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May 03, 2005
Will The U.S. Lose its 'Near Abroad'?
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, raising many important questions in a Mother Jones post headlined "Losing the American "Near Abroad." He noted that: Of the two superpowers that faced each other down in an almost half-century-long Cold War, one -- the United States -- emerged victorious, alone in the world, economically powerful, militarily dominant; the other, never the stronger of the two, limped off, its empire shattered and scattered, its people impoverished and desperate, its military a shell of its former self. This is a story we all know, and more or less accept. Winner/loser, victor/vanquished. It makes sense. That's the way we expect matches, competitions, struggles, wars to end.
Mr. Engelhardt said, "in regards to the U.S., it would have been considered laughable not so long ago, except to a few scholars of imperial decline like Immanuel Wallerstein, and yet it may be an increasingly plausible thought." I highly recommend his article. It's time U.S. citizens start thinking the unthinkable. Here's more.
But what if, as I've suggested recently, the Cold War turned out to be a loser/loser contest? That may seem counterintuitive.
Posted by Munir Umrani at May 3, 2005 09:59 PM
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