American Hegemony is Ending

 The era of American dominance in the world is rapidly coming to a close. It has been apparent that this decline had been taking place for several years, but the events of February 28th cemented America's fate. The war on Iran went about as horribly as could have been imagined for the once powerful nation. 

Iran's response, and continuing response as this is being written, was vastly underestimated in its global implications. Iran was able to circumvent air defenses in Israel and the Gulf Arab nations. Iran has been launching barrages of missiles in small waves at US bases throughout the region at will. The USA's interceptor missiles are so critically low that the US military pulled all of its THAAD batteries from South Korea to be deployed to the middle east. South Korea was infuriated by this decision. Both the South Korean media and leadership have expressed their dismay. 

To the Gulf Arab nations, it is now clear that US bases are not an advantage to them, but clearly a detriment. It is now blatantly obvious that the only middle eastern nation that the Americans ever truly cared to defend was the white settler colony of Israel. The US-Gulf relationship may never recover from these revelations. 

Meanwhile, the American Pacific sphere of operations is diverting ships and troops to the middle east as the Iran war continues to go South. China must now recognize the opportunity that they have been given. It was reported on March 15 that Chinese aircraft have been increasing their activity around Taiwan. If China was truly going to invade the island, now is surely the best time. The Chinese now clearly see that they have an opening that they may not have again for decades to come. 

Europe has never been more irrelevant. The USA eased sanctions on Russian oil to alleviate the inevitable price increase of the Iran war. All the while Trump threatens tariffs on European countries and Denmark is threatened to surrender Greenland to the USA. The Europeans are now largely fighting the Ukraine war of attrition alone, and it is unclear how long they can sustain this fight. 

The USA has burned every bridge in the world in recent years. China is now seen as the rational actor in geopolitics, and everyone sees the writing on the wall. China will overtake the USA as the dominant force in the world regardless of what either nations do from now on. The situation can only get worse for the USA depending on its actions from this point forward. What few allies the USA has left are rapidly being alienated by the events of the Iran war. China does not necessarily need the USA, but the USA needs China for its fragile economy to remain afloat.

The loss of Taiwan would mean the end of the USA's supply of semiconductors and logic chips. The last bastion of the American economy was the artificial intelligence industry. This industry would be instantly decimated by a Chinese move on Taiwan. Geopolitically, it would also end the USA's sphere of influence in the South China sea and in Southeast Asia at large. The Chinese realize all of this and there is a none-zero chance that this is all being taken into consideration by the high command. 

The world balance is changing and the US leadership should have realized this before galavanting in wars of aggression across the global South. Instead, its leaders speak with a bombastic fury that is hard to take seriously. The leadership in China and in other nations around the world are looking at the USA like the train wreck that it is. America's decline was inevitable, but no one expected it to crash and burn so spectacularly.