The Causes of American Decline - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14877044
What are the causes of American decline?

To start of with, here is an article predating POTUS Trump to illustrate that it can’t be blamed on him. Neither Bush jr. nor Obama seemed able to prevent the decline. And when this article was written, no one could foresee the current President.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33440287


The decline of US power?
Nick Bryant
New York correspondent


Standing on the Washington Mall at the turn of the new millennium, it was impossible not to be struck by America's power and global pre-eminence.
Victory in the Cold War made it the hegemon in a unipolar world.
Few argued when the 20th Century was dubbed the "American Century", a term first coined in the early 1940s when the country was still overcoming its isolationist instincts.
Even the New Year's fireworks, which illuminated the obelisk of the Washington Monument in a way that made it resemble a giant number one, projected the country's supremacy as the world's sole superpower.

Over the past 15 years, America's fortunes have changed with dizzying speed.

First came the tremors: the dot-com bust and a disputed presidential election in 2000. Then came the massive convulsions: the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
Long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have exacted an enormous blood price - the lives of 6,852 American military personnel - not to mention immense financial expense, estimated to be as high as $6 trillion (£3.9tn).
The detention centre at Guantanamo Bay has undermined American ideals, just as the NSA and Wikileaks spying scandals have undercut American diplomacy.

George W Bush, a president with a Manichean worldview, was widely seen as over-eager to project America's military might, without adequately considering the long-term consequences.
Barack Obama, who campaigned in 2008 on a platform of extricating America from its unpopular and exhausting wars, has drawn criticism for disengaging too much.
Under both presidents - the first an impulsive unilateralist, the second an instinctive multilateralist content sometimes to lead from behind - America's global standing has been diminished.
Lost fear factor
Polls regularly show that Americans recognise that their country's international standing has waned.
Among the young, this trendline has fallen sharply. Only 15% of 18-29-year-olds believe that America is the "greatest country in the world", according to Pew, down from 27% in 2011.
Tellingly, however, there has been no great public outcry.
No longer is there much appetite for America playing its long-standing role of global policeman, even in the face of the rise of the group calling itself Islamic State.
The cost, human and financial, is considered too great. Americans increasingly think that other countries should share the burden.

Obama, while continuing to trumpet "American exceptionalism", regularly prefaces remarks on foreign affairs by acknowledging the limits of US power, again with little public outcry.
America's reluctance to launch new military actions has also had a major bearing on the nuclear negotiations with Iran
The upshot is that the United States is no longer so keen to exert leadership in an increasingly messy world.
Yet one of the reasons why the world has become so disorderly is because America is no longer so active in imposing order.
Over the course of this century Washington has lost its fear factor.
Ignoring the White House
World leaders nowadays seem prepared to provoke the wrath of the White House, confident that it will never rain down on them.
It explains why the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, after unleashing chemical weapons against his people, continues to bombard them with barrel bombs.
Why Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea, and also offered a safe haven for the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
And also why Benjamin Netanyahu thumbed his nose at the Obama administration, by accepting an invitation from the Republican congressional leadership to address a joint session of Congress, a platform he used to lambast the Iran nuclear deal.
Assad's flouting of American warnings is especially noteworthy.

