The Decline of the American Empire

Every successful person has many enemies. While many people look up to him and look to imitate, others are envious of this success and are waiting for the moment this successful person fails. Others however are actively trying to bring that successful person down. Everyone agrees the journey to success is a long hard one. However, maintaining that success is the harder task.

When Egypt was Egypt, it was strong and powerful and many other cultures tried to imitate it. Some tried to destroy it. However, Egypt's great civilization was destroyed from within with weak rulers and a terrible economy. When Rome was Rome, no one dared to come near it. Everyone knew that Rome was the all mighty powerful kingdom. Between Egypt and Rome came many great empires that rose and fell and between Rome and today also came many great Empires that are now unheard of and are buried under sand or maybe in a museum somewhere.

When small tribes started attacking Rome, the mighty Roman leaders laughed. They thought they were insane to attack the great Rome. However, slowly but surely these tribes started causing a lot of problems to Rome. Slowly but surely Rome collapsed. Rome, which extended from Northern England all the way to the Mediterranean broken into pieces and is now a tiny Italy. This true story happened over and over and over to many civilizations. Yet, for some reason no one seems to learn the lesson.

This may seem like a long introduction or a dreary history lesson. But, all the answers are in our history. If we forget it then we forget who we are and where we are going. I am certain that citizens of Rome or Greece or France or Britain or even the Mongols thought that they live in the greatest country on Earth just as we think today living in the United States.

What we fail to see is our decline. We fail because we became so engulfed in the idea that we are most powerful. We fail because we are no longer united. We fail because we ignored the reasons why this country became so great. We fail because we are more and more ignorant. We fail because we are blind, self involved, greedy and basically dumb. I am not saying that this applies to all of us but it applies to a majority of the people. Sometimes even the most educated fails to see the big picture.

The truth of the matter is we are no longer the most powerful nation on Earth. We think that we are because we have all these nukes and have a large military. I believe however that right now we are at one of our weakest moments. Our military has been stretched across the world fighting unnecessary wars, and loosing thousands of good men. Now, a rare amount of people wants to enlist because of the horror stories they hear about the military. Our currents soldiers serving more than they are required because there are not enough soldiers to rotate them. True, we have nukes but who on this Earth really wants to use that unless they are mentally demented. The notion that we are undefeated has been a myth for ages now ever since the Korean wars, passing by the catastrophic Vietnam War to the disastrous Iraq war. Certainly we have a great military but that does not negate that many countries around the world have also great militaries that can cause serious damage. Just imagine, the ever so powerless Iraqis have done that much damage with few bombs and guns, imagine what a powerful country can do?

But, the wars of the 21^st century are no longer centered on military power. Now it is all about economy and information. That is why many countries concentrate on their scientific development while leaving a very small portion of their budge to defense. We, on the contrary, have done the exact opposite in the last few years in a strictly gong ho move that has been proven to be disastrous. The US, once a strong economic nation is now an economic mess. We became a burden on the world as one UN member has declared. While the world is trying to modernize itself and get more advanced, somehow we lagged behind. While we were sleeping, India, a third-world country, became the world leader in software technology. The famous silicone valley suddenly became a silly-cone. Japan, China, Korea are getting more advanced by the second and just look at the automobile industry. GM, the world's biggest automobile country in the world, sold fewer cars than Toyota which is only one company. American cars are now, more and more, less desirable while Japanese cars are rising exponentially in popularity. China launched its first piloted spaceflight in October of 2003 and became the third nation on Earth capable of independently launching its citizens into orbit. That was five years ago. Now they are looking to explore Mars and Saturn. Even cell phones, which technically were invented in the US by a Motorola researcher, are now dominated by foreign countries. Nokia, a Finland based company, is now the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones. Samsung, a Korean based company comes in second while Motorola comes in third but probably will not keep its position for long due to the fast rising LG electronics company. Motorola lost half of its world market share in less than a year.

Currently we are going through a disastrous economic hardship. We have skyrocketing gas and energy prices, six consecutive months of job losses, and the exponential rise of home foreclosures. The dollar is very low compared to other currencies such as the Euro and even the Canadian dollar. Few years ago, many people went to Europe to find bargains. Now Europeans come to the US to find bargains. If we just look around us we can see the hardship affecting everyone. Hours being cut at work, thousands of employees being laid off, bonuses at the end of the year are now erased, companies bankrupting, triple-digit losses at the Dow, debt collectors on rampages, and people working two and three jobs just to be able to survive.

The reasons of our decline will be discussed later, but the point we need to focus on is that this country is being weakened by failed policies, failed politics, failed economics and failed social and even ethical factors. We need to admit that we are facing a problem in order for us to solve the problem. That is, if it is not too late.