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A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don’t bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines. If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting.

Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.

Future historians are likely to identify the Bush administration’s rash invasion of Iraq in that year as the start of America's downfall. However, instead of the bloodshed that marked the end of so many past empires, with cities burning and civilians slaughtered, this twenty-first century imperial collapse could come relatively quietly through the invisible tendrils of economic collapse or cyberwarfare.

But have no doubt: when Washington's global dominion finally ends, there will be painful daily reminders of what such a loss of power means for Americans in every walk of life. As a half-dozen European nations have discovered, imperial decline tends to have a remarkably demoralizing impact on a society, regularly bringing at least a generation of economic privation. As the economy cools, political temperatures rise, often sparking serious domestic unrest.

Available economic, educational, and military data indicate that, when it comes to US global power, negative trends will aggregate rapidly by 2020 and are likely to reach a critical mass no later than 2030. The American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of World War II, will be tattered and fading by 2025, its eighth decade, and could be history by 2030.

Significantly, in 2008, the US National Intelligence Council admitted for the first time that America's global power was indeed on a declining trajectory. In one of its periodic futuristic reports, Global Trends 2025, the Council cited “the transfer of global wealth and economic power now under way, roughly from West to East" and "without precedent in modern history,” as the primary factor in the decline of the “United States' relative strength—even in the military realm.” Like many in Washington, however, the Council’s analysts anticipated a very long, very soft landing for American global preeminence, and harbored the hope that somehow the US would long “retain unique military capabilities… to project military power globally” for decades to come.

No such luck. Under current projections, the United States will find itself in second place behind China (already the world's second largest economy) in economic output around 2026, and behind India by 2050. Similarly, Chinese innovation is on a trajectory toward world leadership in applied science and military technology sometime between 2020 and 2030, just as America's current supply of brilliant scientists and engineers retires, without adequate replacement by an ill-educated younger generation.

By 2020, according to current plans, the Pentagon will throw a military Hail Mary pass for a dying empire. It will launch a lethal triple canopy of advanced aerospace robotics that represents Washington's last best hope of retaining global power despite its waning economic influence. By that year, however, China's global network of communications satellites, backed by the world's most powerful supercomputers, will also be fully operational, providing Beijing with an independent platform for the weaponization of space and a powerful communications system for missile- or cyber-strikes into every quadrant of the globe.

Read more at link.

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Originally posted by mincingbeast:
Read this article several days ago with great interest. As an American, I feel no shame in rooting for America. Devil take the rest of this worthless world. Yet, as an American, I am ashamed of America.

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Delighted that rather than confront our "supposed" decline, we're tackling the really important issues. Like whether two swishy dudes can apply a meaningless adjective to themselves ("married"), or whether our president is in truth a socialist mooslim foreigner. For years we've imported 3rd world poverty, exported our industrial strength, and gone on one trivial crusade after another.

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
The Titanic is heading right be for iceberg. And people are bickering about the direction they should swerve, without actually doing any swerving.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Actually a more appropriate analogy is that they're all arguing whether to speed up or slow down, while ignoring or shouting down anyone who even suggests swerving - remember, I been makin that analogy for what, six years now ?

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
ETA: Ah, but are they senseless violins, Mikey ?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SenselessViolins
And might I interest you in a line of pitchforks and torches at wholesale rates, or perhaps a distributorship - it's all about the franchise, you know...


-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.

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Originally posted by mincingbeast:
Read this article several days ago with great interest. As an American, I feel no shame in rooting for America. Devil take the rest of this worthless world. Yet, as an American, I am ashamed of America.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
At the rate things are going, we'll be able to expand to every city in the country in the next couple years...

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Originally posted by kpo:
How much does the US spend maintaining its 'empire' (by which we mean wars, and overseas bases)? I think it might spend more on tax cuts :-/

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Not sure how it works at y'all's houses, but in my place, when there's debt to pay down, I have to curb my spending habits AND put money specifically toward paying off that debt.

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
I don't know how accurate this is, but Wikipedia has some figures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_United_States

It says $663.8 billion per year.

