HEG DecliningThe United States is in decline. The economic fallout has left the US lacking in the power and resource and influence to continue as a hegemon. Americas attempts at hegemony are recreated in the Syrian conflict where assads presidency mocks US exceptionalism.Huihou 14(An Huihou. formerly Chinese Ambassador to Algeria, Tunisia and Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt and is now a distinguished research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies http://en.people.cn/n/2014/0605/c98649-8737275.html)The US President Barack Obama announced on August: "The rule of Bashar al-Assad has lost its legitimacy and he must step down." However, far from falling, Bashar al-Assad has secured another three years in power, for many reasons. Most importantly, the United States has made no direct military strikes against Syria. Why did the U.S. military decide not to wield the big stick this time? Boogged down by its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the peak of the United States hegemony is past. The U.S. economy crashed during the 2008 financial crisis, triggering further domestic issues. Coupled with the rise of the emerging economies, it is an indisputable fact that the dominance of the U.S.A. is in decline. Increasingly powerless to halt this decline, the United States is at a loss.Through his implementation of the "Asia-Pacific rebalancing strategy" in 2011, Obama adjusted his Middle East policy by reducing investment in the Middle East, slowing down the implementation of the "new interventionism and seeking shelter in stability. A war in Syria is now contrary to its global strategy, and it would leave the U.S. facing too many associated difficulties. In August 2013, the West contrived the Syrian 'chemical weapons' crisis. The United States schemed with the United Kingdom to threaten Syria, declaring its intention to carry out a limited military strike. But 59% of Americans were opposed to aiding the Syrian opposition. The UK Parliament forced their government to abandon its war plans. Obama had to accept a Russian proposal to turn over control of Syria's chemical weapons in exchange for peace as an "acceptable" conclusion to the crisis. Mr. Qian Wenrong, a reputable Chinese scholar, points out that after World War II and the Cold War, the United States has always been ready to make war, and has always been able to assemble a group of willing helpers. As a result, the U.S. suffers from the illusion that it can do whatever it wants. This time round, Obamas compromises on the Syrian "Chemcal Weapons crisis" testify to the declining strength of the United States. The U.S. is weaker than before. The prime of U.S. hegemony has passed, and is perhaps fated to disappear for ever. Some commentators suggest that Bashar al-Assads participation in the 2014 presidential election will become an excuse for the U.S. to use military force. However, the U.S. response to date has been firstly to claim that the elections are not legitimate and the U.S. will not accept the results, secondly to grant diplomatic status to the Syrian anti-government organization office in the U.S.A., and thirdly to provide $ 27 million in aid to the Syrian opposition. The United States and its allies may have plans for further actions, but so far there is no sign of any military strike against Syria. On May 28 Obama delivered a speech at West Point in which he stated that as far as Syria is concerned, while military action is not a solution, the United States will support the opposition against the authorities. The speech suggests that the option of direct military intervention has been ruled out.A political solution to the Syrian crisis repressents the international consensus. But Western countries, led by the U.S., and some of the countries of the Middle East, still insist on supporting the Syrian opposition and on demanding that Bashar al-Assad should step down as a prerequisite to any talks. Only a political solution will resolve this impasse . As long as the U.S. continues to support the opposition, it will be difficult to end the Syrian civil war; as long as the United States does not launch direct military strikes, Bashar al-Assads regime will not be overthrown. Efforts are still being made to find a political solution to the crisis, but if neither side is willing to change its attitude, any such efforts will be in vain. The Syrian crisis could drag on.The crisis has not evolved in the way that the U.S wished. Not only has Bashar al-Assad refused to step down, he will be re-elected as a president. His continuance in power is a frustrating reminder to the U.S. of its declining hegemony.

