Poll: Is America too big to fail?

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: Atheus

Originally posted by: Craig234
As the weaponry, communications technology, propaganda, tactics, intelligence gathering capabilityes, and more have hugely increased, the viability of revolution has plummeted.

I don't agree with this, we modern people are not special, we're not the end of the evolution of humanity or something. In fact I would say the gap between the ruling classes (or whatever you want to call it) and everyone else is smaller than it's ever been. Malnourished peasants with wooden clubs have pulled armoured knights off their horses and beat them to death before. Besides this is all based on the idea that the army would fight against the revolution rather than participate in it.

Yes, knights on horses were the old technology that is no longer the standard, when the populace could do that. Now, they face something very different.

There's no way I see for us to resolve the question about your speculation that the military would side with the revolution, other than my citing many, many examples where the military has sided with the repressive government in even the most brutally repressive situation in other countries, but my point was that if the public did face our military, the game has greatly changed in the viability of revolution.

As long as the US - with its military spending about the same as the rest of the 94% of the world population combined - has a good hand in the power structure, it can very effectively hold on to power, even if it is in a bad situation that in earlier times might have threated its retaining power.

I looked that up because I couldn't believe it - most numbers say the USA has about 1/3 of total world military spending. Europe spends more than half of that and it's going up. China will overtake both of us in time. Not that I anticipate a world war but it won't be long before the USA wouldn't be sure of winning such a thing should it happen. Much more likely than actual war would be a drop in international influence as China starts to flex it's muscles.

I've consistently seen the figure at about 45%, which I rounded to 'about the same'. I don't know where you got a third, or how important the distinction is.

But scroll down to the pie chart on the following link for a typical example:

Link showing US share about 45%

Hence my prediction having more to do with 'decline cna change', not a 'failed state'.

Sure, I wouldn't expect 'America' to fall completely into insignificance, but the entity called 'the USA' could easily be replaced by something else. You mentioned regional consolidation of power yourself - if the major power was the 'American union' rather than any country therein wouldn't that constitute the fall of the USA? I mean there is still a country called Britain, and we're very happy with it, but the British Empire is gone never to return - the future is the EU.
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We're going to another issue I'm not sure is that important on the name, but Britain did not give up her name with the loss of empire or the EU.

I think it's unlikely for the US to do so, just as it has maintained its name when adding states, or joining alliances. If the American Union is a new name, so be it.

This historical power structure is such that the dominant nations - Europe, the US being prime examples - tend to exploit the weaker, not to make them partners, other than in useful alliances from the United Nations to the Organization of American States which have a veneer of equality but hardly prevent the unequal situations between the nations.

There's no rival on the horizaon for the US in the American; I suspect the continuation of the US in the dominant role.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: MovingTarget
Without the US, the world will go on functioning, albeit not very well following the aftermath of a 'failure' of the USA, but it would recover. No nation is eternal or has the clout to permanently bring the rest of the world economy down. Even if it did 'fail', then it would still live on in some form - either fractured into smaller nation-state-economies or absorbed into a larger entity (Greater Canada? ).

It seems to me the road of human history is slowly leading to one, permanent, global government or at least alliance of a handful of regional governments (maybe Palin was just ahead of her time in referring to Africa as one political entity). I may be fueling the 'crackpots', but that doesn't change the fact of the history I interpret this way.

The de-centralization of power is generally caused by the outside force of an even greater power. The main questions are such as will it resemble more the US or or others?