WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER
info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com
We are followers of written history which is a sense of all that has occurred regarding humanity’s collective aspirations; and throughout history, nations and empires have risen to control the global community and by exerting strong and unquestionable influences through economic, political and military powers. Rome, France, Britain and Russia have at different times in the past exerted global influence the way the United States of America is currently doing. The permutations always change, and it is obvious, the baton is all about to change hands again.
No dynasty has reigned eternally. That is the unwritten law of power. While there are factors that make and unmake super powers, the reality is that there would always be an end to dominance. Nature has a way of organising the change when it is time; and long before now, a series of chain events to bring an end to the reign of America as the global world power were unconsciously set into motion, and now culminating into its crescendo.
The United States started well, and through negotiations, conflicts and conquest ascended the position of a great world power. Well planned and articulated domestic expansion and three wars; the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II created the new United States and enshrined the new most powerful status of the country globally. This rise to power however comes with a forceful occupation of free and independent territories, spanning over and across Cuba, Guam, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico; taking control of territories spanning ten thousand miles from Puerto Rico to the Philippines. Eventually, in 1898, after decades of expansion and economic development, the country became a world power.
How long will the USA remain the undisputed world power? Maybe another few decades or even a century. It depends on how long the country is able to continue to maintain the factors that took it to the top where it occupies. Over the century, the United States as we have it today, assumed the undisputed position of the global big brother that wielded all the instruments of control over others. Militarily, the country boasts of a military force and investment that cannot be rivaled easily by any other country. The annual defense budget cannot be compared to the defence budget of any other nation – not even with the combined budgets of the next ten countries lining behind it – and the presence of its military base across continents, regions and countries make it even stronger to contend with by any nation militarily.
Then, the formation of strategic defense alliances and cooperation via the instruments of the United Nations, NATO and others, which the United States literally exercises control over due to the size of its financial and logistic contributions and holding strategic positions on their structures which further strengthen the United States global influence and control. The United States can and has continued over the decades to use these bodies as ready tools to subdue its direct adversaries, perceived enemies and assumed threats to America. The aimless and useless wars at Iraq and Libya readily come to mind, but those two are just a tip of the iceberg, when the list of nations that had been hit by the hammers from the USA and its many allies are collated.
Another factor that has kept the United States of America sitting at the top was the country’s designed welfarist policies that sees American aid spreading across the globe to all the continents, countries and people; up to the point that more than half of the global community directly and indirectly rely on assistances and aid coming directly and indirectly from the government of the United States of America. Nearly half of the global Nongovernmental organisations have their funding source in the United States. From education, health, agriculture, to almost all sectors of national life, many nations were literally surviving on monetary aid from the USA. USAID became a tool of keeping many nations and continents at bay and under the control of the USA.
The other less recognised but very significant factor responsible for keeping the USA where it has been is the open door policy of the country when it comes to immigration. The United States was taking in an influx of all categories of people from all nations of the world. The overtly useful professionals that are today the brain box of many advanced development in many sectors, the moderately useful, who are happy to escape the terrible economic and others non-palatable conditions of their home countries constitute over fifty percentage of the country’s unskilled and semi skilled labour force, and the less-useful population who are allowed into the country as asylum seekers, seeking protection from some perceived dangers in their home countries. Taking them from every country, more than any other nation on earth, the United State carved a name for itself and stands strong, feared and respected.
Yet, long before now, the decline in power, control and respect began. With the increase in obvious arrogance of the nation as it arbitrarily usurps rights of nations after nations, also comes the waning of the power it seems to hold. The prosecuted war in Iraq raised too many questions. Why the war? What does America stand to gain from a baseless war that led to the murder of millions of innocent lives and has left the country unstable till now? There were claims it was the war of Israel; America doing the bidding of Israel to diminish its perceived enemies in the entire Middle East. The Israeli Prime Minister, on record, made a suggestion about the destruction of the capacity of nations in the region that are aiding Hamas and making it easy for the projection to totally annex the region.
The war in Libya, for instance, was concluded by many as a selfish war by America to gain control of the country’s crude oil; and consequently created an awareness of the reign of power abuse by the USA and, of course, projected many nations to begin to strategise to protect themselves and their allies, should the United States of America, one day, turns on them. A new coalition began to emerge, long before now, with Russia and China taking the lead to create forces both economic and military forces that would contest with and threaten the global dominance of America.
Now, the end has begun all the way from the time the United States grew too pompous to assuming they can ride on other sovereign nations without consequences. Across Africa, Asia, and Europe, the US has been exerting its influence in the United Nations on one hand, and NATO on the other hand and becoming so high handed that it picks its wars with impunity. The United States watches and funds the Israeli demarcation and destruction of the Palestinians, wreaking havoc in Gaza, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens without looking back; all because It is the desire of Israel that the Palestine nation be extinguished. Yet, the same USA is currently looking the other way as Russia is decimating Ukraine. It now became clear that the United States prosecutes its wars based on its interest, supports the killings in Gaza because Israel is its friend, supports Ukraine when its leadership considered Russia an enemy but now on the side of Russia, as Ukraine is considered unfriendly.
The emergence of Trump is now finally taking off the influence of America in world politics, economy and power structure. The high respect once willingly offered the United States does not exist anymore. The moment Trump considered his country’s removal from WHO, the termination of aid to developing nations via USAID, mass deportation and the arbitrary imposition of tariffs that triggers global economic war, respect for the USA took a sudden and steep decline. As nations began to source alternative economic and political cooperation, existing blocs are getting stronger, and without knowing it, the days of the USA as the world number one powerful nation draw closer to an end than we can all imagine.
That is the reality. If you become a nation with the sole ambition to protect yourself and less bothered about the welfare of nations that once see you as the big brother, you should also be prepared to lose whatever hold you exert on those nations. You cannot eat your cake and have it! As thousands of NGOs, across Africa, Asia and other continents, attending to global challenges on many fronts become forced to look away from the USA for their funds, so also will the control America holds on these organisations and the benefiting nations. It is normal and once the path is taken, the events naturally follow its course to an end.
The once democratic structure and system of the United States is crumbling from within. The nation’s politics is gradually becoming worse than what it decries in developing nations and what it was going around the globe to fight against. A nation that is far losing its capacity to protect its own democracy cannot be regarded as a beacon of global sanity in the same. The Republican Party is completely silent as it finds itself between going against the authoritarian nature of Trump, and supporting the President on the platform of its party.
We would begin to see it; that is, the end of hegemonic America. As it was predicted by the leaders of Russia a long time ago, America will continue to self destruct from within. However, the BRICS bloc, especially in its current incarnation, would get stronger and project China as the emerging stronghold of world power. It is a matter of time as the American dollar will receive its major hit, and the dependency of many currencies on it will be terminated, as many nations will move away and towards a new currency power hold. We will see nations aligning to challenge America’s military power at the global theatre. The ongoing tariff war will further hasten the end of the United States’ strong markets and economy. The country is not going to recover from the unnecessary policy because strong nations around will resist or circumvent it. Nations are moving away consciously from America, and everyone already has alternate destinations in mind. It may appear that many nations are quiet but diplomatic attachments are changing and not in favour of the United States.
It is time that all serious nations re-evaluated their relationship with America in the era of Trump and redesign their foreign policies to identify the radical America policy decisions to exterminate their once existing cordial relationship and to respond accordingly.