China is pushing for the decline of US HEG Now. Chinese banks are advancing on US dominated fields to heighten the value of the yuan and replace the dollar. In the Midst of the recent US failures this means the end of US Heg. OByrne15(Mark OByrne, he currently writes for Goldcore one of britains foremost resources on economics.http://www.goldcore.com/us/gold-blog/u-s-hegemony-and-dollar-threatened-by-new-chinese-bank/) The success of China in attracting countries traditionally within Washingtons sphere of influence to join its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), such as the UK, Israel, Australia and Germany, marks another milestone toward a new multi polar world and a new era in international politics and economics. The AIIB is seen as a potential rival to established lenders the World Bank, IMF and Asian Investment Bank, which are dominated by the United States. The era of infrastructure investment and multilateral banks and financial institutions controlled, in large part, by Washington often as an aggressive strategic policy tool has come to an end. The AIIB which will be controlled by China will compete with the World Bank and the IMF for infrastructure projects and potentially could become a global lender of last resort to sovereign nations such as Greece. It is almost certain that the AIIB will begin lending in yuan another phase in the inevitable demise of the dollar as sole reserve currency and the fulfilment of Chinese ambition to make the yuan an internationally traded currency. Even the Chinese themselves were reportedly surprisedat their success in attracting key U.S. allies particularly Britain to join the AIIB. The U.S. had exerted pressure on its allies to eschew the new Asian bank. However, when Washingtons closest ally Britain broke ranks and announced its application in March it led to a slew of western countries following suit. goldcore_chart2_8-04-15 It is interesting to note that the World Banks US-appointed President has vowed to find innovative ways to work with a new Chinese-led global bank, welcoming it as a major new player in the world. The positive overtures by Jim Yong Kim comes ahead of next weeks World Bank and International Monetary Fund spring meetings in Washington. It also marks a split with the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama which put him forward to head the World Bank in 2012. According to the Financial Times, Chinas success stems from softening of its diplomacy early last year following tensions with Vietnam with the sinking of a Vietnamese fishing vessel. By the time the APEC conference came around China was negotiating agreements and deals with its neighbours, including Japan. That Britain, Israel, Australia and Germany have turned a deaf ear to Washington on an issue that is of such vital strategic importance to the U.S. demonstrates the shocking degree to which the influence of the U.S. has declined in the past fifteen years. While Canada and Japan remain on the sidelines for now many believe that it is just a matter of time before they too join the new bank. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers wrote this week that the failure of strategy and tactics was a long time coming, and it should lead to a comprehensive review of the US approach to global economics. Summers is a U.S. and international political insider and was Chief Economist of the World Bank from 1991 to 1993. Summers worked as the Director of the White House United States National Economic Council for President Obama from January 2009 until November 2010, where he emerged as a key economic decision-maker in the Obama administrations response to the financial crisis. He was widely tipped as the potential successor to Ben Bernanke as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, though after criticism from the left, Obama nominated Janet Yellen for the position. If the U.S. is to arrest the decline in its influence through the World Bank, Summers identifies three areas that Washington needs to address . Firstly, in its approach to the wider world it must rebuild a bipartisan foundation and be free from gross hypocrisy and be restrained in the pursuit of self interest. The U.S. needs to apply the same standards to its state regulators, independent agencies and far-reaching judicial actions that it demands of other countries. He advises against using the dollar as an aggressive geopolitical tool such as the attempts to suffocate the Iranian economy by cutting Iran out of the banking system. We cannot expect to maintain the dollars primary role in the international system if we are too aggressive about limiting its use in pursuit of particular security objectives. Ultimately the new global institution will help China knock the U.S. off its pedestal as the worlds pre-eminent economic and military superpower and will likely lead to a further erosion in trust of the debased dollar as the global reserve currency. The new emerging order should lead to greater geopolitical stability in the long term. The rising economic power of China seeks to work together financially and economically with both NATO members and indeed nations currently at odds with American foreign policy such as Russia and Iran. goldcore_chart3_8-04-15 Iran has been accepted as a founding member of the AIIB. Interestingly, China said that the decision was made by existing members, including China, Britain, France, India and Italy. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has also been accepted. China and Iran have close diplomatic, economic, trade and energy ties. One would hope that this should limit the potential for large-scale conflict involving Israel, the U.S. and certain NATO members and the current black sheep of the international family Iran and Russia. In the shorter term however it may lead to greater geopolitical tension as the neoconservative influence in Washington continues to labour under the delusion that the U.S. is still the indispensable nation chosen by history to rule the world unilaterally. Perversely, the decline in U.S. hegemony especially in the financial and economic realms may embolden the neo-conservative militarists who appear desperate to maintain U.S. hegemony at all costs. The clear shift in economic power from West to East will put further pressure on the dollar. The recent strong bounce in the dollar will likely be seen as a short term cyclical bull market within a secular long term bear market. The coming dollar crisis will impact the currency international monetary system and likely lead to an international monetary crisis. Global property bubbles, leveraged finance and high risk securitization were the elephants in the room in the years prior to the start of global financial and economic crisis in 2007. Many warned but were ignored. There are similar elephants in the room today which are also being ignored. There is the growing risk of an international monetary crisis due to the real risks posed to the global reserve currency the dollar and to the not so single currency, the euro.

