After empire

the long version

The United States' victory in the Cold War in 1991 led to triumphalist claims that humanity had reached "the end of history," and that Washington would enjoy everlasting supremacy. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called America "the indispensable nation." By invading Iraq, George W. Bush undermined U.S. credibility worldwide. By curtailing Americans' civil liberties while waging an endless "war on terror," and resorting to torture in prisons of occupied Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, his administration, as well as America, lost its claim to a moral high ground. Moreover, the 2008-2009 global fiscal meltdown, triggered by sub-prime mortgage crisis on Wall Street, exposed that heavily indebted America had ceased to be the financial behemoth it had been since World War II. After Empire sketches complex world system emerging during late imperial phase of U.S.^ It examines events that prepared the ground for world to move from the tutelage of the sole superpower, America, to a multipolar, post-imperial global order. Author Dilip Hiro does so from a distinctly non-Western perspective. Dilip Hiro does not offer a comforting thesis that the U.S. is quite capable of accommodating the rising world powers like China, Russia, India, and the European Union while retaining its dominant position. Neither does he frame global politics in a Manichean way - America versus China; the West against Asia. The world, he suggests, is set to revisit the pre-World War I Europe, where rulers frequently changed allies and adversaries to achieve shared aim of keeping the continent free of an overarching power. China's state-owned corporations are buying up companies worldwide. Russia, the number one producer of natural gas, is now world's foremost producer of hydrocarbons. Its nuclear arsenal is on par with America's.^ Venezuela and Iran are challenging Washington-dominated status quo respectively in South America and Middle East. The European Union has surpassed America as globe's largest trading entity, and euro has emerged as a strong rival to U.S. dollar as a dominant reserve currency.