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Living in such tense and mercurial times, it’s easy to see that most Americans do not have a strong confidence in their country’s future, with about 60% thinking it’s headed in the wrong direction, according to the polling data from RealClear Politics. They are sharply divided by politics, by the role America should play in the world, by how to utilize science and education. All such sentiment is not only warranted but indicates the reality that the American Empire is in its last years, if you believe the prediction of the noted historian Alfred McCoy. He laid out his vision for the monumental transformation of the global order in the near future in an interview with The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill.
McCoy sees the election of Donald Trump to Presidency as a defining moment. He does not think Trump himself is the cause of the waning American power, but rather a symptom of it. Nonetheless, McCoy regards Trump as likely to hasten the downward trajectory.
The historian writes that all negative trends that are plaguing America now are likely to get much worse, growing rapidly by 2020, and would “reach a critical mass no later than 2030.”
“The American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of World War II, may already be tattered and fading by 2025 and, except for the finger pointing, could be over by 2030,” writes McCoy.
A lifelong observer of America's trajectory, in 1972, McCoy wrote “The Politics of Heroin,” a seminal book on the CIA involvement in the heroin trade during the Vietnam War. His new book “In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” is coming out in September. He currently teaches history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He describes the coming 2020s as a “demoralizing decade of rising prices, stagnant wages, and fading international competitiveness.” He blames decades of growing deficits on “incessant warfare in distant lands”. By 2030, the U.S. dollar will lose its status as the world’s dominant reserve currency, marking the empire’s loss of influence.
full: http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/the-fall-of-the-american-empire-will-come-by-2030-predicts-famed-historian
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