From
George Castro
International analyst
The main problem of the 21st century is not the conflict between the United States and China, or the war in Ukraine, through the confrontation between the United States and NATO against Russia, but American weakening, above all political-strategic, which is the combination of 3 elements: the deep fracture and extreme polarization of the US system, which broke the consensus based on the unanimous acceptance of US “constitutional democracy”, which created the most critical situation in its history since of the Civil War of 1861/1865; the fact that President Joe Biden is one of the weakest and most vacillating in US history; and the disruption that has occurred in the central equation of power in Washington since the Republicans’ triumph in the 2022 midterm elections, which gave them control of the House of Representatives, which supplements the government of American democracy, which has led to an emphasis on decision-making paralysis of the world’s first superpower.
This happens when the central trend of the weather is the irreversible transfer of the axis of world power from the Atlantic to the Pacificin a process that essentially ended in 2008/2009, when the international financial crisis occurred with its epicenter on Wall Street and caused by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers.
This coincides with Xi Jinping’s assumption of leadership in China, which took place in 2012, the result of which was an extraordinary strengthening of the People’s Republic through a double movement: the priority given to the fight against corruption, considered the main existential threat of the Chinese regime; and the absolute and systematic turn of the Chinese economy towards innovation and high technology, provided that The Fourth Industrial Revolution (CRI) is the greatest opportunity that has been presented to Chinese civilization in its 5,000-year history.
From this it follows that over the past ten years China has begun to challenge US dominance in advanced technologies of CRI, led by Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things, which comes after proving that it has conquered the cutting edge of the fifth-generation mobile Internet (5-G) and is now ready to do the same. the next step, which is 6-G.
This combination it has unleashed an extraordinary anti-Chinese paranoia in the United States, which covers both the Executive and Congress, Democrats and Republicans; and above all it has grasped the most decisive factor in the system, which is American public opinion.
It should be noted that This in no way implies a “decline” of the United States.which remains unequivocally the leading power of the capitalist system in its CRI phase.
The calculation that must be made on the reality of the United States today is as follows: there are about 400 centers of innovation, high technology, advanced education, and non-transferable deep creativity, of which the main ones are: the Silicon Valley/Los Angeles/Hollywood/San Diego axis; the Austin/Atlanta/Miami network; the New York/Boston/Chicago circuit, which is the hub of finance and the most advanced education in the world; AND the first agrarian system of world capitalismwith its epicenter in the Midwest (Nebraska/Illinois/Iowa).
There is no “decline” of American civilization in any way. Which what happens is a political crisis of historic gravityin a moment of global change, where the axis of power in the world tends to move towards Asia, and above all towards China.
What there is is a crisis derived from historic exhaustion of US hegemonywhich is not being supplanted by another – for example the Chinese one – but by the emergence of a new global order, typical of a world society completely integrated by the technological revolution, which has irreversibly unified the world, and whose axis is now in the East .
US defense spending totals $868 billion in 2023, that is more than the defense spending of the 10 countries that follow it in order of importance combined (The defense expenditure of the People’s Republic reaches 280,000 million dollars this year).
The United States has seven strategic fleets, centered around nuclear aircraft carriers, which control the seas and oceans of the worldand they have become platforms of rapidly deployable forces capable of dealing with local conflicts in any region of the global system.
In short, the United States are not the first system of defense and world security, but their supremacy has such a preponderant character that it has acquired a qualitative meaning, and has become, strictly speaking, a the global security system of our time.
There is no issue more relevant right now in world history than the immense paradox that arises from the phenomenal technological and strategic power of the United States, in stark contrast to its extreme and growing political and strategic weakness.
This is the greatest risk offered by world politics in this second decade of the 21st century.
Source: Clarin
