The global financial crisis will see the US falter in the same way the Soviet Union did when the Berlin Wall came down. The era of American dominance is over.
John Gray The Observer, Sunday September 28 2008
Our gaze might be on the markets melting down, but the upheaval we are experiencing is more than a financial crisis, however large. Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over.
You can see it in the way America's dominion has slipped away in its own backyard, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez taunting and ridiculing the superpower with impunity. Yet the setback of America's standing at the global level is even more striking. With the nationalisation of crucial parts of the financial system, the American free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated. In a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed.
Peacenik has been mentioning this possibility in several recent posts. When Russia was faced with the collapse of the Soviet Union, rather than lash out in anger and frustration, it simply acquiesced. The danger is that the United States, when faced with a similar situation, may choose to go down with guns blazing. This article by John Gray is a nice summary of the U.S.'s short term prospects. Peacenik has only just started trying to contemplate the consequences for Canada. Peacenik is going to stock up on Kraft dinner just in case.
