This was in my Youtube feed - a very serious discussion about the new world order and the demise of the USA as a world leader. It started with Obama but Trump is trashing it.
It’s an opinion piece from the Sydney Morning Herald.
Two new acronyms ABUSA (Anywhere but the USA) and TACO (Trump always chickens out)
It is a bit dry but very interesting. World wide, dictators are no longer afraid of the USA. It is a bit scary.
Haven’t seen the vid but it started way way before Obama and Trump - capitalism (greed) as we know it in the West only works for the few, so while the greedy fat cats have been getting richer in the West, the poor have been getting poorer because alllllllllllll the money Americans (and people in the West) have been making have been going into the pockets of the already rich.
Meanwhile, China is a socialist country, and all the money they’ve been making has been going back into the country and the infrastructure and the people. They have practically eradicated poverty there. Food is cheap. Everyone has a home. Health care is affordable or free. And yet, it is one of the most technologically advanced places on earth with the world’s biggest economy.
People in the UK, the US, Oz, Europe - and their ancestors - have been taken for mugs by the greedy aristocrats and ruling classes.
I’m glad people have begun waking up and wanting what’s rightfully theirs.
Revolution can’t come quick enough in my view!
Azz when we were in China well out into the countryside locals broke of tree branches and left them dry out on the road. This was so they had heating and light. Even our car had to stop so the road was cleared because of the branches spread over it. So there are still those that are poor but your never told about them.
Life in China is very difficult, particularly in the villages. Communism hasn’t been a success long term anywhere in the world. Similarly I don’t think any country has true capitalism. My main concern is that we are heading towards global dystopia and a surveillance / AI nightmare.
The US has been declining since the 90s but they still have plenty of clout.
When did you go to China?
My Malaysian Chinese friends say the Chinese are getting wealthy very quickly
You need to watch the video to understand why Obama and why dictators are not afraid of the USA any more. The video is the point of this thread.
That’s bullsh*t. Obama did warn Assad against using chemical weapons, setting a “red line,” and Obama tried to get Congressional approval to strike Syria, but it was denied.
While the Assad regime did use chemical weapons after the warning, leading to a complex diplomatic and political situation, a deal was eventually reached to dismantle Syria’s declared stockpile.
What destroyed our standing in the world (IMO) was our military overthrow and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the gross incompetence displayed in that action as well as the cost incurred, which was several trillions of dollars. The world knows that the U.S. doesn’t have the stomach for any more military interventions and considering the U.S. debt is over $36 trillion, we can’t afford another war.
Granted, I didn’t watch the entire video. I stopped after the anti-Obama spiel made it obvious that this guy isn’t credible.
It seems that any “ ism” only works for a few people…
How could a loss of respect for the US be substantiated? It would be ironic if that were the case, since Trump has been claiming that he demands respect (again) from anyone. Not surprising that he demonstrated that to the world by picking the weakest link and talking someone down in the Oval Office who “doesn’t have the cards” anyway while indeed chickening out on other occasions when he should put his foot down. He seems to be surprised that things are not going according to plan and looks clueless.
End of an empire? What empire? In contrast to Britain, the US never had an empire in the true sense of the word which they were interested in keeping together so as to benefit from it economically. The US had been economically strong due to their resources and the large territory which allowed them to be more self-sufficient. Other countries were looking for military protection when the world was bipolar. In today’s multipolar world the US are still a world power yet not the only one and for the free world they definitely still are the world leader since there is no one else and hardly will be. No one is leaving the “empire” to make it come to an end. It’s the current governments own decision to alter former commitments.
I am surprised you saw it as anti Obama, he was mentioned only in passing and given as part of the reason Putin felt confident invading Ukraine knowing that despite the rhetoric the US would not intervene. It’s a view of the USA viewed from outside.
The details of why there was no intervention (congressional approval) really don’t matter to anybody except the US citizens, the fact is the US didn’t do anything in Syria despite threatening to do so. It gave the green light to every dictator world wide…
America’s influence is on the wane, Trump has further trashed it, China’s influence is on the rise.
I think you are taking the word “empire” far too literally, Perhaps if you replace it with “Influence” it will make more sense to you.
The important part of the discussion is the worrying decline of the US Dollar as a reserve currency (hence ABUSA) and if it does cease to be a major reserve currency will the US be able to service its massive debt? If the US is forced to default it will have an horrendous effect on world trade.
It was on the news last night that overseas investors are fleeing both the US bond market and the US share market. This is not normal.
