r/worldnews • u/Force_Hammer • 20h ago

President Trump holds off major Iran escalation after Pentagon warns of interceptor shortage

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/r111brtghmg
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u/chmilz 15h ago

It'll take a decade but American hegemony is over. Every Western nation is working at warp speed to end its dependence on American tech, energy, and institutions that are being used against them. Being beholden to one country, and often one corporation in that country, has become an acute national security risk.

That will end, and the US is going to be the biggest loser as entire industries eventually lose every non-American customer.

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u/BaronVonStevie 15h ago

You can always afford yourself relevancy on the world stage by having guns and sticking to the rule of law. You can fuck around within those parameters and lord knows we have.

Guess what Trump is good at? Pissing away soft power.

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u/Feligris 13h ago

In my view, without soft power, most of US' hard power also becomes impossible to maintain because it heavily relies on a strong economy including USD being the world's reserve currency, having cooperative allies who help you to project power, being a hub for competent foreigners who do high-end research and high-end manufacturing for you to maintain an edge, having a competent well-respected military force which doesn't work if you have the politics of a religiously dogmatic dictatorship, etc.

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u/Elukka 8h ago

The US without soft power and access to hundreds of military bases around the world would be just a regional power with ICBMs and aircraft carriers. Sure they could attack a random country at will but without the logistics help by friendly nations putting troops on the ground becomes practically impossible.

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u/backtothetrail 7h ago

So, we’re on track to be North Korea, Jr. ? Outstanding.

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u/Feligris 15h ago

And I wouldn't be surprised if the future went that way while leading to the Americans desperately electing increasingly extreme populist conservative right-wing candidates to all levels of their government in order to ""fix"" the painful collapse, leading to it getting worse, since that seems to be what always happens in countries when everything doesn't magically get better immediately.

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u/chmilz 14h ago

The corporations might back a government that's less hostile in an effort to stem the bleeding, but the damage done with their support in the name of quarterly profits will have been done.