( Tomdispatch.com ) – It came upon a midnight clear, a vision both complete and quite specific — not from any of those “angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold,” as in the Christmas carol, but from a long line of trucks on the Indiana Toll Road. On that cold winter’s […]
Climate Change Taking the World’s Four Legacy Empires Down:
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Some 2,000 years ago, an itinerant preacher, Saul of Tarsus, was writing to a wayward congregation in Corinth, Greece. Curiously enough, his words still capture the epochal change that may await us just over history’s horizon. “For now we see in a glass, darkly,” he wrote. “Now I know in part, […]
Requiem for an Empire: How America’s Strongman will hasten the Decline of U.S. Global Power
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Some 15 years ago, on December 5, 2010, a historian writing for TomDispatch made a prediction that may yet prove prescient. Rejecting the consensus of that moment that U.S. global hegemony would persist to 2040 or 2050, he argued that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could […]
Powder Keg in the Pacific: America’s new Cold War with China
( Tomdispatch.com ) – While the world looks on with trepidation at regional wars in Israel and Ukraine, a far more dangerous global crisis is quietly building at the other end of Eurasia, along an island chain that has served as the front line for America’s national defense for endless decades. Just as Russia’s invasion […]
The American Empire in (Ultimate?) Crisis
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Empires don’t just fall like toppled trees. Instead, they weaken slowly as a succession of crises drain their strength and confidence until they suddenly begin to disintegrate. So it was with the British, French, and Soviet empires; so it now is with imperial America. Great Britain confronted serious colonial crises in […]
Trump and the End of the American Century
( Tomdispatch.com ) – With recent polls giving Donald Trump a reasonable chance of defeating President Biden in the November elections, commentators have begun predicting what his second presidency might mean for domestic politics. In a dismally detailed Washington Post analysis, historian Robert Kagan argued that a second Trump term would feature his “deep thirst […]
The Other Imperialism: Russia’s Mercenaries Abroad
( Tomdispatch.com ) – One of modern history’s major empires is falling apart right now, right before our eyes. Yet precious few in the media have reported on this extraordinary event, much less offered any analysis of its implications for the fast-changing shape of global power. Over the past 60 years, France has used every […]
Peace for Ukraine Courtesy of China? Another Step in Beijing’s Rise to Global Power
( Tomdispatch.com ) – All wars do end, usually thanks to a negotiated peace agreement. Consider that a fundamental historical fact, even if it seems to have been forgotten in Brussels, Moscow, and above all, Washington, D.C. In recent months, among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s followers, there has been much talk of a “forever war” […]
Does the Rise of China in Eurasia mean the Fall of the United States as the Global Power?
( Tomdispatch.com) – From the ashes of a world war that killed 80 million people and reduced great cities to smoking rubble, America rose like a Titan of Greek legend, unharmed and armed with extraordinary military and economic power, to govern the globe. During four years of combat against the Axis leaders in Berlin and […]