There’s only so much we could do since Russia is a nuclear power and is run by a lunatic. I don’t think Obama’s mild threat made any difference at all.
Since you watched the entire video, did the guy being interviewed mention the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the size of the U.S. debt?
It didn’t mention Afghanistan or Iraq probably because that were not US wars but a “coalition of the willing” if you recall. However Vietnam was briefly mentioned - again other nations were involved in that conflict.
Yes, the US debt was a very large part of the the discussion and pointed out as the biggest threat to the US dollar as a reserve currency. From memory 132% of GDP.
You have to remember that to the rest of the world Obama was just another US President like Donald Trump, Richard Nixon or John Kennedy, partisan politics are irrelevant except, as I say, to US citizens.
A lot of the video is speculation. The US dollar hasn’t gone out of fashion yet. The US economy is too resilient to fall apart despite whatever Trump throws at it. The US isn’t pulling back it’s military power from what I’ve seen. If anything they are realigning their military in more strategic locations relative to their business interests. I think there are a lot of people behind the scenes working around Trump’s ever changing decisions, to try to mitigate the problems.
Correct. As I said in the original post, it’s an opinion piece. It’s a discussion about possibilities - food for thought.
You also said it was a bit scary. But perhaps we only had the illusion of safety all along?
Just watched a few minutes and thought he was talking a load of nonsense - the US (and the UK and EU) have a terrible record of replacing legitimate govts and replacing them with puppet govts and dictators. As I said in my original post, the West has fallen - oligarchs and the rich have been abusing nationals for a very long time, sucking the life out of us by essentially treating us all (and our parents and children) as slaves. To repeat:
They actually discussed that too.
It really needs watching from beginning to end to make any sense but obviously 16 minutes is far too long for people’s attention span these days.
Here’s a transcript of the first few minutes, perhaps you can point out the nonsense:so that we can discuss that.
why
does it even matter if America’s status
0:05
as a global superpower is waning like
0:07
what’s the risk here well the first step
0:09
would be to make the point that almost
0:13
everything we think is normal in the
0:14
world is not normal the stability and
0:17
the prosperity that has dominated in the
0:20
world for most of the post-war era post
0:22
World War II era is unusual historically
0:25
unusual so the risk is that without a
0:30
dominant hegeimon that has both the
0:32
power and the will to enforce stability
0:36
and the systems that create that
0:38
stability you end up with an unstable
0:40
world now you might say but we already
0:44
have an unstable world uh which is true
0:47
but the stability had always been
0:49
contained so for example and Trump is
0:51
not the first uh American president to
0:55
start wrecking the system that America
0:57
itself created american strategic
1:00
uh credibility started to slide under
1:04
Barack Obama uh that was when he told uh
1:08
the Syrian president um not to use
1:11
chemical weapons against his people and
1:12
if he did he’d come after him obama did
1:14
nothing uh all the other dictators in
1:17
the world took note and that’s why uh
1:20
shortly thereafter Vladimir Putin
1:22
invaded for the first time uh Crimea and
1:25
other parts of Ukraine and then that’s
1:28
escalated because they could see the US
1:31
had lost its will and its ability to do
1:34
anything about it now that’s accelerated
1:36
and you’ve seen the full scale war now
1:38
that Putin is waging against Ukraine and
1:40
threatens to wage against all of Europe
1:43
so without um a dominant and um able and
1:48
willing American hedgeimon that sort of
1:50
thing you could expect to break out um
1:53
more often more and more widely across
1:56
the world that sounds bad Peter it is
2:00
bad i hate to break it to you Samantha
2:01
but it’s also the systems of prosperity
2:03
so here’s a great example um the World
2:07
Trade Organization was set up by the US
2:09
after World War II to create a uniform
2:11
system of rules um communist countries
2:13
were shut out during the Cold War um
2:16
when 2000 hit Bill Clinton said “Look
2:19
that Cold War stuff is nonsense i like
2:21
China.” U let’s bring the Chinese into
2:24
the system and they did the Americans
2:26
together with the other members of the
2:28
WTO admitted China that was the takeoff
2:32
point for the Chinese economy access to
2:35
essentially um free trade throughout
2:38
that system by admitting China allowed
2:41
China to trade its way the Chinese did
2:44
the hard work but it got access to a
2:45
system it had been shut out of and it’s
2:47
that turbocharged the Chinese economy so
Co incidentally on the news last night was a snippet that the USA now spends more money on servicing its debt than it spends on its military. The last nation that this occurred to was the Habsburg Empire which dissolved in 1918, it is not a good look.
