{"id":26049,"date":"2017-09-24T11:34:54","date_gmt":"2017-09-24T16:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26049"},"modified":"2017-09-24T11:34:54","modified_gmt":"2017-09-24T16:34:54","slug":"the-view-from-the-end-of-the-american-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26049","title":{"rendered":"The View From the End of the American Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo: Brendan Smialowski\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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THE VIEW FROM THE END OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE<\/a><\/h3>\n
IN HIS UNITED<\/u> Nations General Assembly speech last week, President Donald Trump loudly stated his intention to effectively dismantle the world order that the United States painstakingly built over the past century. Trump lauded nationalism before the assembled delegates at the same global institution that the U.S. helped create: \u201cI will always put America first just like you, the leaders of your countries, should put your countries first,\u201d he thundered. \u201cThere can be no substitute for strong, sovereign, independent nations.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Trump\u2019s speech was a remarkable departure from decades of U.S. policy aimed at creating an integrated post-nationalist world under its own leadership. At the end of the Second World War, the U.S. emerged for the first time in its history as a true superpower: a country able to reach out beyond its borders and reshape the nature of global politics. Most people alive today were born into\u00a0a world whose institutions, economic systems, legal rules, and political boundaries have all been shaped to some degree by American influence. While the U.S. has never been comfortable with embracing its identity \u2014 preferring to refer to itself with such euphemisms as \u201cthe indispensable nation\u201d \u2014 a sober\u00a0accounting of America\u2019s influence on world affairs can only arrive at the designation of an \u201cempire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through\u00a0a network of nearly 800 military bases located in\u00a070 countries around the globe, in addition to an array of trade deals and alliances, the\u00a0U.S. has cemented\u00a0its influence for decades across\u00a0both Europe and Asia. American leaders helped\u00a0impose a set of rules and norms\u00a0that promoted\u00a0free trade, democratic governance \u2014 in theory, if not always in practice \u2014 and a prohibition\u00a0on\u00a0changing borders militarily, using a mixture of force and suasion to sustain the systems that keep its hegemony\u00a0intact.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo: Brendan Smialowski\/AFP\/Getty Images THE VIEW FROM THE END OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE IN HIS UNITED Nations General Assembly speech last week, President Donald Trump loudly stated his intention to effectively dismantle the world order that the United States painstakingly built over the past century. Trump lauded nationalism before the assembled delegates at the same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3602,259,16127,13176,827],"class_list":["post-26049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-american-empire","tag-empire","tag-end-of-empire","tag-murtaza-hussain","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26050,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26049\/revisions\/26050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}