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The Democrats Are Missing the Biggest Issue of the 2020 Election

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corbe:
The Democrats Are Missing the Biggest Issue of the 2020 Election

How the nation’s leaders will address the most pressing political reality of our time—namely, the crumbling of the American status quo and, more ominously, the global status quo. America is struggling through a Crisis of the Old Order.

by Robert W. Merry

February 14, 2020

The conventional view of this year’s Democratic nomination battle is that it represents essentially a conflict between the party establishment, described generally as “center-left” in political orientation (Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bloomberg), vs. the more radical leftists (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren). But that isn’t what this campaign season is really about. It’s about how the nation’s leaders will address the most pressing political reality of our time—namely, the crumbling of the American status quo and, more ominously, the global status quo. America is struggling through a Crisis of the Old Order.
 
The Old Order is essentially the order established at the end of World War II and its immediate aftermath. That’s when U.S. GDP encompassed roughly 50 percent of global GDP and as much as 40 percent through the 1960s. Militarily, America bestrode the globe like a colossus. The dollar reigned supreme in global markets. A balance of power was maintained between the West, led by America, and its only rival, Bolshevik Russia, poised on Europe’s back porch with 1.3 million Soviet and client-state troops.

Those days are long gone. The old Soviet threat to Europe no longer exists, but America clings to the notion that Russia is still a mortal threat to the West. NATO, created as a defensive military alliance against that mortal threat, has pushed right up to the Russian border and threatened to snatch Moscow’s dominance over territories that had been part of Russia’s sphere of influence for centuries. U.S. GDP, as a share of global GDP, is down to about 15 percent, reflecting a profound change in America’s global financial standing. The rise of China represents a profound alteration in the global status quo, and yet America seems incapable of confronting that new reality with any effectiveness, bogged down as it is in seemingly endless Middle Eastern wars and military adventures.

In short, the world has changed profoundly while America continues to operate as if the old status quo reins. That by definition is a crisis of the Old Order.

<..snip..>

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/democrats-are-missing-biggest-issue-2020-election-123411

PeteS in CA:
Address? They've been a cause, e.g. Obama's World Apology Tours.

bigheadfred:
The rise of China represents a profound alteration in the global status quo, and yet America seems incapable of confronting that new reality with any effectiveness

That is complete BS to anyone paying any attention to the new trade deals Trump has in the books regarding China.

corbe:

--- Quote from: bigheadfred on February 16, 2020, 05:17:40 pm ---The rise of China represents a profound alteration in the global status quo, and yet America seems incapable of confronting that new reality with any effectiveness

That is complete BS to anyone paying any attention to the new trade deals Trump has in the books regarding China.

--- End quote ---



Not to mention the havoc the Corona Bug is doing to them.

EdinVA:
This guy has some good points but left some out..



--- Quote ---The Old Order is essentially the order established at the end of World War II and its immediate aftermath.
--- End quote ---
The point on this that continually is ignored... The US was the ONLY superpower that had any infrastructure, economy or social structure left in tact after the end of the war and we provided economic support to the entire world in order that they could rebuild their countries.  That is why for 50 years or more, we subsidized every nation, at the expense of our own infrastructure, on earth thru foreign aide.  The time has come for us to focus our financial tool to rebuilding our country.




--- Quote ---The old Soviet threat to Europe no longer exists, but America clings to the notion that Russia is still a mortal threat to the West.
--- End quote ---
A direct Russian invasion maybe not, but a continual "nibbling" away as the border areas of the European countries is alive and well.

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