Here is how that budget compares to other countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditure
s



Can't Take (my gorram) Sky
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Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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Well, the latest proposed tax cuts for the rich are said to have a price tag of $900 billion over the next two years, which is less than we spend on defense.

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
I don't know how accurate this is, but Wikipedia has some figures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_United_States

It says $663.8 billion per year.

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Originally posted by pizmobeach:
Obviously it's not enough, we need more, because we've been spending that for 9 years and we still can't beat the Taliban. Maybe we're not really trying?

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
The reality is, of course: China is fucked.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Y'know, I don't see China as "taking over"

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Originally posted by canttakesky:

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Y'know, I don't see China as "taking over"

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Sorry. I meant, "take over" as in become the world's dominant superpower. Take the place of the USA.

I'll probably get stoned for saying this, but I think things are going to get a lot, lot worse in the States. As in civil war all over again. Disappearances. Refugees to other countries. I have no basis for this prognosis. Just a feeling. Chalk me up as being crazy like PN, if you wish.

Can't Take (my gorram) Sky
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Everything I say is just my opinion, not fact.

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You're going to get stoned? That won't help!

As far as "taking over" you'd have to define that first. They have already passed us in terms of laying out a plan for embracing the high tech future and they're putting their money (our money?) where there mouth is by allocating a couple trillion dollars to see it through. They have identified 7 areas to fund, they have catchy names and sound cool and it may all end up meaning nothing, but they sound exactly like the things we should be getting excited about if we had money and leadership.

Will it happen? Can they make it happen or is it just them playing the international PR media game and sounding frighteningly modern? I know they'll try and I know they have the work force to pull it off. If they succeed I guess we can take some pride in the fact that we helped foot the bill.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
I'll probably get stoned for saying this, but I think things are going to get a lot, lot worse in the States. As in civil war all over again. Disappearances. Refugees to other countries. I have no basis for this prognosis. Just a feeling. Chalk me up as being crazy like PN, if you wish.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
I'll probably get stoned for saying this, but I think things are going to get a lot, lot worse in the States. As in civil war all over again. Disappearances. Refugees to other countries. I have no basis for this prognosis. Just a feeling. Chalk me up as being crazy like PN, if you wish.

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Hate to tell ya this, but it's already that bad here, one of the things discussed (and that's putting it VERY politely) in a recent meeting between local contract security and the TSA was that they were supposed to hot-flag americans exiting the country with large sums or money and/or substantive valuables cause they might not be planning on coming back - remember what I said about the IRS never pulling it's claws out, yes ?

And apparently there's enough concern about it that they're actively watching for that kind of thing, to which I say again, uncut gemstones, a rock collection and a couple hammers and books, and viola - instead of a soon-to-be fugitive, you're now a geology buff and no one the wiser.

Also watching JP Morgan and a whole *LOT* of bizarre manipulation of the "Paper Silver" (most of which doesn't even EXIST in physical form) going round on COMEX - looks like they're trying to do an artificial price-pin and buy a shitload of it on the cheap before rolling it back over when they pull the pin on it.

Not that it matters, cause again, very little of that COMEX "silver" is anything more than just words on paper, a promise to pay which'll be the first thing to go if matters turn ugly, at which point they got the silver, and you got useless paper.

You think other financial derivitives are bad, you ain't seen shit when it comes to metals, precious and other - besides which COMEX/FOREX, are inherently rigged anyway, like playing Monopoly with a Banker who passes cash from the bank to his buddies under the table, the only thing what keeps em going is the dipshit suckers who believe all the bullshit and come in to get fleeced.

And if you don't think folk get "disappeared" here in America just yet - seriously, what the fuck do you think happens to them kids that get sent to Hellcamps ?

And just like they've applied "behavior modification" (i.e. Torture) to adults when they got away with it on children...

Just like they've applied "intensive screening" (i.e. Zero-Tolerance) to adults when they got away with it on children...

And the spying, and all the fucking rest, did one not ever for a moment CONSIDER where they got the goddamn idea for "Extraordinary Rendition" *FROM* in the first fucking place ?

Especially when they're even using some of the same goddamn Gulfstream aircraft ?

It *IS* that bad, we just don't wanna admit it.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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