Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Real Power
"Only one threat to global stability hangs over the world today--the United States...The ostentatious militarism of the United States...has ended up worrying the three big real powers--Europe, Japan, and Russia--and is pushing them closer together.
The disquiet and agitation directly or indirectly sponsored by the United States in the Persian Gulf and its clear desire to control the energy supply on which both Europe and Japan depend can only lead these two protectorates to increasingly consider Russia, now the second-leading producer of crude oil and still the world's leading producer of natural gas, as a necessary partner....
Together, Europe, Russia, and Japan are two and a half times more powerful [economically] than the United States....The United States is unable to live on its own economic activity and must be subsidized to maintain its level of consumption...[but] there will be a slowdown in the flow of goods, capital, and migration that currently nourishes the United States [which] will then have to live like other nations, notably by reigning in its huge trade deficit, a constraint that would imply a 15 to 20 percent drop in the standard of living...."
--Emmanuel Todd, After The Empire
The disquiet and agitation directly or indirectly sponsored by the United States in the Persian Gulf and its clear desire to control the energy supply on which both Europe and Japan depend can only lead these two protectorates to increasingly consider Russia, now the second-leading producer of crude oil and still the world's leading producer of natural gas, as a necessary partner....
Together, Europe, Russia, and Japan are two and a half times more powerful [economically] than the United States....The United States is unable to live on its own economic activity and must be subsidized to maintain its level of consumption...[but] there will be a slowdown in the flow of goods, capital, and migration that currently nourishes the United States [which] will then have to live like other nations, notably by reigning in its huge trade deficit, a constraint that would imply a 15 to 20 percent drop in the standard of living...."
--Emmanuel Todd, After The Empire
