American hegemony
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USA, India, Pakistan.. an eternal prickly braid
Omar Ali argues that the US–India relationship has soured since May 2025 as Trump attacks India’s protectionism, probably over Russian oil, while Pakistan benefits. He sets out his guesses on…
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The West’s War of Decline
X.T.M argues that the American attack on Iran, met with little response, fits a Western pattern of seeking relevance through war in its twilight, and quotes a commenter on how…
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US Economics and Theory of Collapse
Citing the national debt, deficits and a Moody’s downgrade, the post debates whether the US faces economic decline, then applies Joseph Tainter’s theory of diminishing returns on complexity, pointing to…
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Book Review: Grand Delusion; the Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East
Hamid Hussain reviews Steven Simon’s Grand Delusion, which argues that American policymakers persistently believed military force alone could deliver lasting change and security in the Middle East, and traces how…
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The Economic History of the American Empire
Tracing the United States from a rural republic in 1790 to the largest economy, the author argues that American power rests on commodity extraction, construction and manufacturing built up through…
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The Post-White World
The author suggests ‘The Post-White World’ as a book title, tracing Western consolidation from 1492 to Victorian racial hegemony and its unravelling through two World Wars, decolonisation and the Cold…
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Afghanistan. Exit to Chaos?
The author argues that Trump is right to want out of Afghanistan but will probably waste what gains remain, and that the blame for failure will wrongly fall on corrupt…
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The Axis of Autocrats. China & Saudi; Pakistan’s evergreen friends
Reading Imran Khan’s $6bn Saudi aid as a sign of a Saudi-Pakistan-China axis with Pakistan as lynchpin, the author argues a declining America struggles to project power after its botched…
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2019 isn’t 1999: the unipolar moment is over
After reading a book arguing that hegemons keep the peace, Razib Khan contends that the American unipolar moment is nonetheless ending, since China and India together are already about 75…