Heg declining now, laundry list Sirbladze No Date( Irakil Sirbladze is a graduate student at Queen Mary University of Londonhttps://www.academia.edu/11029838/Is_the_Era_of_US_Hegemony_really_ending) 3 The United States is conventionally indeed almost universally recognized as the worlds only superpower: the sole power with complementary strength in the dimensions of military, economic , political/ideological and soft or social power ( Mann, 2003 cited in Dumbrell, 2010) However , According to former National Security Adviser, Zbignew Brzezinski, the United States capacity to mobilize, inspire, point in a shared direction and thus shape global realities has significantly declined (Brzezinski 2007 cited in Dumbrell, 2010) Back in the 1990s, Charles Krauthammer famously argued about the unipolar moment, which is to be considered as the most striking feature of the post-Cold War world. However, he anticipated that time will come when multipolarity will come back and the world would resemble the pre-World War One era (Krauthammer, 1990:23-24). Hence, now it is time to explore whether there are enough evidence to argue the emergence of multipolarity and thus the end of the US hegemony. In his book After Bush , Robert Singh lists several reasons why the United States can be regarded as a hegemon: Historical perspective. In the late 1980s or even in 1990s, be it in military expenditure, international influence, pop culture or information technology, the United States ran further ahead of all its rivals ; In the military terms, the United States has by far the largest military budget and capability, and continues to have the strongest and the most dynamic economy, of any state in the world, accounting even today for 20 per cent of world output. The US per capita income is around $40,000 compared to a corresponding Chinese figure of 2,300 ; International influence of the United States reflected in the treaties with no fewer than 84 countries ; The major rivals the United States faces are much weaker than they appear : Russian military power is exaggerated, while the economy and social fabric of China , not to mention its political system, face increased strain (Singh cited in Halliday, 2009) However, many scholars propose a number of arguments emphasizing on the decline of the relative power of the United States. Barry Buzan attempts to explore what kind of international order is to be expected in the near future and whether the role of the United States has waned or not. According to him, the stranding of the US is in notable decline on three levels: the acceptability of its policies, its attractiveness as a model of the future and the illegitimacy in international society of hegemony in any form (Buzan,2011:7) 4 The foreign policy decisions made by different administrations throughout the history of the United States were disapproved not only by the enemies of the United States but also by its partners and allies. From Cuba, Vietnam and Chile, and limited nuclear war, through its unquestioning support for Israel and its occupation of Iraq, to obstructionism on controlling climate change and the use of torture, US policy has often been controversial among its friends. In the recent year a general sense of seeing US as a hegemon has weakened due to the non-existence of the great ideology which needs to be contained. After the unilateralist approach used by Bush administration, the replacement of talk about friends and allies and the free world with a harsher instrumental line about the coalitions of willing is a stri king symbol of changing narratives. (Ibid) According to Barry Buzan, disagreements over policy in the Middle East already rank as one of the conspicuous areas of disaffection between the US and Europe and this seems to be continuing tendency ( Buzan, 2011:7) The main point for the question of US superpower legitimacy is that many of the US interventions in the Middle East , both those of the Bush administration and those more long-standing, are widely perceived to have been counterproductive , not only feeding the terrorist problem, but also deepening the many tragedies in the region (Ibid, 8) One of the important aspects of hegemony is how the hegemon state is perceived to be the model for other countries behaviour and how hegemon state is managing to keep its rules of the game spread across the entire international system. Due to the US failures to rightfully represent the liberal future and the shortcomings of the liberal model itself, the perception of the United States as a hegemon has declined.(Buzan, 2011:9)The US is no longer the only model of the future in play and it is far from clear that it will be able to recover the leading position that it once possessed.(ibid) Another additional factor that contributes to the decline of the US hegemony is the widespread illegitimacy of the concept and the practice of hegemony in international society. According to Barry Buzan: This problem would arise for any unipolar power, but it also connects back to the specific US legitimacy deficit in which , under bush administration, the US lost sight of what Watson calls raison de systeme ( the belief that it pays to make the system work) , and this exacerbated what is anyway the illegitimacy of hegemony in itself (Buzan, 2011:10)

International failures has caused heg decline. Heg declining now, shift to the virtual economy and failed wars has led to the erasure of US hegemony.Peng15(Huanqiu Peng, translated by Darius Vukasinovic, published here http://watchingamerica.com/WA/2015/03/11/us-is-suffering-from-hegemonic-menopause/) Ever since the United States began unwittingly moving its physical economy into the brightly beckoning e-commerce world, the actual substance in the U.S. economy has been growing ever thinner. Although the United States created the world's most unbeatable war machine, in the new era of a nuclear balance of power and mutual economic dependence, it has found that physical warfare is no longer viable, and reliance upon financial might alone is simply an untenable position. The reasons for the decline of American hegemony are not to be found externally, but rather, internally. They developed from the double-edged sword of the USA's financial power: the parasitic nature of its selfish and monopolistic capital enterprise system. The famous U.K. historian Arnold J. Toynbee once said that empires collapse as the result of foreign expansion and internal distortions within their societies. The decline of U.S. hegemony stems from engaging in year after year of warfare in the pursuit of strategic resources, the bursting of the virtual economy bubble, and from the way the U.S. approaches its external "challenges."

