Is the Soviet Collapse Dragging the United States Down?
The mix of old and new in the United States's role as world leader creates ambiguity and confusion. The United States is looking for ways to regain its lost economic punch and to consolidate its world hegemony. At present, however, with no true enemy on the horizon, it is being dragged down by the Soviet collapse. The twentieth century was a period of transition but not from capitalism to socialism. The nonmarket alternative or challenge represented by the Soviet Union gave capitalism the means to overcome many obstacles to its reproduction and raise profits to new levels. The United States occupied a privileged position in that process. However, the twenty-first century demands new solutions for capitalism's inherent contradictions, and as a result the United States is apparently still trying to invent a new Soviet Union.
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic
"The Sorrows of Empire" scrutinises the policies, past and present, that have led to American imperialism and the massive defence spending and overseas military deployment that necessarily accompany it. The author suggests that the US could suffer the same "overstretch" that led to the demise of the Soviet Union. Chalmers Johnson outlines the cost of Empire, both for the American people and for the rest of the world. "The Sorrows of Empire" is a sombre and cogent analysis and is written with an authority that is difficult to ignore.
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1