Reduced Dominance Is Predicted for U.S.

Source: Washington Post

An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future global risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.

The report, previewed in a speech by Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst, also concludes that the one key area of continued U.S. superiority -- military power -- will "be the least significant" asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future, because "nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force."

Fingar's remarks last week were based on a partially completed "Global Trends 2025" report that assesses how international events could affect the United States in the next 15 to 17 years. Speaking at a conference of intelligence professionals in Orlando, Fingar gave an overview of key findings that he said will be presented to the next occupant of the White House early in the new year.

"The U.S. will remain the preeminent power, but that American dominance will be much diminished," Fingar said, according to a transcript of the Thursday speech. He saw U.S. leadership eroding "at an accelerating pace" in "political, economic and arguably, cultural arenas."

The 2025 report will lay out what Fingar called the "dynamics, the dimensions, the drivers" that will shape the world for the next administration and beyond. In advance of its completion, intelligence officials have begun briefing the major presidential candidates on the security threats that they would be likely to face in office. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) received an initial briefing Sept. 2, with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) expected to receive one in the coming days, intelligence officials said.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/09/AR2008090903302.html

We outsource our jobs, we deny basic science (to teach a fucking fairy tale about the world being a few thousand years old and seven days and blah blah blah), we focus more on who in Hollywood is fucking each other than people who are in need, we put rejects from Alaska on Presidential tickets in the name of politics and not what is good for our country, we have a media owned by mega-corporations who demand huge profit and right-wing bias...should I go on?

Just like every other dominant power in history.

an international panel of science experts reach consensus: "water is WET!". :crazy:

die.

Greatest Generations begat the Greatest Flatulation. A generation of jealous backstabbing whiners that inherited the United States as a free nation and turned it into their warped vision of reality. Torture, rendition, secret trials.

and other foreign debtholders.

In fact it was the Chinese who forced the Feds to take over Fannie & Freddie.

Tell me more. Are their "fingerprints" on the move?

You better believe it.

nukes our asses back to Bedrock.

Best country in the world my ASS.

Well Duh indeed!

And it’s a total shame. America had so much to offer the world. Post WW2, America came out the grand winner: not so much by military conquest and human sacrifice but more by geographical location and hard work supporting our allies around the world through manufacturing and trade to hold off the axis powers. In the end, America was the only country that didn’t have a destroyed infrastructure or economy and reaped the benefits.

We took the ball and ran with it, and despite a few paranoid episodes of red scares and other distractions, we were instrumental in rebuilding the civilized world. All of the growing pains of a nation ironed out in the 60s culminating in Apollo 11 in 1969. On that day America peaked. It was downhill after that.

The 70s were spent coming to grips with all the 60s accomplished and a re-evaluation of thing such as the world, and especially those countries we helped get back on their feet, continued to prosper and catch up with us. Then the 80s ushered in Reagan and the new Republicans with the old thinking that it was still post WW2 and everybody wanted to be like America. No need to improve things, or keep being the cutting edge in alternative energy sources and quality production. The only area where America focused was military weaponry...which is ironic since America wasn't traditionally a warrior nation.

Since then we have been heading downhill, and in the last 14 years from the “contract with (on) America” and the neocon revolution, we have spiraled toward oblivion. The rest of the world has exceeded us in most aspects. America now continually comes in at the bottom of the pack in all international (industrialized nations) comparisons from education and health care to basic freedoms and human rights. Unfortunately, we as a nation will eventually fall as did the English empire and the Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians before them.

On the other hand, it was inevitable we would take this path as all great empires have, but I didn’t think we would only last 40 on top of the heap. It’s just that to stay on top as Americans seem to expect, one needs to have boots on the ground around the world. But with only having 4% of the world’s population and 5% of its non water land mass, compiled with pointless expensive wars started by chicken hawks with uniform fetishes, America didn’t stand a chance.

I mean come on, a country that feels more comfortable electing to the highest office someone who they would like to have a beer with or bang on a cold winter’s night in a northern state’s governors office as opposed to an “elitist” that has risen from near poverty to graduate from Harvard, then engage in community organizing eventually making it to the senate in his early 40s, well as in the words of Larry Flint: “Americans will get what they deserve”.

So it’s no surprise to me that America will eventually be off the top billing on the world stage, but seriously I don’t think they really wanted to be there in the first place…which is not a bad thing.

Good. The world is greater than the sum of America's parts.

Empires suck.

the field isn't looking good.

(Except ourselves).

k&r

Yet military power is what McBush is running on. Well, time to start dismantling the huge number of military bases in other countries, offer retraining to our soldiers, and start spending the money on our crumbling infrastructure such as roads, lack of access to healthcare, lack of reasonably priced housing, etc. Except this country will NEVER do this.

All this thrashing around the last 6 years has been a waste of time, money, and people's lives? All that stuff about "full-spectrum dominance" was really "full-spectrum decline"?

we're broke, our leaders are loathed and mocked worldwide, and we lost a war to to makeshift army despite killing and displacing 1/3 of the people of Iraq. Who would have thought we're no longer "dominant"? :eyes:

The entire world is smaller now, in a sense. The human species has really only recently discovered it's own planet...and very recently connected to the entire planet vis a vis the internet, earth images from space...200 years ago people didnt have the information highway we have now..at the turn of the last century, human beings received , in one day, 100 pieces of information per day about news, and now its 3500 per day..there has been an amazing shift of conciousness...you can fly to Bali in a day, that was not possible back then...
so, it seems to me, the United States has been like an adolescent with a smirk on his face, who doesnt want to grow up or behave like a mature adult , who stomps his foot when he doesnt get his way (Bush represents that image to me also)..but eventually everyone has to grow up, sometimes kicking and screaming..
Gore Vidal said that in 1948 we had a choice, and we chose to be a military empire..we are living with the repurcussions of that as I speak..I grew up in the 50s, and lived through most of this empire, and I am glad to see it wane, wane , wane...I hope, for my grandson, that the vision of this species will be one of peace and compassion and learning to share this planet .

of the foundation and stuff them in your pocket, eventually things come crumbling down.

The US used to be the technological center of the world. We had the best scientists, inventors and schools. We treasured intelligence. Other nations sought to learn from us. We were the most respected country on earth.

Twenty-five years later we are the most reviled. Our values have shifted from "we" to "me-me-me." How to divert public funds into private hands has become the new mandate; what is good for the country or our neighbors is irrelevant.

Illogical acts with a logical outcome.