The United States is on decline. Poor internal politics, the mass media, and diffusion in the global arena have led to a decline in heg now.Turbeville14 (Brandon Turbeville is a writer out of Florence, South Carolina. He holds a B.A. from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, The Road To Damascus- The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, Codex Alimentarius- The End of Health Freedom, Seven Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions, and Dispatches From A Dissident Vol. 1 and 2.)The ultimate decline of the United States, however, is dealt with in Brzezinskis concluding section of the book which it tellingly titled Beyond The Last Global Superpower. Here, Brzezinski opens with the announcement that, not only will American hegemony soon come to an end, but that there will never be another superpower to emerge as powerful as the United States is at the time of the writing of the book, in 1997. He writes, In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but is also likely to be the very last. This is so not only because nation-states are gradually becoming increasingly permeable but also because knowledge as power is becoming more diffuse, more shared, and less constrained by national boundaries. Economic power is also likely to become more dispersed. In the years to come, no single power is likely to reach the level of 30 percent or so of the worlds GDP that America sustained throughout much of this century, not to speak of the 50 percent at which it crested in 1945.[4] Keep in mind that the permeable nature of nation states that Brzezinski refers to is a result of the process of globalization of economies and the harmonization of laws worldwide as well as the globalization of culture. Also notice that Brzezinski states that the concentration of hegemonic power will not be concentrated in the hands of a single state - not that concentrated hegemonic power will cease to exist. Indeed, such world power will simply move from the hands of a perceived national entity to those of an international and global institution. Describing American primacy as having only a relatively brief window of historical opportunity, Brzezinski states that the fall of the American empire will be due to both internal and external reasons namely, pessimism and addiction to entertainment at home and overextension abroad. As quoted above, Brzezinski begins his argument by discussing the lack of will to go to war held by the average American absent the existence of the perception of some serious threat to their safety or the security of the country. He writes, Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat. Such a consensus generally existed throughout World War II and even during the Cold War. It was rooted, however, not only in deeply shared democratic values, which the public sensed were being threatened, but also in a cultural and ethnic affinity for the predominantly European victims of hostile totalitarianisms. In the absence of a comparable external challenge, American society may find it much more difficult to reach agreement regarding foreign policies that cannot be directly related to central beliefs and widely shared cultural-ethnic sympathies and that still require an enduring and sometimes costly imperial engagement. If anything, two extremely varying views on the implications of Americas historic victory in the Cold War are likely to be politically more appealing: on the one hand, the view that the end of the Cold War justifies a significant reduction in Americas global engagement, irrespective of the consequences for Americas global standing; and on the other, the perception that the time has come for genuine international multilateralism, to which American should even yield some of its sovereignty.[5] Brzezinski thus describes a society that loses its taste for war with other cultures as a result of increased diversity in the makeup of the American public and a lack of cohesion of what has been American culture since the beginning of the country. The fact that America has itself earned the label of the hostile totalitarianism that was once foisted onto a number of other countries and governments has finally become too overwhelmingly obvious to hide for many Americans. Brzezinski also identifies the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War as a potential hindrance to the drive to fight and conquer across the globe. In other words, the lack of the perceived direct external threat results in the lack of desire for empire in the minds of the general public. After all, the average person does not desire war or the glory of empire but merely the ability to provide for themselves and live in some level of comfort.[6] Empire is the goal of psychopaths. Still, Brzezinski sees the lack of the presence of the Cold War as a potential excuse for the sacrifice of sovereignty under the guise of genuine international multilateralism and, of course, globalism and globalization. One can clearly see from reading the Grand Chessboard that this concept only alarms Brzezinski in terms of the possibility that the lack of will to expand the empire might come before America has been exhausted in the pursuit of it. Unfortunately for those who will be the cannon fodder for any overseas adventure, that perceived direct external threat was provided to them in the form of radical Muslim fundamentalist terrorism in 2001 and, in 2014, the reemergence of the Cold War propaganda between the United States, Russia, and to a lesser degree, China. In this regard, Brzezinski appears to avert the question of direct confrontation only to present the possibility in apocalyptic terms. He writes, With the more-endowed nations constrained by their own higher technological capacity for self-destruction as well as by self-interest, war may have become a luxury that only the poor peoples of the world can afford. In the foreseeable future, the impoverished two-thirds of humanity may not be motivated by the restraint of the privileged.[7] Of course, by restraint of the privileged one must read restraint against attacking ones military equal. Restraint is by no means a word that could be used when referring to the policies of Western or developed nations toward undeveloped countries. Brzezinski continues by stating, It is also noteworthy that international conflicts and acts of terrorism have so far been remarkably devoid of any use of the weapons of mass destruction. How long that self-restraint may hold is inherently unpredictable, but the increasing availability, not only to states but also to organized groups, of the means to inflict massive casualties by the use of nuclear or bacteriological weapons also inevitably increases the probability of their employment.