Maybe then we can become the nation we want to be and let someone else be the super power for a change. I just hope they manage the responsibility better than we have done in the end.

I agree. We and the rest of the world would be better off if we were not a superpower. The trouble with that is the corporations, defense contractors, and politicians will bankrupt our social programs before they will significantly reduce our military industrial complex.

We are merely the possessions of the faceless owners to do with as they please. They can keep you well fed enough so you will not rebel.

When there is an absence of a dominate nation, colonial power, tribe, coalition one has emerged to fill the vacuum. There is a biological imperative in human dominate behavior to establish that hierarchy. Who would you nominate for that position to assume the uncorrupted mantle of superpower? Right now it appears to me to be the "Super Rich" coalition not exactly the United States or any one nation state. Political institutions are at caretaker status and take their marching orders.

What exactly are you getting at? We've been keeping tabs on humans ever since we learned how to (coinciding with drastic change in human behavior), which is about 1% of human existence. We don't really have a clue.

Being self aware should be more than a burden.

The operations have been against nations and NGOs that have no realistic chance of becoming dominant.

We don't necessarily have to become weak and defenseless. We could instead:
- reduced the US military to twice the next most powerful nation,
- renounce unilateral first use of force outside our borders,
- participate in use of force only when sanctioned by the UN or by treaty organizations with multiple members, like NATO, and
- prioritized economic, scientific, medical, and environmental leadership over military and political leadership.

Politicians, Narcissist, Mad Men who think they can become dominate do not last long.

As the most powerful nation, we should recuse ourselves from interventions, except when interventions are led by others in a multinational alliance.

Just because we can do something, doesn't mean we should.

We are social by nature, not predatory. Individually we are marginally capable, but ill-suited to violence and the overwhelming majority of human history is entirely counter to that notion of violent hierarchy being our nature.

We are animals, but we are the only animal with the capacity to choose. We have made the world with our choices, the most common being to choose to let somebody else make the choices for us and that has resulted in all manner of atrocities from religion to genocide.

I liken our current state to that of the early anthropologists. almost everything we believe we know is so heavily colored by our environment that it eventually is going to be proven wrong.

As to being predatory that is a matter of debate we are after all the last surviving hominid species with opposable thumbs. Advantage is not necessarily dictated by just violence in establishing alpha leaders. It is also difficult to study humans when you are one of them.

who serves at the whims of the elite in their grandious ambitions

I like that "superpeasant" you mind if I take that? You nailed it.

learn Mandarin soon, because we won't be an empire much longer.

We need to manage our disengagement.

all together.

I wholeheartedly agree!

And face it, we're better than Russia or China.

The Emperor Qian Long in a letter to George III says "I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country's manufactures."

Russia was attacked by Napoleon, by the French and English in the Crimean War, and by Germany and AustroHungary in the first and second world wars.

Is there any reason to think China would not want to be a superpower?

After surviving Napoleon and the World Wars, Russia as main part of the USSR did become a superpower. After losing that, it's hard to believe they don't want it to come back.

It's a myth that the world needs a 'superpower', in the sense of a global police force. We don't. Most of the times, the underlooked geopolitical and economic interests driving the actions being conducted by the imperial establishments across the globe are either what triggers the problem in first place or only makes it worse. And they end up being ignored or overlooked.

The American citizen doesn't need any of that. He doesn't have to confront aggressive nations. It's just Halliburton that needed a help from their former CEO that, well, was the vice-president, to get some good contracts in Iraq, which served just fine because the guys in Pentagon and the Department of State had long wanted to get rid of Saddam in first place. Americans also don't need to counter organizations that foment terror outside the US. But how could you let the gentlement at MIC miss the opportunity to sell weapons to jihadists in Lybia? Think about the private island they'll be able to buy!

It's not about altruism. Has never been. Those who doubt, please open a history book.