American intelligence agencies predict that China and India will cut into U.S. clout over the next two decades.
This report, released by US intelligence agencies, predicts that the influence of the United States will decrease substantially in the next two decades. The report says that countries like China and India are going to play more important roles in the coming years, China being the most strategic challenge to the US. It also predicted that a multipolar world will give more manoeuvre room to countries like Iran and Turkey. The report says that US will still be an economic superpower but it won’t be able to assert its will in a multipolar stage.
This report is significant because it is for the first time that America feels threatened because of its diminishing power. Political analysts attribute the decline in the power of the US to several factors. The first and probably the foremost reason was the unilateral (and now unsuccessful) invasion of Iraq. The unilateral invasion created a rift between US and other powerful international players. Furthermore the quagmire that the US plunged itself into, depleted the strategic power and influence of the US dramatically. Apart from that, the 33-day war between Israel and Hezbollah weakened US influence even more. Also the unsuccessful attempts to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear capability was another blow to the hegemonic power of the US in the region.
The global financial meltdown and the dramatic plunge in the value of US stocks curtailed the influence of America substantially. The financial crisis in the US is said to be the worst since the Great Depression in the 1930s. The high unemployment rates and the increasing cost of living are the challenges that the US has to cope with domestically. The financial crisis would be definitely limit the power and influence of the US to play a more robust and unilateral role in the world.
Also the resurgent Russia is also a huge strategic challenge to the US. The oil boom last year was a huge help for Russia to reemerge as a world superpower. Also the energy monopoly that Russia has over the European countries has put Russia on a very strategically advantageous position over them. Furthermore, the nuclear issue of Iran has given Russia a leverage over the US and indeed Russia has played very well with this card with the US.
Other challenges to the US include the new leftism of Latin America. Cuba , Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia have recently emerged as socialist-leaning countries which have dramatically curtailed the influence of the US in Latin America.
Apart from these the growing global hatred towards the policies of the US which reached a climax with the Bush administration has greatly tarnished the reputation of the US. All these factors and reasons have made US officials to admit that the next two decades would see a great decrease of the power of the US.