[8] Yet, while the prospect of general war and the employment of nuclear weapons clearly exists, another possibly even more dangerous threat to the American empire is the culture it has deliberately created for the benefit of the ruling class. While Brzezinski presents the American cultural crisis as a threat merely because its hedonism and self-absorption precludes a desire to fight foreign wars, his acknowledgement of the existence of this crisis is revealing in terms of how the American culture has been manipulated into that of egocentrism and entertainment addiction and a type that eschews sacrifice, cultural connection, and identity. Thus, Brzezinski writes, More generally, cultural change in America may also be uncongenial to the sustained exercise abroad of genuinely imperial power. That exercise requires a high degree of doctrinal motivation, intellectual commitment, and patriotic gratification. Yet the dominant culture of the country has become increasingly fixated on mass entertainment that has been heavily dominated by personally hedonistic and socially escapist themes. The cumulative effect has made it increasingly difficult to mobilize the needed political consensus on behalf of sustained, and also occasionally costly, American leadership abroad. Mass communications have been playing a particularly important role in that regard, generating a strong revulsion against any selective use of force that entails even low levels of casualties. In addition, both America and Western Europe have been finding it difficult to cope with the cultural consequences of social hedonism and the dramatic decline in the centrality of religious-based values in society. . . . . . . The resulting cultural crisis has been compounded by the spread of drugs and, especially in America, by its linkage to the racial issue. Lastly, the rate of economic growth is no longer able to keep up with growing material expectations, with the latter stimulated by a culture that places a premium on consumption. It is no exaggeration to state that a sense of historical anxiety, perhaps even of pessimism, is becoming palpable in the more articulate sectors of Western society.[9] After decades of increasingly decadent, demoralizing, and dehumanizing entertainment, the deliberate dumbing down of each generation, and the intentional destruction of cohesive social and cultural structures, average Americans undoubtedly lack the ability to engage in undertakings that require intellectual commitment or group cohesion that reaches across racial, social, gender, or other divisions. The growing egocentric nature of American culture renders most people entirely incapable of the empathy needed to interact with others in a positive and productive manner. In addition, this type of culture negates the value of self-sacrifice required for the undertaking of a project for the common good, particularly if that project requires long-term planning and effort with the ultimate effects that may not be witnessed in the workers lifetime. While the lack of motivation to fight foreign wars on the behalf of the ruling class is something that should be encouraged and nurtured, the lack of motivation and desire to engage in any activity outside of oneself or the immediate benefits of such activity spells the death of any culture in short order. Such a culture breeds ignorance, apathy, lack of empathy, and cruelty as well as the destruction of the potential for human progress. The latter, however, is of no real consequence to the ruling class. Brzezinski also points out the pervasiveness of drugs in a culture that is already obsessed with immediate gratification and escapism. Compounded with the absurd War on Drugs which violates the rights of all Americans in immeasurable ways, the persistent spread of drug abuse continues to the point of rendering a significant portion of the American populace unemployable and entirely disconnected from the plight of the nation as a whole or simply incapable of taking effective action to change their own miserable situation. A culture of hedonism coupled with an economic depression and an entrenched police state has undoubtedly produced what Brzezinski deems a sense of historical anxiety and pessimism is the order of the day, at least among the more articulate sectors of Western society.[10] Brzezinski writes that this pessimism or lack of confidence has been intensified by widespread disappointment with the consequences of the end of the Cold War.[11] US Heg is declining. NO interdependence with China Apple proves that tech innovations will lead to competition not coopTrigkas15(Vasilis Trigkas, Recently he gave the 40 Years China-EU Relations Global Vision Lecture with Ambassador Hans Dietmar Schweisgut,http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/chimerica-in-decline/)Chinas resilient authoritarianism or at least Beijings continued adherence to a distinctively non-Western polity has for the moment refuted the democratic end of history. Still, the first part of Fukuyamas polarizing thesis, the liberal part in the liberal democracy declaration, has been celebrated by political pundits around the world as the irreversible path of humanity. The term Chimerica has been the epitome of the wishful thinking of liberal intellectuals around the world who deterministically infer that U.S. and Chinese economic interdependence ensures a peaceful hegemonic transition. According to this argument, as both Washington and Beijing engage in a positive sum economic relationship and enhance their material position ad infinitum, the Gates of Janus will be sealed by two prosperous societies who prefer commerce to conquest; consumption to cannons; goods to gunboats. Neither American nor China will dominate the 21st century the liberals ardently declare. Instead, Chimerica a hybrid state governed by the invisible hand of the market or by the very visible hands of cosmopolitan business elites will create perpetual prosperity and peace. Realists have long challenged this liberal orthodoxy. China and the U.S. are on a collision course, they argue, and both states engage in comprehensive balancing economic, military, technological and diplomatic. Chimerica is a phantom that defies reality and fails to observe