Anonymous Comrade writes: Foreign Policy has posted Immanuel Wallerstein's 'The Eagle Has Crash Landed'.

The United States in decline? Few people today would
believe this assertion. The only ones who do are the
U.S. hawks, who argue vociferously for policies to
reverse the decline. This belief that the end of U.S.
hegemony has already begun does not follow from the
vulnerability that became apparent to all on September
11, 2001. In fact, the United States has been fading as
a global power since the 1970s, and the U.S. response
to the terrorist attacks has merely accelerated this
decline. To understand why the so-called Pax Americana
is on the wane requires examining the geopolitics of
the 20th century, particularly of the century's final
three decades. This exercise uncovers a simple and
inescapable conclusion: The economic, political, and
military factors that contributed to U.S. hegemony are
the same factors that will inexorably produce the
coming U.S. decline.Intro to Hegemony

The rise of the United States to global hegemony was a
long process that began in earnest with the world
recession of 1873. At that time, the United States and
Germany began to acquire an increasing share of global
markets, mainly at the expense of the steadily receding
British economy. Both nations had recently acquired a
stable political base--the United States by successfully terminating the Civil
War and Germany by achieving unification and defeating France in the
Franco-Prussian War. From 1873 to 1914, the United States and Germany became
the principal producers in certain leading sectors: steel and later automobiles
for the United States and industrial chemicals for Germany.

The history books record that World War I broke out in
1914 and ended in 1918 and that World War II lasted
from 1939 to 1945. However, it makes more sense to
consider the two as a single, continuous "30 yearsí
war" between the United States and Germany, with truces
and local conflicts scattered in between. The
competition for hegemonic succession took an
ideological turn in 1933, when the Nazis came to power
in Germany and began their quest to transcend the
global system altogether, seeking not hegemony within
the current system but rather a form of global empire.
Recall the Nazi slogan ein tausendjuhriges Reich (a
thousand-year empire). In turn, the United States
assumed the role of advocate of centrist world
liberalism--recall former U.S. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt's "four freedoms" (freedom of speech, of
worship, from want, and from fear)--and entered into a
strategic alliance with the Soviet Union, making
possible the defeat of Germany and its allies.

World War II resulted in enormous destruction of
infrastructure and populations throughout Eurasia, from
the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, with almost no
country left unscathed. The only major industrial power
in the world to emerge intact--and even greatly
strengthened from an economic perspective--was the
United States, which moved swiftly to consolidate its
position.

But the aspiring hegemon faced some practical political
obstacles. During the war, the Allied powers had agreed
on the establishment of the United Nations, composed
primarily of countries that had been in the coalition
against the Axis powers. The organizationís critical
feature was the Security Council, the only structure
that could authorize the use of force. Since the U.N.
Charter gave the right of veto to five powers--including the United States and
the Soviet Union--the council was rendered largely toothless in practice. So it
was not the founding of the United Nations in April 1945 that determined the
geopolitical constraints of the second half of the 20th century but rather the
Yalta meeting between Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin two months earlier.

For the full text, go to
The Eagle Has Crash Landed