Rebel-held Douma was hit hard by Syrian government forces in February
In killing so many civilians with chemical weapons, he flagrantly crossed the "red line" imposed by Obama, but escaped punishment.
The president was unwilling to carry through on an explicit threat, in what was the biggest foreign policy climbdown of his presidency and also one of the most significant in the past 50 years.
Even supporters of Barack Obama believe he made a fatal strategic mistake, because it demonstrated endless flexibility and a lack of American resolve.
Needless to say, despots around the world took note.
Weak hand
America's reluctance to launch new military actions has also had a major bearing on the nuclear negotiations with Iran.
Tehran has managed to extract notable concessions, such as the ongoing ability to enrich uranium, hitherto ruled out by the Americans.
Obama recognises intellectually that he could do far more in terms of massaging the egos of world leaders, but cannot quite bring himself to do so
It has played a weak hand strongly, because it knows that America has what the foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman calls "an empty holster".
Nor is it just America's enemies who no longer fear the White House to the extent they once did.
In recent months, two close allies, Britain and Australia, have defied the Obama administration by joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
By signing up to the AIIB, they are effectively endorsing Beijing's effort to establish financial rivals to the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), which are dominated by America.
Ambiguous language
By seeking improved commercial and diplomatic relations with China, Britain and Australia are also hedging.
They suspect that America will not be the dominant Pacific military power indefinitely, nor the world's foremost economic powerhouse.
Stars and StripesImage copyrightTHINKSTOCK
Other American allies would complain that the "dependability factor" has also gone.
Israel feels badly let down by the Obama administration over the Iran deal, and relations between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama are poisonous.
The president, by using deliberately ambiguous language, has even signalled that his administration might end its traditional protection of Israel at the United Nations.
Like Israel, Saudi Arabia has been enraged by the prospective nuclear deal with the Iranians.
Riyadh also knows that America is no longer so dependent on its oil, the cornerstone of the relationship since the end of World War Two.
Egypt was angered in 2012 when Obama said Cairo was neither an ally nor an enemy.
Later, the State Department issued an embarrassing correction, and reinstated Cairo as a "major non-Nato ally."
No massaging
Maybe Obama's Egyptian error, and the slight it conveyed, was truly a Freudian slip.
After all, he hasn't invested the same energy nurturing alliances as his predecessors. The detached air that has been a hallmark of his presidency also extends to foreign affairs.
America's diplomacy has also been complicated by the dysfunction and hyper-partisanship in Washington
Here, I gather, Obama recognises intellectually that he could do far more in terms of massaging the egos of world leaders, but cannot quite bring himself to do so.
Indeed, a common complaint is that the Obama administration has prioritised normalising relations with its one-time enemies, Iran and Cuba, at the expense of fostering longstanding friendships.
Realising that America is no longer so supportive, and no longer so engaged in the Middle East, the Saudis have recently taken military action of their own in Yemen.
There's also been a warming of relations between Riyadh and Moscow.
And Egypt launched airstrikes in February against the Islamic State group in Libya.
America's standing in the Middle East has unquestionably waned, along with its ability to shape events.
Unexpected stats
More surprising has been its slippage in Africa, Obama's ancestral home, and Asia, the focus of his much vaunted pivot.
In Asia, America's median approval rating in 2014, as measured by Gallup, was 39%, a 6% drop since 2011.
In Africa, the median approval went down to 59%, the lowest since polling began, despite Obama hosting the US-Africa Leaders' Summit in Washington in August, last year.
It even dropped in Kenya, his father's birthplace.
Graphic: Top 15 military spenders in 2013
America's diplomacy has also been complicated by the dysfunction and hyper-partisanship in Washington.
Republican lawmakers actively sought to derail the Iran nuclear deal by sending a letter to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
President or Congress?
House speaker John Boehner invited Netanyahu to address Congress, knowing it would infuriate the White House.
Democrats with reservations about free trade have tried to sabotage the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the biggest trade deal since Nafta.
There's also been strong congressional opposition to one of the big plays of Obama's second term, the rapprochement with Cuba.
Should countries listen to the president or Congress?
America cannot even lay claim any more to its great, uncontested boast since 1872, of being the world's largest economy.
The IMF now estimates that China's economy is fractionally bigger.
Yet it would be a mistake to exaggerate the downsizing of American influence.
US military spending continues to dwarf its rivals, and up until last year amounted to more than the next 10 countries combined.
In 2014, America spent $731bn, compared to China's $143bn.
Even though China's economy is now larger, America's per capita spending power is in a different league - $53,000 to $11,868.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989Image copyrightAP
Though America is contending with the rise of the rest - China, India, Brazil, Germany and Russia - it has not yet been overtaken by emergent rivals.
Indeed, there are foreign policy thinkers here who predict that America will preserve its pre-eminence for at least another 20 years.
Yet the unipolar moment ushered in by the fall of the Berlin Wall has proved to be just that: momentary.
Moreover, hopes of a new world order following the collapse of the Soviet Union have given way to widespread pessimism about the spread, even the contagion, of global disorder.
Gone are the certainties of America's Cold War thinking, when the containment of communism governed its international actions.
Gone are the doctrines that gave US foreign policy such a rigid frame, throughout the Cold War and in the aftermath of 9/11.
Gone, too, is the notion that every fight is an American fight and along with it a redefinition of what constitutes the US national interest.
Barack Obama has instead advocated pragmatism and diplomatic dexterity, trying to steer a path between America being overextended and undercommitted.
Maybe the overriding challenge for US diplomacy over the next 20 years is to strike the proper balance.
#14877051
@foxdemon

People were screaming American decline for decades. In my opinion, American decline started with the advent of China, the rise of Asia, and the further de-legitimization of American influence and Western ideals. So basically around the late 90s to early 20s is where American decline began.

