In recent years, the idea that the United States is an empire in decline has gained considerable support, some of it from quarters that until very recently would have denied it was ever an empire at all. The New York Times, for instance, has run columns that describe a “remarkably benign” American empire that is “in retreat”, or even at risk of decline and fall.
Yet the shadow American power still casts over the rest of the world is unmistakable. The US has military superiority over all other countries, control of the world’s oceans via critical sea lanes, garrisons on every continent, a network of alliances that covers much of the industrial world, the ability to render individuals to secret prisons in countries from Cuba to Thailand, preponderant influence over the global financial system, about 30% of the world’s wealth and a continental economy not dependent on international trade.
Actress Susan Sarandon has apologized for her recent comment at a pro-Palestinian rally where she claimed that American Jews are now “getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country.”
Even amid the litany of horrors from the war in the Far East it still has the power to shock – hundreds of unarmed British and Allied prisoners shot in cold blood by their Japanese captors as they tried to save themselves from a sinking transport ship.