Tuesday, October 8, 2013

This is what decline of a superpower looks like

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Foreign policy analysts at home and abroad have been predicting for years the inevitable decline of American power, often with a fair amount of schadenfreude and sometimes even with glee.
But now that political dysfunction in Washington is accelerating, the downsizing of the world’s only remaining superpower, all you hear is whining.
“The American self-blockade is shocking,” Karl-Georg Wellmann, a foreign-policy expert for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party, complained to the business daily Handelsblatt. “The position as the West’s leading power will be affected.”