However that's assuming we're using foreign influence as the ruler for the strength of a country. In terms of economic and political stability and prosperity, that died during the early 70s and, in a desperate attempt to save itself, America began to use policies that actually hurt it instead of saving it.
#14877056
Oxymandias wrote:@foxdemon

People were screaming American decline for decades. In my opinion, American decline started with the advent of China, the rise of Asia, and the further de-legitimization of American influence and Western ideals. So basically around the late 90s to early 20s is where American decline began.

However that's assuming we're using foreign influence as the ruler for the strength of a country. In terms of economic and political stability and prosperity, that died during the early 70s and, in a desperate attempt to save itself, America began to use policies that actually hurt it instead of saving it.


Yes, socioeconomic inequality started in the 1970s. And that is the basic cause of instability in America.

The rise of Asia might need a closer look. Traditionally India and China were the major economies of the world and only declined for a few centuries. Japan was already growing in power in the late 19th century. Again it re-emerges in the 1960s. China and India are re-emerging now. I guess they are bigger than Japan and so have a greater impact.

But why can’t America handle it? They out did the European empires and then out did the Soviets. So what changed?
#14877057
Oxymandias wrote:However that's assuming we're using foreign influence as the ruler for the strength of a country. In terms of economic and political stability and prosperity, that died during the early 70s and, in a desperate attempt to save itself, America began to use policies that actually hurt it instead of saving it.


The development of a multi-polar world is no threat to the people of the US. It actually serves their interests, if they would but embrace it.

The US "economic" travails are not economic at all, but simply the results of the bad political choices we have made. There is nothing in the state of the US economy that would preclude a high standard of living for the 99% - we simply choose not to avail ourselves of this easily available possibility.
#14877058
An Indian writer disagrees with the idea Trumpmis to blame for the decline. He also points out US global finically strength won’t be broken without a major disruption.


https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/where-america-still-rules-the-idea-that-trump-is-accelerating-us-decline-is-demonstrably-wrong-in-vital-respects/

Where America still rules: The idea that Trump is accelerating US decline is demonstrably wrong in vital respects

December 28, 2017, 2:00 AM IST Ruchir Sharma in TOI Edit Page | Edit Page, India, World | TOI

A new breed of American declinists argue that by alienating old allies, President Donald Trump is undermining his nation’s standing in the world and ceding the mantle of global leadership to China. These critics point repeatedly to a Pew survey showing that Trump is far less trusted than President Barack Obama was, and Trump’s America is viewed far less favourably than Obama’s was.

