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December 19, 2011
The U.S. military formally handed over its largest base in Iraq, the ill-name “Camp Victory,” to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The base sits at the edge of Baghdad International Airport and it was one that the US was never going to leave.
What was achieved by the Iraq war and its military invasion and occupation of a sovereign country in the Middle East?
All I can see is the U.S. military bogged itself down in two disastrous wars in the Greater Middle East in pursuit of global supremacy and its political ties to the Middle Eastern oil states.The US failed to impose its will on the Greater Middle East. It failed to dominate the Middle East or to erect a new order conducive to U.S. interests.
A decade later, a major redistribution of global power is underway. The U.S. is economically weaker, a battered former “sole superpower” still in need of an enemy, still thinking about global energy supplies, and, if anything, more reliant than ever on a military-first policy in the world. Oh, it has a new enemy---China of course--- so the US is beefing up its presence (military and diplomatic) in the Asia Pacific.
Though Washington still speaks in terms of merican global leadership, American exceptionalism, and that never-ending American Century, reality will soon hi the political class in the face--the US is a declining power.
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Americas problem with China is simple. China doesnt need America for anything unlike the past where countries have needed America which inturn gave them the ablility to establish some form of control over a country China seems at present only interested in creating wealth without indoctrination. At some point China may see the need to give America a job so to speak. At present China would be happy for America to carry on being the world police because at this stage China has no use for being that role.
It is human nature for speculation about who's pecker is bigger when you have two countries like these but we are a long way off calling China the enemy of America when the only real difference is that China is doing well and The U.S is doing badly.