This has been a tough week for progressive Americans, with the passing of a Democratic stalwart and the apparent capitulation of the President on tax cuts for the rich. And while I am not one to whine endlessly whenever our cause gets a setback or post a bunch of gloom and doom diaries, I couldn't help but present a possible scenario here.
I came across an article in Salon.com about the imminent demise of American power. The article states that it's just about inevitable that the United States will cease to be a major economic and military superpower by 2025. As a result, our government will be forced to drastically shrink our military and close a number of bases around the globe. It also states that our economy will go into severe hyperinflation and cause widespread panic at home, leading to a far right leader being elected to the White House. The article lists four main scenarios for our imminent decline; the economy, oil, military misadventures, and World War III.
As for the economy, the article posits thus:
After years of swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant lands, in 2020, as long expected, the U.S. dollar finally loses its special status as the world's reserve currency. Suddenly, the cost of imports soars. Unable to pay for swelling deficits by selling now-devalued Treasury notes abroad, Washington is finally forced to slash its bloated military budget. Under pressure at home and abroad, Washington slowly pulls U.S. forces back from hundreds of overseas bases to a continental perimeter. By now, however, it is far too late.
It goes on to list how China, Russia and Iran will supersede the USA in military might. While China is certainly rising as a global superpower, maintaining a full military force with armies, a full navy, and global satellites can get awfully expensive, as we have seen here and in the former Soviet Union.
Here's what the article claims will become the next oil crisis:
The United States remains so dependent upon foreign oil that a few adverse developments in the global energy market in 2025 spark an oil shock. By comparison, it makes the 1973 oil shock (when prices quadrupled in just months) look like the proverbial molehill. Angered at the dollar's plummeting value, OPEC oil ministers, meeting in Riyadh, demand future energy payments in a "basket" of Yen, Yuan, and Euros. That only hikes the cost of U.S. oil imports further. At the same moment, while signing a new series of long-term delivery contracts with China, the Saudis stabilize their own foreign exchange reserves by switching to the Yuan. Meanwhile, China pours countless billions into building a massive trans-Asia pipeline and funding Iran's exploitation of the world largest percent natural gas field at South Pars in the Persian Gulf.
Concerned that the U.S. Navy might no longer be able to protect the oil tankers traveling from the Persian Gulf to fuel East Asia, a coalition of Tehran, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi form an unexpected new Gulf alliance and affirm that China's new fleet of swift aircraft carriers will henceforth patrol the Persian Gulf from a base on the Gulf of Oman. Under heavy economic pressure, London agrees to cancel the U.S. lease on its Indian Ocean island base of Diego Garcia, while Canberra, pressured by the Chinese, informs Washington that the Seventh Fleet is no longer welcome to use Fremantle as a homeport, effectively evicting the U.S. Navy from the Indian Ocean.
Now this assumes that we will continue to burn though oil at the pace we have been at for the past 20 years or so. It also dismisses our efforts to build a green economy and alternative energy sources. It also doesn't mention how environmental issues may curtail oil consumption across the globe, particularly in China, which is already facing huge environmental issues of their own.
As for military misadventures, the article is more on point, but that's mainly because we have current events to draw on. Nevertheless, they see a Vietnam escape scenario unfolding:
It’s mid-summer 2014 and a drawn-down U.S. garrison in embattled Kandahar in southern Afghanistan is suddenly, unexpectedly overrun by Taliban guerrillas, while U.S. aircraft are grounded by a blinding sandstorm. Heavy loses are taken and in retaliation, an embarrassed American war commander looses B-1 bombers and F-16 fighters to demolish whole neighborhoods of the city that are believed to be under Taliban control, while AC-130U "Spooky" gunships rake the rubble with devastating cannon fire.
Soon, mullahs are preaching jihad from mosques throughout the region, and Afghan Army units, long trained by American forces to turn the tide of the war, begin to desert en masse. Taliban fighters then launch a series of remarkably sophisticated strikes aimed at U.S. garrisons across the country, sending American casualties soaring. In scenes reminiscent of Saigon in 1975, U.S. helicopters rescue American soldiers and civilians from rooftops in Kabul and Kandahar.
As for World War III, the article states that this could be the first war in space and cyberwar, in which the Chinese launch malicious viruses to disable and/or destroy American weapons.
The first overt strike is one nobody predicted. Chinese "malware" seizes control of the robotics aboard an unmanned solar-powered U.S. "Vulture" drone as it flies at 70,000 feet over the Tsushima Strait between Korea and Japan. It suddenly fires all the rocket pods beneath its enormous 400-foot wingspan, sending dozens of lethal missiles plunging harmlessly into the Yellow Sea, effectively disarming this formidable weapon.
Determined to fight fire with fire, the White House authorizes a retaliatory strike. Confident that its F-6 "Fractionated, Free-Flying" satellite system is impenetrable, Air Force commanders in California transmit robotic codes to the flotilla of X-37B space drones orbiting 250 miles above the Earth, ordering them to launch their "Triple Terminator" missiles at China's 35 satellites. Zero response. In near panic, the Air Force launches its Falcon Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle into an arc 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean and then, just 20 minutes later, sends the computer codes to fire missiles at seven Chinese satellites in nearby orbits. The launch codes are suddenly inoperative.
As the Chinese virus spreads uncontrollably through the F-6 satellite architecture, while those second-rate U.S. supercomputers fail to crack the malware's devilishly complex code, GPS signals crucial to the navigation of U.S. ships and aircraft worldwide are compromised. Carrier fleets begin steaming in circles in the mid-Pacific. Fighter squadrons are grounded. Reaper drones fly aimlessly toward the horizon, crashing when their fuel is exhausted. Suddenly, the United States loses what the U.S. Air Force has long called "the ultimate high ground": space. Within hours, the military power that had dominated the globe for nearly a century has been defeated in World War III without a single human casualty.
Now it's certainly possible that China could launch devastating attacks on America in the not-too-distant future, but considering how they are reluctant to deal with North Korea, they may have a way to go to impose global hegemony. Plus they have their own issues with democracy (or the lack of it) internally, and just as those attacks could be launched at enemies abroad, they could be launched inside their borders as well.
Before you completely agree with or poo-pooh their doomsday scenario for the USA, they state their assumptions thusly:
All of these scenarios extrapolate existing trends into the future on the assumption that Americans, blinded by the arrogance of decades of historically unparalleled power, cannot or will not take steps to manage the unchecked erosion of their global position.
Like I said earlier, I am not a pessimist nor am I a gloom and doomer. But if we continue to let the oligarchs run government policy and give tax cuts to the most wealthy people in the midst of widespread economic struggle; if we continue to staff our important scientific offices with people who question evolution and reject climate change as a myth; if we continue to put off dealing with the major economic and military issues barreling down us by distracting people over peripheral issues like guns, abortion, prayer in school, and gay marriage; then we are truly heading down the path of becoming a banana republic.