumphalism thing.
Stalin imposed Communism on Eastern Europe by force of Soviet arms; that doesn’t mean he didn’t believe in the natural workings of the Marxist historical dialectic.
The naive quixotic belief that spreading democracy is simply a matter of deposing dictators. That of course democracy is what people will default to once they’re rescued from the purely artificial situation of despot rule. :rolleyes:
If Mexico can at times appear to be on the verge of becoming a narcostate, what prospect does that hold for the rest of the developing world?
International financiers were convinced that the American model of business and economics was a safe way to grow your countries finances and power. They suddenly have to defend their actions to the people, many who did not believe . Their economic systems have been threatened.
Who is going to trust the US now? Also most countries object to our militaristic expansion .
We are torturers now. What is to there to recommend in our model now?
No one needs to trust anyone. The commercial paradigm spearheaded by the United States can either be repaired and made to work, or it can’t, in which case why would we want it anyway. The proof will be in how this turns out and we’ll learn from there and move on.
See, maybe if we hadn’t been so busy re-assuring ourselves that we were the greatest nation in the history of the universe and deeply chastising everyone who might have suggested something that might have deviated in the slightest, we could have been busy preparing for a more difficult 21st Century.
We still have the opportunity to make a large impact on the future. We have the potential to invest in science and new high-tech infrastructure. Maybe if we would pour lots of resources into science and technology we can just work our way out of the problem. I would be more than willing to do my part, the problem is if the rest of the goddamned country can realize the pickle of the situation that we’re in and the amount of effort it will take to overcome it.
Like most I’m terrified about the financial crisis, and I’m at a financially weak point of my life, but on the other hand, I’m going to enjoy our comeuppance as it will inevitably lead to a more realistic worldview that we so desperately need.
Because these predictions are generally wrong or at best to vague to be useful?
I predict that over the next 20 years, we will see political instability, conflicts over the distribution of scarce natural resources, political and religeous strife and threats to the hedgemony of the United States as the sole superpower. Why can I make these predictions? Well…tradition mostly.
I guess that’s what’s great about those kinds of predictions. People can see what they want to see in them, even if they are fantasy.
I believe it.
Attributed to Alexander Tyler, who was talking about the Athenian Republic:
*“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.” *
I believe we have offically moved from apathy to dependency.
Yes, our problems are clearly caused by rampant socialism. :dubious:
America’s share of the world economy has been steadily decreasing since the end of WWII and America’s influence has also been slowing decreasing in the last couple of decades as Europe and Asia grew in influence. But I believe that when historians look back they will point at GW Bush as a time when America’s position in the world suffered the most dramatic decrease.
I believe in 25 years it will be very clear that America will then be a powerful economic player but behind China and Europe and in the league of other nations.
Now, I believe the USA can learn to play nice with others and assume its new role in a multipolar world or it can try to refuse to acknowledge the inevitable and be dragged into the new situation against it’s will which would be disastrous. Most empires have refused to adapt and so far America is doing the same.
:rolleyes: sigh Not that shit again.
Alexander Tytler (not Tyler) never wrote that, and he would have been dead wrong if he had. (Robert Heinlein did say something to the same effect, with more brevity, and he was dead wrong too.) Some republics and democracies in history have self-destructed by various means; some have been destroyed by foreign conquest. No democracy has ever self-destructed by way of the mob voting itself largesse from the treasury. See this thread. It’s all pure RW UL.
Again with the fucking China and India. In terms of GDP, the US is still larger than the next 4 countries combined, of which China is only 4th behind Japan and Germany. India is like 12th.
The EU is not a single country like the US. It’s a hodgepodge of countries sharing the same currency and some institutions that link them together.
25 years ago they were predicting that Japan would be ruling the world. How did that work out?
I don’t hold a lot of stock in these predictions.
Obama should do what he is supposed to do. Focus on strengthening our country through policies that make sense and are just.
Has the accuracy of the US intelligence community in recent years given us a basis to regard their analyses as reliable?
Eh? Who predicted that?
Ha! Good point.
Right. Let’s take a look at ye’ olde Gobal Trends 2010 report from fall, 1996, revised in 1997:
http://www.dni.gov/nic/special_globaltrends2010.html
I’m cherry-picking a bit here. On the whole I’d say the report is pretty good and generally rings true, but then again that’s true only so long as there hasn’t been a sudden change in inflection in various global trends.
They have not and cannot now predict the surprises.