the limits of unilateralism

friends:

andre gunder frank sent to us several months ago a brilliant essay where he
stated in effect that only the $ and US military power maintain the US role
as the hegemonic leader in the world system.

now, a colleague from the heritage foundation (usually not an institution,
quoted by world system scholars) - jack spencer, a very reknown defense
analyst from the u.s. republican camp, de-sects the strategic weaknesses of
the US in great detail and offers very interesting insights into the
weaknesses of american global power. 

this article is an important element in the debates, currently led by
colleagues like AGF, Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, Immanuel Wallerstein and
others. just remember:

http://upf.tche.br/~golin/historiaeconomica/2001011702samir.doc 

http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/wallerstein.htm

http://www.soc.jhu.edu/people/Arrighi/gaglobalppr.pdf

giovanni for example says that the present compound means US military power
and Asian finance. Immanuel says:

What the United States needs now to do is to learn how to live with the new
reality - that it no longer has the power to decide unilaterally what is
good for everyone


i hope you folks know to read texts that might not, perhaps, correspond in
language and content to the personal credos of the majority of the world
system school. but if you abstract from the political agenda, inherent in
that text below, the deeper message of the text from the perspective of
world system SCHOLARSHIP is quite interesting - america's hegemony comes to
a finish, most probably earlier than expected, and that america's global
reach in effect has led to serious over-extension problems known to
comparative world systems research already from earlier periods of waning
global hegemony, like the NL or GB before.

so read that piece:

http://www.heritage.org/mandate/priorities/chap10.html

the article also neatly tells us implicitly in effect, that unilateralism
will reach its limits, and that - more than ever before.

arno tausch