David Harnasch 27.10.2008 14:36 +Feedback
Amir Taheri: The End of America?
Keineswegs:
To start with it is not at all certain that Americans will elect Obama, although all opinion polls currently signal his victory. But, even if Obama is elected, there is no reason to believe that the US would not absorb the shock as it did that of Jimmy Carter’s presidency almost 30 years ago.
In its time, Carter’s election inspired as much speculation about the “end of America” as Obama’s likely victory, against a background of financial meltdown in Wall Street, has done in the past few weeks. During Carter’s presidency, inflation went into the stratosphere while growth was nonexistent, creating the condition known as “stagflation”. In those four years, the average American family became 15 per cent poorer while gasoline lines lengthened and prices went through the roof. The grand American retreat was signalled by the fall of the Shah’s regime in Iran, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by the USSR, and the expansion of Soviet influence to some 30 more countries in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. In a notorious speech in 1979, Fidel Castro spoke of “Yankee Imperialism” on its deathbed”.
Four years later, however, the dying “Great Satan” was back in better health than ever and as the only credible actor on the global stage. A decade later, it was the only “superpower”, leading the emergence of a new global system that, despite its obvious failings, has helped lift more than 100 nations out of abject poverty, and aside the number of countries with pluralist governments from around 30 to more than 120. Hier ist der ganze Artikel.
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