"... The leaders of the world's second-rank powers, among them India, Japan, Russia, and some European countries, are already assessing the potential impact of U.S. decline on their respective national interests. The Japanese, fearful of an assertive China dominating the Asian mainland, may be thinking of closer links with Europe. Leaders in India and Japan may be considering closer political and even military cooperation in case America falters and China rises. Russia, while perhaps engaging in wishful thinking (even schadenfreude) about America's uncertain prospects, will almost certainly have its eye on the independent states of the former Soviet Union. Europe, not yet cohesive, would likely be pulled in several directions: Germany and Italy toward Russia because of commercial interests, France and insecure Central Europe in favor of a politically tighter European Union, and Britain toward manipulating a balance within the EU while preserving its special relationship with a declining United States. Others may move more rapidly to carve out their own regional spheres: Turkey in the area of the old Ottoman Empire, Brazil in the Southern Hemisphere, and so forth. None of these countries, however, will have the requisite combination of economic, financial, technological, and military power even to consider inheriting America's leading role.
China, invariably mentioned as America's prospective successor, has an impressive imperial lineage and a strategic tradition of carefully calibrated patience, both of which have been critical to its overwhelmingly successful, several-thousand-year-long history. China thus prudently accepts the existing international system, even if it does not view the prevailing hierarchy as permanent. It recognizes that success depends not on the system's dramatic collapse but on its evolution toward a gradual redistribution of power. Moreover, the basic reality is that China is not yet ready to assume in full America's role in the world. Beijing's leaders themselves have repeatedly emphasized that on every important measure of development, wealth, and power, China will still be a modernizing and developing state several decades from now, significantly behind not only the United States but also Europe and Japan in the major per capita indices of modernity and national power. Accordingly, Chinese leaders have been restrained in laying any overt claims to global leadership.At some stage, however, a more assertive Chinese nationalism could arise and damage China's international interests. A swaggering, nationalistic Beijing would unintentionally mobilize a powerful regional coalition against itself. None of China's key neighbors -- India, Japan, and Russia -- is ready to acknowledge China's entitlement to America's place on the global totem pole. They might even seek support from a waning America to offset an overly assertive China. The resulting regional scramble could become intense, especially given the similar nationalistic tendencies among China's neighbors. A phase of acute international tension in Asia could ensue. Asia of the 21st century could then begin to resemble Europe of the 20th century -- violent and bloodthirsty.At the same time, the security of a number of weaker states located geographically next to major regional powers also depends on the international status quo reinforced by America's global preeminence -- and would be made significantly more vulnerable in proportion to America's decline. The states in that exposed position -- including Georgia, Taiwan, South Korea, Belarus, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, and the greater Middle East -- are today's geopolitical equivalents of nature's most endangered species. Their fates are closely tied to the nature of the international environment left behind by a waning America, be it ordered and restrained or, much more likely, self-serving and expansionist.A faltering United States could also find its strategic partnership with Mexico in jeopardy. America's economic resilience and political stability have so far mitigated many of the challenges posed by such sensitive neighborhood issues as economic dependence, immigration, and the narcotics trade. A decline in American power, however, would likely undermine the health and good judgment of the U.S. economic and political systems. A waning United States would likely be more nationalistic, more defensive about its national identity, more paranoid about its homeland security, and less willing to sacrifice resources for the sake of others' development. The worsening of relations between a declining America and an internally troubled Mexico could even give rise to a particularly ominous phenomenon: the emergence, as a major issue in nationalistically aroused Mexican politics, of territorial claims justified by history and ignited by cross-border incidents.Another consequence of American decline could be a corrosion of the generally cooperative management of the global commons -- shared interests such as sea lanes, space, cyberspace, and the environment, whose protection is imperative to the long-term growth of the global economy and the continuation of basic geopolitical stability. In almost every case, the potential absence of a constructive and influential U.S. role would fatally undermine the essential communality of the global commons because the superiority and ubiquity of American power creates order where there would normally be conflict.All of this will necessarily come to pass. Nor is the concern that America's decline would generate global insecurity, endanger some vulnerable states, and produce a more troubled North American neighborhood an argument for U.S. global supremacy. In fact, the strategic complexities of the world in the 21st century make such supremacy unattainable. But those dreaming today of America's collapse would probably come to regret it. And as the world after America would be increasingly complicated and chaotic, it is imperative that the United States pursue a new, timely strategic vision for its foreign policy, free of the despicable Zioconned ideology and the infamous White House Murder INC, in the Levant..... -- or start bracing itself for a dangerous slide into global turmoil....""... As great as was the feat of building the infrastructure for a military occupation and war in Iraq, and then equipping and supplying a massive military force there year after year, it was nothing compared to what the U.S had to do in Afghanistan. Someday, the decision to invade that country, occupy it, build more than 400 bases there, surge in an extra 60,000 or more troops, masses of contractors, CIA agents, diplomats, and other civilian officials, and then push a weak local government to grant Washington the right to remain more or less in perpetuity will be seen as the delusional actions of a Washington incapable of gauging the limits of its power in the world.