Opinions, however, are flighty. Though Trump’s style may erode US cultural and diplomatic influence while he is in office, it is less clear he represents a permanent threat to America’s measurable economic and financial strength.
Even before Trump, the declinists were cherry picking data to show China gaining a greater share of the global economy at America’s expense. While America’s current 24% share looks much diminished compared to 30% in 1990, it is about the same as the 26% share in 1980 when China’s modern renaissance began. The reality is that China is gaining global economic share at the expense mainly of Europe and Japan.
America is a tested economic superpower, having survived 23 recessions and a Great Depression since 1900. China remains untested, having suffered not one outright recession since its modern renaissance began around 1980. It has yet to be seen just how well China will weather its inevitable first test.
Meanwhile, America is as great a financial superpower as ever. Central banks looking for a safe place to park funds usually buy US assets, typically Treasury bills, which show up as dollars in their foreign exchange reserves. Since 1980, the dollar’s share of foreign exchange reserves has held steady at around 66%. This suggests that the world trusts the United States to pay its debts – and trusts it more than Europe, Japan and China. Serious money does not equate America with Trump.
The American declinists also ignore the state of its rivals. The euro was born 18 years ago, ambitious to become a reserve currency, but recurring fears of a eurozone breakup limit the world’s willingness to trust it. Aging Japan’s stagnation has long capped the yen’s popularity. And outsiders remain more wary of the renminbi, owing both to China’s debt troubles, and the threat Communist rulers pose to free flows of capital.
In contrast, confidence in the dollar reflects longstanding faith in American financial and political institutions, and the free flow of capital over its borders. When businesses in two countries – say India and Argentina – want to conduct a deal, they almost always arrange payment in dollars. Nearly 90% of bank-financed international transactions are conducted in dollars, a share that is close to all-time highs.
In some ways the reach of the dollar is expanding. When individuals and companies borrow from lenders in another country, they increasingly borrow in dollars, which account for 75% of these global flows, up from 60% just before the global financial crisis in 2008.
Most of the world now chooses to live in a dollar bloc. The share of countries that use the dollar as their main “anchor” – the currency against which they measure and stabilise the value of their own currency – has risen from 30% in 1950 and 50% in 1980 to 60% today.
Critically, there is no sign that the dollar’s status – as a reserve, an anchor, or the favoured currency for cross border transactions and loans – has declined since Trump took office. Even the weakening of the dollar under Trump provides more evidence of its dominant role: a weak dollar was a major driver of the global recovery in 2017, because in a dollar world, a cheaper dollar eases the cost of borrowing and helps other economies grow.
There is more at stake here than trust. Having the world’s favourite reserve currency is an economic advantage and a symbol of great power status, which is why China has been eager to establish the renminbi as a reserve currency. It has made no progress, however, and probably won’t as long as China’s financial markets remain largely closed, underdeveloped and subject to government meddling.
Many observers nonetheless assume that with China rising as an economic power, financial clout will follow. Perhaps, but the United States surpassed Britain as the world’s largest economy in the late 19th century, and the dollar did not fully displace British sterling as the leading reserve currency until World War II left British finances shattered. That doesn’t mean it will take World War III to end the dollar’s reign, but it will take a shock bigger than one unpredictable president.
Size alone won’t propel China to financial superpower status, either. For much of the period between 1450 and the late 1700s, China was the world’s leading economy but it never had the leading reserve currency because, then as now, its financial system lacked credibility.
No one doubts that China poses a growing challenge to the United States. But Trump’s critics may be overstating both the scope and inevitability of American decline, and the role one president can play in advancing it. To identify which nation the world really trusts in the long term, follow the money. And money still flows to the dollar — arguably the vote of confidence in America that matters most.
#14877059
@foxdemon: All of this is simply irrelevant to the problems of the US. The decline is not economic at all. The US continues to have a powerful economy. What it doesn't have is everything that matters: vital and respected institutions, a tradition of mutual respect and empathy, a coherent culture, a desire to rid government of massive corporate corruption, and an honest electoral system.

An aggressive empire-building strategy can't long make up for these lacks.
#14877063
quetzalcoatl wrote:@foxdemon All of this is simply irrelevant to the problems of the US. The decline is not economic at all. The US continues to have a powerful economy. What it doesn't have is everything that matters: vital and respected institutions, a tradition of mutual respect and empathy, a coherent culture, a desire to rid government of massive corporate corruption, and an honest electoral system.

An aggressive empire-building strategy can't long make up for these lacks.


Yes, the corruption and abuse of institutions has deminished trust. This goes hand in hand with rising inequality to fuel domestic instability.

But America isn’t so bad on respect and empathy. Nor does it lack a coherent culture.


I guess it is a matter of perspective. Political leaders, acedemic and the global public see America as a nation engaging in global economics and geopolitics. The American people see America around them as the world they live in.

Is it best to judge American decline from the inside or the outside? Certainly the spectacle of American decline on the global stage is far more exciting than the daily experiences of particular American citizens.

Is there a solution to be found in addressing the lack of faith amongst the American public?

Or is it really a matter of global events?
#14877065
foxdemon wrote:Yes, the corruption and abuse of institutions has deminished trust.
America has always been corrupt. That's nothing new.

foxdemon wrote:But America isn’t so bad on respect and empathy.
From the American perspective, perhaps. The rest of the world is seeing a growing level of 'America First' shit that is low on both respect, and empathy. Americans are demonstrating a level of selfishness that the rest of the world is simply not impressed with.

America is declining as a leader on the world stage, but is not declining in power. That's a silly misconception that some Americans seem to hold. America's world leadership is declining, but mostly because of Dolt 45, and American isolationist policies.

