Can we stop being a superpower, please?
It's been roughly twenty years since the fall of the Soviet Union, which means that the U.S. has experienced two decades of being the world's sole superpower. The experience hasn't been positive.
Under the sway of neocon ambitions, in particular, the Bush era was marked by a failed attempt to dominate the globe militarily. Mired in Afghanistan and scarred by Iraq, those ambitions proved to be shameful and foolish. A group of misguided gunslingers created a catastrophe. Have we come to the point where disillusion will lead us where we need to go, to the end of playing the superpower role?
This is a relevant question in the aftermath of President Obama's visit to Russia, a country that yearns to return to its former status and does everything it can to posture as its old superpower self. Yet other than a bloated nuclear arsenal and swaggering oil production, present-day Russia doesn't fit the bill and never will again. Its diminished threat is the first reason why the U.S. should abandon the thankless task of policing the world. The second is the enormous waste of resources involved in being a superpower. Sheer inertia keeps fueling the production of new armaments to replace outworn ones that were useless to begin with. Has the Stealth bomber justified its staggering cost, or the nuclear submarine, Polaris missiles, Titan missiles, not to mention Star Wars? Most of these weapons haven't seen the slightest use. Billions of dollars have been spent on a defense system that is protecting us from a foe who long ago neutralized its threat. More
The Ultimate World Order
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