the unabated securitization trend in Sino-U.S. relations, realists declare. Testing the validity of the Chimerica thesis demands a thorough investigation of the three liberal indicators, the fertilizers of interdependence between China and the United States; that is, the very forces that annihilate the nation state, turn boundaries obsolete, and dictate policies based on interstate rather than intrastate conditions. What are these indicators? Dependence on the Chinese market, supply chain dependence, and cosmopolitan business elites. Chinese Market Dependence: End of the Gold Rush and Rising Indigenous Innovation Capital follows returns. When China opened up its market to foreign capital under Deng Xiaoping, U.S. multinationals followed their animal instincts and invested in the worlds most populous country. Thirty-five years later, the Chinese market shows steady growth, yet for the American companies that have invested in it, returns have underperformed other markets. According to The Economists annual Sinodependency index, for the past three years returns on investments outside China have outperformed returns on investments within China. While this may not be a long-term trend, the significance of opportunity costs in the decision making of large multinationals could lead many of them to change their focus away from the Chinese market. More importantly, according to the Sinodependency index, the three U.S. companies that are most dependent on the Chinese market are all high-tech companies (Apple, Intel, IBM). Those companies will most probably see their shares in China undermined by the increasing indigenous competition as Chinese companies climb the value ladder. Such value evolution from the assembled-in-China model to the designed-in-China model will certainly erode the big market margins of U.S. tech giants and even inspire global competition for market shares. In addition to the natural evolution of competition, the Chinese government has also enacted policies that limit the capacity of foreign companies to compete with local ones, partly in response to National Security concerns after Snowdens revelations on the National Security Agencys de facto partnership with U.S. tech companies. Most importantly, the draconian anti-terror law has terrified American CEOs as it will immediately outlaw foreign companies that do not share important security codes and software backdoors with Chinese authorities. Beijing has already excluded Microsoft from its public procurement activities and has directed multibillion dollar packages of state support to developing an indigenous comprehensive operating system and other technologies where U.S. companies hold a significant lead. If the preferences of Chinas top university graduates is any indicator of Chinas trend toward indigenous innovation, the omens for U.S. companies are ominous. While only five years ago Tsinghua and Peking University Science & Engineering graduates looked to U.S. tech firms for graduate jobs in China, now the majority aim for recruitment in one of Chinas Big 5: Baidu, Ali Baba, Netease, Huawai and Lenovo. Supply Chain Dependence: Factor Price Equalization and Regional Trade Agreements Free trade leads to the eventual convergence of real wages among trade partners. As China enjoys enormous trade surpluses its firms demand more labor, pushing wages higher. Across the Pacific, as the U.S. deals with high trade deficits and low aggregate demand, real wages tend to stagnate. Eventually, the factor price equalization law has it, China and the U.S. will have similar levels of average real wages. To be sure, the average Chinese wage today is much lower than that of the U.S., but the trend has been one of convergence. This as well as the technology revolution in the U.S. has added to the current restoration of U.S. industry and has led CEOs to look for new production networks in less developed Asian economies like Vietnam, Indonesia and India. As the complementarity of the U.S. and Chinese economies declines, more and more companies will be outsourcing their production outside of China, further contributing to Chimericas decline. In addition to the natural evolution of wages and relative prices, the current increasingly complex system of regional trade agreements promoted by both the U.S. and China will distort market signals and further exacerbate competition between China and the U.S. More and more companies will fall victim to new regulatory barriers and will be effectively ostracized from Chinas production networks. Trade friction, decreased complementarity, and unprincipled competition spell doom for Chimerica. Cosmopolitan Elites: CPC Political and Ideological Resilience Proletariats of the world unite! Marx and Engels declared in their communist manifesto: There are no nation-states nor are there intrinsic cultural and historical forces that classify people other than the ownership of the means of production and the material conditions. Surprisingly, capitalists and liberal intellectuals have adopted the same thinking. A banker in Shanghai overlooking the Putong from his luxurious office on the 100th floor of the World Trade Center is little different from a Wall Street banker overlooking Brooklyn. Both believe in one god: Money. Money in a liberal democracy buys influence; in the United States it arguably even buys the White House. Had a similar scenario held for China that is, had business elites been able to pick the general secretary of the CPC then perhaps liberal and cosmopolitan elites in China and America could manage Chimerica and perpetuate the status quo of globalization. However, it is now clear that the CPC is an adaptable organization and Chinas polity gives no weight to business elites when it comes to setting policy. While Jiang Zemins reforms ensure that businesspeople can participate in the collective decision making of the CPC, the ultimate grand strategy of China is shaped by the powerful standing committee of the Politburo. The operational code of the Chinese communist party remains deeply anti-capitalist. It utilizes the free market to optimize the power of a Leninist state and any businessman that dares to confront the party cadres ends up bankrupt and humiliated. To be sure Chinas leading elites may have their own vision of cosmopolitanism, one that adheres to different norms from those of Wall Street, but this difference and the inability of both China and the U.S. to openly accept a world safe for diversity is tearing Chimerica apart.