Talk about learning curves: having watched their country fail disastrously in a major war on the Asian mainland three decades earlier, America's leaders somehow convinced themselves that nothing was beyond the military prowess of the “sole superpower.” So they sent more than 250,000 American troops (along with all those Burger Kings, Subways, and Cinnabons) into two land wars in Eurasia. The result has been another chapter in a history of American defeat -- this time of a power that, despite its pretensions, was not only weaker than in the Vietnam era, but also far weaker than its leaders were capable of imagining....(Read the full report)"....Only problem with this Pacific pivot is the perilous financial situation of Zioconned America....
US is in position to carry on with it in the absence of financial resources when it is going to be consumed by never-ending bickering between Democratic administration and Senate on one side and Republican House on the other in 2012 election year.
And then there is Bush legacy of utter corruption, criminality and extra-judicial assassinations, using the infamous White House Murder INC, in the Levant since January 24th 2002, after the odious inside Job of 9/11....
Obama has been saddled with the endless war due to duplicitous ally and the worst economy due to 2008 financial meltdown from very beginning as well as negotiated troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Once Bush negotiated an agreement with Iraqi government to pull US troops out of Iraq, it was impossible for Obama to continue US troop presence there without Iraqi government’s approval.
Bush totally ignored who is fueling continuing Afghan insurgency and who is responsible for this unending Afghan war.
The seeds of the ‘current Afghan tragedy’ were sowed in Washington when Bush administration decided to allow Musharraf to spirit away by airlift hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz in November, 2001. Pakistan relocated those Taliban cadres including Mullah Mohammed Omar in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan (now relocated to Karachi by Pakistani ISI to protect them from possible US drone attacks) and Haqqani network (HQN) in North Waziristan from where Mullah Omar’s QST and Haqqani’s HQN have been planning raids in Afghanistan ever since.
It is this deliberate policy of Bush administration to ignore Pakistani State’s terrorist connections that has saddled Obama with an endless Afghan war. Obama has belatedly recognized that the root of this Afghan war is in America’s so-called ally Pakistan.
But after ten long years of war, America has neither the wish nor the resources to take on Pakistani military.
So Obama administration will reach a facade of Vietnam-style peace deal as dictated by Pakistan with the Afghan Taliban leaders chosen by Pakistan . US will begin its drawdown and finally exit the theater of a war it is desperate not to be seen as having lost, not so much to the Taliban and Al-CIAda.... as to the wily Generals of Rawalpindi who have proved to be smarter than the Americans.
That facade of peace will crumble within few years after the departure of US troops and Pakistan will bring Afghanistan under its suzerainty with reimposition of Taliban rule just as it did in 1996 while tired and financially broke Uncle Sam will helplessly look the other way.....
As For the IRAN situation....
The administration has played the sanctions game with Iran for almost two years now, to no avail. Iran still progresses with its missile program as well as nuclear enrichment (there is no hard evidence of connection between these programs) unharmed.
Closing the Straits of Hormuz would not be more of an act of war than launching spy-planes to another nation's airspace. Nonetheless, the Iranian regime understands that once the Straits are locked, a US attack would follow, so that is a hollow threat. Just as hollow as the ever-repeated "all options are on the table" boasts of Obama.
Bottom line is, one can hardly qualify these toothless and meaningless responses to be "almost exactly right". Obama seems to have a way of resorting to talismanic policies time and time again, regardless of the fact that they are not working (surge after surge in Afghanistan, challenging China on human rights, imposing half-hearted sanctions on Iran, etc.).
Even the over-hyped "green movement" of last year's summer died off within a few weeks, it didn't even last as long as the "occupy XY" movements in the US. So much for popular resistance, eh?
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