America from within can be seen as declining, but mostly in the principles and morality that it once was known for.
#14972355
The reason why the Yanks are declining was because of Ronald Reagan, and his conservative revivalism that started in the 1980's. Prices went up, but not the paychecks. Everything got more expensive, and most of the new American homes that were built since Reagan are big and expensive, so that singles can't afford them, only multi generation families can afford them. This enforces the family institution. The minimum wage not being livable also enforces the family institution. Welfare rates also started to go down. And many manufacturing jobs in America are moving to Eastern Asia due to cheaper labour. Universities and college education in America also got more expensive, which helps enforce the family institution. This one American I knew, he told me in the 1960's and 1970's, you can have your own rented apartment or smaller purchased house that's paid off monthly, live by yourself and not rely on family, go to college and pay for it while you're working, all on minimum wage.

Before Reagan, he told me that you can drop out of grade school, get an easy job at a factory, and make enough money for a spouse, and two children. Before Reagan, he told me that a woman can get an easy job anywhere and live her own life. Before Reagan, the USA was cheaper, less family enforced, more public financial assistance, and way more high paying jobs.

The USA is declining due to conservative and Reaganist politics and policies that were first introduced in the 1980's, the same decade that socialism was deteriorating in Eastern Europe. Fuck Reagan.
#14972377
@SSDR So, essentially, you're talking about Trickle Down Economics, which has been the go-to strategy for Republicans for the last 4 decades.
#14972379
@Godstud, Yes, if that's what people call it.

Less state assistance, raising prices, bigger homes that are multi family, and manufacturing jobs leaving the USA is what's causing the decline.

If the USA wants to stay capitalist, then they need to increase the minimum wage that is livable, increase state assistance, make university free (you have to pay for a PhD????), bring back manufacturing jobs OR introduce an universal basic income that's taxed from automation, and have free road assistance. That is because you have to drive EVERYWHERE, and tyres go flat, and not every low wage worker has a relative that can pick them up.
#14972409
@SSDR Most of those things you mentioned would fall under the shadow of the big bad bogeyman called "Socialism". Americans clearly aren't ready for enlightenment, judging by who they elected for President the last time around...
#14972504
@Godstud, They aren't enlightened, yet, they love money and are more religious. Don't you see the connection? Also, what I mentioned was not socialism, it was state capitalist tactics that would be used to save and conserve the capitalist mode of production in the USA.
#14986607
Godstud wrote:America has always been corrupt. That's nothing new.

And it's always been in decline for the locals as well. So that's nothing new either.

Think about "America" from the point of view of the people already living here in 1492.
1492 is the year that the "America" concept was invented. And it started with new deadly pandemics, ecological disasters, and religious slaughter; horrible, rapid decline.

The invading foreign businessmen used their (intentionally kept-ignorant) slaves and servants (Euro or other) to terrorize the locals. And they used propaganda to give the whole project a "God-almighty-heaven" flavor.

Show me how this has changed in any way.
#14986620
Indeed, there are foreign policy thinkers here who predict that America will preserve its pre-eminence for at least another 20 years.
Yet the unipolar moment ushered in by the fall of the Berlin Wall has proved to be just that: momentary.
Moreover, hopes of a new world order following the collapse of the Soviet Union have given way to widespread pessimism about the spread, even the contagion, of global disorder.
Gone are the certainties of America's Cold War thinking, when the containment of communism governed its international actions.


The problem is that Europe no longer needs America to protect itself from the Soviet threat, making NATO obsolete. European leaders can afford to be anti-American without jeopardising the region's security, which is the primal cause of America's decline as a global hegemon or the leader of the free world. During the Cold War, most capitalist countries were controlled by Washington as America's puppet states which could not say no to Washington. But nowadays, only Japan still remains as America's steadfast ally because of the ongoing Communist threat in the Far East. South Korea has also switched sides to North Korea, which is no longer called an enemy by Seoul.



North Korea is no longer South Korea’s “enemy,” though Pyongyang’s nuclear program still poses a security threat, according to Seoul’s biennial defense document published Tuesday.

It’s the first time since 2010, the same year 50 South Koreans were killed in attacks blamed on the North, that the enemy label hasn’t been applied, and a further sign of better ties between the rivals.

The South Korean Defense Ministry white paper doesn’t include past terms that labeled North Korea an “enemy, a “present enemy” or the South’s “main enemy.” It still said the North’s weapons of mass destruction are a “threat to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” a reference to the North’s missile and nuclear program.

The “enemy” terminology has been a long-running source of animosity between the Koreas. North Korea has called the label a provocation that demonstrated Seoul’s hostility.

http://time.com/5502970/south-korea-nor ... a-enemies/
Last edited by ThirdTerm on 07 Feb 2019 19:29, edited 1 time in total.

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