It’s naïve to say that the US is just now losing its hegemony. The downward spiral began with the 90s, but the heavy body blow was 08’ crisis. 2016 was the cement made manifest that America is an imploding empire. I think it’s important to understand that effects of a cause take time to be felt concretely. 2016 wasn’t where the trend of collapse began but rather when the anger was given a concrete voice and concrete political reaction: Bernie, Trump. America is no longer the unipolarity, and even the nation’s formally under the heel of America is no longer feeling the pressure, see South America recently. That was something that’s been building up for years and has only manifested now, if America were the same America of an earlier time they would’ve been successful like they were in the 60s.
If you were to pull my arm and force a prediction from me ( and I’m not much for predicting things but rather making sense of the here and now) id tell you that a South American union will form the basis of a new polarity in the world.
South America is extremely divided between different ideologies, it will take decades for them to unite. I think its more likely that Africa will unite first, especially because they get support from China, and have a lot of natural resources.
Ya, south america central america and the Caribbean are on the front lines right now. We’ve seen defeats in Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, much of central america, political struggles in Mexico, Bolivia, embargoes on VZ, Cuba.
That’s a good assessment, and I’d say the really dramatic decline started around when USSR collapsed. Reagan deregulation, and then Bush years created a naked kleptocracy in US.
I really wouldnt get my hopes up for Germany to do that. Almost all the politicians have very tight links to the USA, and no reason to change that.
It seems like the public opinion has turned heavily against US, especially after Trump. It’s likely that politicians who keep promoting strong ties with US will not be doing well going forward.
Public opinion is one thing, but CDU/CSU/SPD who are in government now still have over 50% of votes in polls, and as long as they are in power, not much is gonna change.
Sure, but the system isn’t nearly as rigged as US and there’s proportional representation, so public opinion actually can make a difference here.
Even in countries with alternative voting systems or grouping systems besides first past the post or winner take all, they haven’t managed to be a challenge to bourgeois democracy. Japan ( which also has proportional representation ), and australia ( proportional and uses ranked choice voting ) both have right wing / neoliberal govs. You might be able to blame capitalist control over media for that one, who are going to give vetted pro capitalist candidates the airtime and legitimacy.
Oh I don’t expect any challenge to the bourgeoisie democracy to happen. I just think that the factions that want to align closer with Russia and China instead of US are going to prevail because China has the best economic prospects going forward.
I doubt it. But there will be an election this autumn, so we will see.
Yeah, going to be interesting to see if there’s a shift. I think economic aspect is worth considering as well here. China is going to be a much more reliable economic partner going forward, and a lot of business interests are already pushing for a realignment towards China.
True, the car industry is extremely important and powerful in Germany. They have pushed against the “uighur genocide” propaganda, because they dont want to risk their profits in China.
Honestly, a more sovereign Germany would probably be for the best, imho.
Of course, I’m all for socialist revolution and all, but at the end of the day, we need steps to get there and having countries constantly under the thumb of the United States won’t do.
I could be wrong, of course.
Right, I also think the fracturing of the capitalist bloc is a net positive. One direct result of this is strengthening China’s position against US.
Great news.
Imagine how giant a scandal it would be if it was found that Russians had hacked Angela Merkel’s phone and were reading her texts… oh wait the US literally got caught doing that. You have to imagine the NSA was probably like … “what if Germany finds out that we’re spying on their heads of state? Ah fuck it we’ll deal with that later. Hopefully this won’t bite us in the ass in the future…”
Yeah, I’m sure the fact that US got caught spying on their politicians played a role here. The other big aspect is the volatility in US. Biden might not be insane like Trump, but who knows who’s gonna get elected next. Meanwhile, US empire is crumbling in front of our eyes and it’s economic suicide to hitch your ride to it at this point.
The east will rise again
