/world-news/requiem-for-an-empire-how-americas-strongman-will-hasten-the-decline-of-us-global-power/ Fact-based, well-reasoned perspectives from around the world Sun, 24 Nov 2024 14:48:54 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 /world-news/requiem-for-an-empire-how-americas-strongman-will-hasten-the-decline-of-us-global-power/#comment-40165 Sun, 24 Nov 2024 14:48:54 +0000 /?p=153399#comment-40165 (4) If we attempt to compare the level of aggression in the policy of Putin’s Russia and US-led NATO, the winner in sheer aggressive intent is clearly the US. Putin needs no extra ‘Lebensraum” but the US, in Mearsheimer’s terms, needs to prevent any rival from emerging and dethroning the US empire. The result of the entire Ukraine fiasco, just as much as a new Trump presidency, I expect will ultimately be seen as more instrumental in the decline McCoy so correctly, and even precisely forecast.

]]> /world-news/requiem-for-an-empire-how-americas-strongman-will-hasten-the-decline-of-us-global-power/#comment-40164 Sun, 24 Nov 2024 14:47:00 +0000 /?p=153399#comment-40164 (3) The expansion of NATO was a provocation that pushed Russia and China into each others’ arms, as Mearsheimer pointed out back in 2015. The aggressive NATO policy emerged, in my reading, from the fear in Washington that if Russia’s economy were to be integrated into Europe’s in the context of an expanding European Union, US global hegemony would be threatened.

]]> /world-news/requiem-for-an-empire-how-americas-strongman-will-hasten-the-decline-of-us-global-power/#comment-40163 Sun, 24 Nov 2024 14:45:24 +0000 /?p=153399#comment-40163 (2)… My own reading of the dynamics of the struggle for the domination of the World Island is very different than this account of Russia’s position. Mearsheimer’s analysis seems to me closer to reality. Yes, Brzezinski’s logic was correct (even if it was morally questionable), but the US ended up undermining it. The US needed to manage rather than militarily enforce its domination of Europe. Clinton and especially Bush Jr. did the contrary.

]]> /world-news/requiem-for-an-empire-how-americas-strongman-will-hasten-the-decline-of-us-global-power/#comment-40162 Sun, 24 Nov 2024 14:43:59 +0000 /?p=153399#comment-40162 I’ve always been impressed by Alfred McCoy’s prophetic powers. I used his book, “To Govern the Globe,” as one the two principal texts in my course on geopolitics at IIT Gandhinagar last year. The other was Michael Hudson’s “Super Imperialism.” One of the main points McCoy makes in the book focuses on Mackinder’s “World Island.” When describing the “postwar geopolitical position” McCoy notes that the US was “the first power in a millennium to control both axial ends of Eurasia.” My own reading of

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