© AP Photo/ Richard Drew
By the end of George H.W. Bush's presidency, the United States had come out on top as the sole global superpower; however, a lot has changed since then, admitted Patrick J. Buchanan, an American conservative political commentator and publicist, noting that Washington's once unchallenged supremacy is vanishing into thin air.
"With the exception of the Soviet Union, some geostrategists contend, no nation, not defeated in war, has ever suffered so rapid a decline in relative power as the United States. What are the causes of American decline? Hubris, ideology, bellicosity, and stupidity all played parts," Mr. Buchanan pointed out.
The political commentator emphasized that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington demonstrated "imperial content" to Russia, "shoving NATO right up into Moscow's face" and carrying out "color-coded" revolutions in the former Soviet Republics.
Such an attitude has logically prompted a backlash from Russia's President Vladimir Putin who promised to revive the "national greatness of Mother Russia," protect its people and "stand up to the arrogant Americans," Mr. Buchanan elaborated.
On the other hand, Washington has seriously miscalculated by considering China a tame partner. The United States moved its manufacturing bases overseas and opened its markets to goods made in China. However, it seems that Beijing has not forgotten the humiliations of the past and is eager now to pay back the West for them.
"What we got, after $4 billion in trade deficits with Beijing, was a gutted US manufacturing base and a nationalistic rival eager to pay back the West for past humiliations. China wants this to be the Chinese Century, not the Second American Century. Is that too difficult to understand?" the author stressed.
Furthermore, Mr. Buchanan underscored that the "great work" of Nixon and Reagan, who meant to split China from Russia in Eurasia's "Heartland" has been undone. Now Moscow and Beijing are much closer to each other and more antagonistic toward Washington than they were during the Cold War.
Still it was the Middle East that cost the United States dearly. By invading Iraq, occupying Afghanistan and toppling Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Washington let the genie of radical Islamic fanaticism and tribalism out of its bottle. Both North Africa and the Middle East are now engulfed by a Sunni-Shiite sectarian war.
"Since 1992, the US has been swamped with Third World immigrants, here legally and illegally, many of whom have moved onto welfare rolls. Our national debt has grown larger than our GDP. And we have run $11 trillion in trade deficits since Bush I went home to Kennebunkport," Mr. Buchanan highlighted, adding that trillions of dollars have been thrown down the drain during the US' interventions and wars, while tens of thousands of American soldiers have been wounded and killed.
While Washington's political and economic strength is fading, its commitments are greater now, the political commentator noted. US military forces have become bogged down in several regions overseas.
Additionally, if the neocons regain power in 2017 the United States will start supplying weapons to Kiev, putting Europe at risk of a full-scale military conflict, while American Tomahawks and B-2s "will be on the way to Iran."
The United States has found itself in an awkward position, the publicist underscored, with its "present commitments unsustainable" and "retrenchment" as an "imperative."