United States hegemony is declining now. The failure of the United States to create fair and equal societies abroad has come to a head and now has begun eroding the perceived need for the US heg. Pimentel14(Mateo Pimentel Mateo Pimentel is a sixth-generation denizen of the Mexican-United States borderland. Mateo writes for political newsletters and alternative news sources; he also publishes in academic journals. Mateo has lived, worked and studied throughout Latin America for the last decade. He currently pursues a Master of Science in Global Technology and Development, The Coming and Going of American Supremacy,http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/10/how-the-us-won-its-post-war-hegemony/)The international political system changes. Sometimes it changes in accord with hegemonic design. The dynamic history of Americas global development project, and its necessary relationship with sweeping international change, has marked changing global order since the end of World War II. Today, however, there exists the increased reach of multinational corporations, and many transnational actors; they also alters the international political landscape. These entities operate with great autonomy. They work within a largely unregulated, anarchic international space. Their supranational agency (and inter-state context) also lends itself to elements some perceive as threats to general security. International economic gangster-ism, and the choppy waters of cyberterrorism, are two relevant areas. Some further argue that wherever power shifts, global governance must follow. But do these global governance exponents mean to maintain the status quo? Do they want to propel the current liberal world order for any specific reason? Curiously, they do not ask whose security is threatened, or who qualifies to construct global governance. Given such drastic changes to the international political system within just the last few decades, it is important to know how power has become what it is today. Moreover, it is important to ask why this power now enters twilight. Pakistani social scientist, Hamza Alavi, shared his thoughts on overdevelopment in the early 1970s. His observations escorted one simple conclusion in particular: Colonial powers engineered governmental structures of their proxies to serve (and preserve) their imperial interests. Two key components were the colonial states sophisticated civil and military administrations, and their Westernized legal systems. Specifically, colonial powers and empires overdeveloped these two areas so as to create a lack of symmetry and to also skew development within the colony state. They structured their rule accordingly. Alavis observations relate to Samuel P. Huntingtons philosophy regarding modernization. The American political scientist, Huntington, argued that without the constructs Alavi described, popular participation would result in perhaps total political collapse, and would give way to uprisings and general insurrection. Huntington further prescribes the constructs of Alavis overdevelopment as the remedy for such turmoil. Initiating any kind of economic or social development processes, suggested Huntington, come after political process were thoroughly institutionalized, and state apparatuses, thoroughly extended. Alavi and Huntington, however paradigmatically different, both witnessed the end of empire as a politically legitimate organization of power on an international level after WWII. This transition colored the thoughts of many social scientists as the world indeed saw the nation-state, with its self-determination, triumph legitimate. A policy of non-intervention by foreign powers in the domestic/internal affairs of sovereign nation-states, along with striving for development, became the international political norm to emerge with the many unfolding post-colonial states. Post-war America was the ever-industrializing global hegemon of the late 1940s. The US pushed weaker European colonial powers to relinquish control of their colonies. Some cite Americas anti-colonial stance as righteous; however, the fact remains that political independence of colonial states was itself largely inevitable. Other observations indicate that US risked European powers doing more harm than good should it cling to colonial rule too long. America thus sought to expedite the process; she did not want groups radicalizing within colonial states, crowding-out potential alliances with friendly nationalist groups in-colony. One National Security Report (NSC 51) averred that 19th century imperialism was not anathema to communism, especially in more revolutionary areas. To the contrary, the report declared imperialism an ideal propellant for communism. Americas goal then was to propagate militarized nationalism for the sake of resisting international communism, which threatened the private ownership of property in de-colonizing nation-states. The key to sustainable hegemony was making use of the power consolidated within colonies via the overdeveloped state mechanisms treated by theorists like Alavi and Huntington. Alavis overdeveloped asymmetrical civil administrative and military elements, were to theorists like Huntington, the necessary preconditions for both sustainable progress and political stability in new states. Some espoused that such state organs were the strongest gears of post-colonial statesthey could be used to build and modernize states. The problem with overdeveloped civil and military bureaucracies, however, is that they lead to underdeveloped democratic elements. Post-colonial states that have, say, weak assemblies, or representative parties, but yet have strong civil and military administrations, give cause for concern. Democratic deficits call into question the purpose of the states existence: Does it exist to serve foreign capital and other foreign interests? Historically, nationalist forces inside colonial areas already pushed the issue of independence, or sovereignty. Many colonies held movements to agitate for independence. They were well organized, and copious amounts of denizens mobilized. Kenya, Algeria, Indonesia, Malaysiaeven Portugals colonies saw the inevitable dawning of independence from below. Domestic pressure, and human as well as financial costs, forced colonial rulers to grant independence. US hegemony, thought many statecraft architects, would benefit from decolonization and militant nationalism as the post-colonial states sought to further development. Preying on democratically-weak nations to secure a unipolar future of American hegemony would simply become easier. The change for once imperial powers was great after the war. US anti-colonialism precipitated the consolidation of power in Europe. As European empires quit their formal colonizer status, European states had to shift their focus to political and economic issues within Europe. This shift indelibly marked the de-legitimization of empire as an acceptable form of international political rule, and Americas project for international development took flight. But before America heralded the golden age