Indispensable reading

Another important analyst of America's "Deep State"--the interface between government and the underworld--is Alfred McCoy, distinguished historian and author of "The Politics of Heroin." He coordinated a group of 140 historians to draw some conclusions about the present status of the United States as the world's "indispensable nation."

They concluded that America is an empire in rapid decline, and McCoy lays out four possible scenarios for how that decline will play out over the coming decades, in his article at Tomdispatch:

www.tomdispatch.com/post/175327/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_taking_down_america/

My only quibble with the piece is that they posit a functioning New World Order as a future event. Here's how McCoy describes a possible future in one scenario:

"In a dark, dystopian version of our global future, a coalition of transnational corporations, multilateral forces like NATO, and an international financial elite could conceivably forge a single, possibly unstable, supra-national nexus that would make it no longer meaningful to speak of national empires at all. While denationalized corporations and multinational elites would assumedly rule such a world from secure urban enclaves, the multitudes would be relegated to urban and rural wastelands."

I would suggest that that's a pretty apt description of today's world, regulated by the World Trade Organization. But it may be just a matter of degrees of difference between us; a project of that magnitude, even ten years in the distance, would already be well underway.

--Michael Hasty