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The Decline of US Hegemony "History is ruled by an inexorable determinism in which the free choice of major historical figures plays a minimal role" Leo Tolstoy  When I went back to Ankara in late 1992 to head the Indian Embassy, many of my friends from the Turkish Foreign Office from my 1969-73 tenure as First Secretary, were going out as ambassadors to newly independent states in Central Asia and the Baltic, following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Looking at the creation of so many new missions, a cheeky young Turkish diplomat in the Foreign Ministry said rather mischievously than hopefully, that only if United States of America broke up into 50 independent states, could he ever hope to head like them a Turkish Embassy, in North America. Turkish diplomats trace their traditions and archives to six centuries of Ottoman rule over an empire from which more than two dozen nations have emerged.
However, the wish of the young diplomat is not going to be fulfilled any time soon, if ever. But still—
An editorial titled ' Collapse of U.S. economy ' in Belleville Intelligencer of 27 Feb 2008 confirms, by now generally accepted ill health of US economy. Harry Koza in the Globe and Mail recently quoted Bernard Connelly, the global strategist at Banque AIG in London, which the likelihood of a Great Depression is growing by the day. Martin Wolf of U.K.'s Financial Times cited Dr. Nouriel Roubini of the New York University's Stern School of Business, who outlines how the losses of the American financial system will grow to more than $1 trillion, an amount equal to all the assets of all American banks. The next domino to fall will be credit card defaults, and after that... who knows? There are so many exotic funds out there, with trillions of dollars in paper - or rather computer-screen money - all carrying assorted acronyms, and all about to disintegrate into nothingness. Over the next couple of years, scores of banks that have thrived on these devices, based on quickly disappearing equities, will fail.
The most frightening forecast so far comes from the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB), "The end of the third quarter of 2008 (thus late September, a mere seven months from now) will be marked by a new tipping point in the unfolding of the global systemic crisis. "At that time indeed, the cumulated impact of the various sequences of the crisis will reach its maximum strength and affect decisively the very heart of the systems concerned, on the front line of which (is) the United States, epicenter of the current crisis. "In the United States, this new tipping point will translate into - get this - a collapse of the real economy, (the) final socio-economic stage of the serial bursting of the housing and financial bubbles and of the pursuance of the U.S. dollar fall. The collapse of U.S. real economy means the virtual freeze of the American economic machinery: private and public bankruptcies in large numbers, companies and public services closing down." "We are not experiencing a "remake" of the 1929 crisis or a repetition of the 1970s oil crises or 1987 stock market crisis What we will have, instead, is truly a global momentous threat - a true turning point affecting the entire planet and questioning the very foundations of the international system upon which the world was organized in the last decades."
After the end of the cold war in the wake of the two World Wars ,the decline of western hegemony over the East and South during the last few centuries ,first exercised by rapacious and brutal European colonialists and then from Washington , is now likely to morph into a fall because of the new forces unleashed by the US led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq .The two debt financed wars have brought US economy close to a recession ( Indian economy including the realty sector would also be affected, Indian officials and media still remain oblivious if not dishonest in spite of the fall in Indian Sensex). Forces and changes have been set into motion, which will completely alter the existing international financial and strategic structures and result in a new dynamics. Unless of course the irresponsible leadership of USA, still with colossal powers of destruction at its command or say a reckless Israel, bomb Iran and hurl the world towards a rapid general warfare between Israel & West vs. Muslim nations and masses, leading to even a nuclear holocaust and Armageddon. Verily, it would then be the last Crusade vs. Jihad!
Contrary to the self proclaimed congratulatory triumphal of neo-liberals after the collapse of Communism and Socialism in end 1980s, celebrated from house tops by the so called philosophers , think tanks and analysts with delusions of permanent world domination of Western financiers and corporate houses based on dubious theories of 'the End of History 'or 'the Clash of Civilizations' and even claims of Washington- the new Rome with absolute control planned in the 'Project for American Century ' by arrogant and historically ignorant Straussian neo-cons and their supporters ; the religious , economic , scientific and historic forces and currents unleashed during the last few centuries are coalescing towards a major East-West conflagration , which will bring about results quite opposite to those dreamed up in Washington , London and Paris.
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