The decline of US power?

Perversely, America&#x27;s excessive amount of control over all other countries has likely (largely) led to the world&#x27;s unprecedented amount of peace and stability. This is the theory of Hegemonic stability: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hegemonic_stability_theory" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hegemonic_stability_theory</a><p>The US doesn&#x27;t exert its power for the greater good, it does so for its own economic gain - but world peace and stability are good for the US. It&#x27;s a very interesting dynamic. It&#x27;s very subjective if USA&#x27;s relative waning power is good or bad, but there&#x27;s a chance we&#x27;ll see increasing strife in the world as America&#x27;s power wanes.<p>edit: based off the ever-changing karma on this comment I&#x27;m assuming some people are downvoting this. My comment is meant to be a neutral stance towards a well-respected political theory - how about a response along with the downvotes? I&#x27;d love to have some discussion around the Hegemonic stability theory, which I find fascinating.

Empires on average last for 250 years. It&#x27;s about time for the US to start losing power. Not only that America really doesn&#x27;t know what to do about many of the problems that it helped create. American capitalists helped create China, American foreign policy helped create the &quot;new&quot; Middle East. Which is an unstable hell hole and will probably continue to be for the foreseeable future.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newworldeconomics.com&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2014&#x2F;092814_files&#x2F;TheFateofEmpiresbySirJohnGlubb.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newworldeconomics.com&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2014&#x2F;092814_files&#x2F;...</a><p>page 4.<p>also: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_empires" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_empires</a>

So many sci-fi episodes from startrek&#x2F;stargate come to mind. US foreign policy (for that matter any countries&#x27;) is designed to exploit all other countries for the benefit of their own interests. Sometimes immediate interests cause shortsightedness which results in a mess being created for them as well. It used to be that mess everywhere else is good for US businesses. But given how all economies are interconnected in more direct ways and hardly any major company has US interests only, the game is more interesting and the political thinkers and lobbyists are yet to catchup to this new reality.

How do you complain about the decade of war and then in the same article complain about countries that the president didn&#x27;t go to war with? The unique insanity of trying to blame a declining empire on such recent actions... does this happen outside of US politics?

This article feels like it should have been written by a Redditor, not a real BBC journalist.

The three major powers in the world today are the US, the EU, and China. The trade that makes them world powers also makes military conflicts between them unthinkable. The US needs to focus on maintaining its economic superiority and not waste its time on fighting the peanut gallery. So far it is doing a pretty good job, or rather, not as bad a job as the other two.

Great powers often decline from inside-out. It&#x27;s reasons outside them just assist the process.<p>Most empires do not truly collapse. They just decline and change into something else, often parts of other empires. British Empire is now small part of power structure in its ex-colony. If you join British Empire and American hegemony together, get 400 years of expanding Anglo-Saxon culture with internal power shifts (like different dynasties in China).<p>In the &quot;The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers&quot;, Kennedy argues that all Western powers in last 500 years are drawn into strategic entanglements that force them to spend more of their GDP on defense. This leads to domestic underinvestment. First the great power experiences relative economic decline, then its rivals start to challenge it. Then wars bankrupt it.

The issue with these &quot;economic decline&quot; stories and speculations is that &quot;decline&quot; is never defined in any kind of useful way. So, arguments tend to rise with people talking past each other because they are using a different idea of what axis the decline is moving along.<p>Are we talking about the power to dictate trade terms or monopolize trade routes? This is a lot less important than in the 17th century. Do they mean cultural influence? I can report as a European that I understand US politics better than my own country&#x27;s. I watch more US movies than al else combined. Do they mean &quot;highest GDP?&quot; Military power? the ability to be the &quot;world Policeman?&quot;

The wealth of the united states has been concentrated to very few people in the past 20 years. Those people are owners of multinational conglomerates that don&#x27;t give much about borders anyways. Where the U.S. as a state used to be a driving force of those money horses, it is now a glorified container for the US defence department. The state(country) officials are allowed to fight as long as the bottom line of the 1%(0.1%) is not endangered...

Joseph A. Tainter had the best theory about empire collapse. The empire usually has some way of making an economic profit. They exploit it till it starts returning negative returns and then they try all kinds of counterproductive things that only make things more complicated to try and save that little scheme they&#x27;ve got going.

And if this is a problem, why <i>aren&#x27;t</i> other countries taking up the role?

Well, for me USA is still great. For cultural reasons mostly(, because I&#x27;m already from a rich country). For instance, I&#x27;d like to go and work in Silicon Valley for a while. If I could get a Visa. ;)

No Ferguson&#x2F;Baltimore mentioned nor fast growth of govt. debt ( <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wolframalpha.com&#x2F;input&#x2F;?i=us+government+debt&amp;lk=4&amp;num=2" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wolframalpha.com&#x2F;input&#x2F;?i=us+government+debt&amp;lk=4...</a> , log scale by default!). It seems from the article the biggest problem of the country it doesn&#x27;t kill so easily people owned by &quot;dictators&quot; anymore. Such a brutal western crap is definitely a huge problem itself.

A part of me hope they vote in a republican again. ISIS gotta go.<p>That third Bush maybe...?

tl;dr US should attack other countries more.

It&#x27;s been about three years since I&#x27;ve seen an article like this. I guess we&#x27;ll see another in about three more years.

The thing that is ignored and has to be ignored or you would not have a story, is the near total alignment of the entire West. Economically, militarily and culturally the West is absolutely the dominant force, and that is a good thing.

And BBC is showing it&#x27;s racist and colonialist thinking colors more and more these days. Such propaganda doesn&#x27;t bode well for their brand reputation.

&gt;<i>Democrats with reservations about free trade</i> have tried to sabotage the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the biggest trade deal since Nafta.<p>Well that&#x27;s a great big lie. It&#x27;s Democrats who are concerned about giving corporations carte blanche to sue in secret courts for loss of expected profits.