Thursday, March 30, 2006

Possible end of American Hegemony

In class on 3/27 we were discussing the American hegemony and the consensus I received from the class is that America's hegemony is strong and currently nothing threatens it. I beg to differ though. I do not think any country in particular or even EU is an immediate threat to us, but our power is slowly starting to decline now. In the book "The World is Flat" written by Thomas Friedeman it discusses over and over again on how more educated the rest of the world is becoming. I remember how he discusses how the students in China, India, Japan, etc.. study more than American students. In addition the book discusses how most of the enginneering students are from India, China etc... I do think that Thomas Friedman exaggerates on the immediate effect, but overall I do think that he makes good points. I think that it is not good for the U.S. overall if most the enginnering students that we train are from foreign countries. I think that it shows that our schools are further behind at least in math and science. Most of the computer scientists come from foreign countries also. I also read numerous articles that predict that our quality of life will be lower than of our parents.
In addition while the rest of the world is catching up in U.S. economically. The insertion of the EU and the Euro is meant to challenge the dollar dominance in the world. I would not be surprised if Euro will be the main currency in the world within the next ten years.
Basically what I am trying to convey is that the threats are there and U.S. and the average person needs to be aware of the challenges that face our country. I am not saying that the American hegemony will end anytime soon, but there are challenges that face us.

1 comment:

Meow said...

I'm not entirely persuaded that the consensus reached by the class was that American hegemony was unthreatened. I think everyone was very cognizant that there are threats in the world. However, neither Europe nor China have made any moves toward assuming any sort of real leadership roles. The EU is still too disorganized to take over world governance, and China, for the moment, is more interested in exerting its influence in Asia before taking on the world.

Friedman's a smart man, but he needs to bear in mind that there has to be the national will to take on the role of the hegemon. The class consensus was not that American hegemony wasn't fragile but that no one else was interested in it.