of capitalism through lofty presidential rhetoric in the post-war interim, her commitment to international development and widespread economic liberalism was long underway in her own backyard. US-sponsored development projects plagued one region, Latin America, since the 1930s. Americas Export-Import Bank, established by Roosevelt through his Good Neighbor Policy. Other US-sponsored development institutions, already mediated coercive interactions in the region. America preyed on the overdevelopment of many poor nations within Latin America. US planners clearly subscribed to classically liberal notions of politics within Latin America. The American experience with forcing the economic liberalization of Latin American states invariably influenced US involvement with post-war international reconstruction and development in a quickly anti-colonial world. Competing interests also fuelled Americas global quest for international development after 1945. Three years later, the United States alone contributed virtually half the worlds industrial productionvirtually half. America had not only the will to forge a new global system, but it also had the money and capitalthe necessary productive forcesto do so. The Soviet Union, Americas main post-war economic competitor, actually lost a quarter of its physical capital, and at least twenty-four million lives as a result of the war. Despite the existing competition between the two powerful unions, America yet reigned in its post-war hegemony. Cordell Hull, an important global order architect, eulogized Americas harmonious vision for the future of international relations. He invoked the unrestricted trade that would eliminate international jealousy, which many liberal internationalists claimed causal in the warring among would-be peaceful and prosperous countries. By the late 1960s, though, productivity slowed in Germany, Japan, and in the US itself. One important question was whether Americas post-war determination to create a highly liberalized future among interacting and sovereign states would help illuminate the regression of capitalisms golden. After all, the 1970s failure of capitalisms economic staying force had serious global consequences. International relations expert, David Williams, observes that by the 1970s the second spike in oil prices (coupled with the proposed increased interest rates) clouded Americas global vision. Latin America, for one, suffered a severe amount of crisis despite decades of US-sponsored development plans. Moreover, America had been altering Latin American states for decades. Writes Williams, In this sense the increase in capital flows that is so characteristic of the golden age had a paradoxical impact. Latin American states, claims Williams, had been exposed to private capital, and also to the volatility of these flows, which necessarily included the risks of a volatile and sudden increase in the cost of servicing their debts. America still espoused that liberalized international relations as the key to peace and prosperity. For a time, the US seemed able to secure the international harmony and cooperation it promised it would. The key to its chimeric success, observes Chris Brown, another international relations expert, was that the United States, in the immediate post-war era was the predominant regime with the ability to establish rules of action and enforces them, and the willingness to act on this ability. Brown is right to conclude that America was also living on the capital built up under hegemony. In typical, liberal economic maneuvering, the US sought not to destroy its Cold War competition, but to outspend it; it would use decolonization as a way of solidifying power within newly emerging and already overdeveloped post-colonial states around the world. Ultimately, Americas plan neither eliminated poverty, nor were the benefits of unfettered trade, or future neoliberal agreements, remotely egalitarian. Overdeveloped military and civil bureaucracies were prostituted in order to further American hegemony in post-colonial states. Such conditions merely left these states democratic institutions underdeveloped. New sovereignties remained easy targets for the global, post-war hegemony America had envisioned. Todays horizontal shift in political power is obvious, however. The global political landscape no longer resembles its 1945, post-war self. Take the governments of continental European states, for example, who are seeing an economic shift in power to the countries ringing the Pacific Rim. As opposed to Americas post-war hegemony of many decades, the global shift towards a multiple polarity of political power means shifting alliances. The West will continue to learn that states are now more interdependent than ever. Just as empire that was once the order of the day in the international political system, the American hegemony of the late 20th century eclipses. Nation-states simply cannot expect to act unilaterally anymore; their actions make waves far too big. As Americas project for global development still falters in yielding desirable, egalitarian effects, the American post-war hegemony of the last seven decades is soon to eclipse

US heg declining. Failed Middle East strategies and a blind eye towards Israel have eroded the American presence and exceptionalism.Leverett and Leverett 14(Hillary Mann Leverett is co-author of Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran, senior professorial lecturer at American Universitys School of International Service, and former US National Security Council and State Department Flynt Leverett is co-author of the book Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran and teaches international relations at Penn State University.)As Israel's military kills and injures hundreds of civilians in Gaza - whose population Israel is legally obligated to protect as an occupying power - people around the world, including in the United States, wonder why official Washington appears so indifferent to even the most graphic instances of "collateral damage". The primary reason is that most American policy elites still believe the United States needs to dominate the Middle East, and that Israeli military assertiveness is instrumentally useful to this end - a mindset the Israel lobby artfully reinforces. Since World War II - and especially since the Cold War's end - the US political class has seen Middle Eastern hegemony as key to their country's global primacy. For two decades following Israel's creation, it contributed little to this; thus, the United States extended it virtually no military or economic assistance, beyond negligible amounts of food aid. Washington started providing substantial assistance to Israel only after it demonstrated a unilateral capacity, in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, to capture and hold territory from Arab states allied, for the most part, with the Soviet Union. Support for Israel grew through the rest of the Cold War; after the Cold War, US policymakers doubled down on the US-Israeli "special relationship", calculating that facilitating Israel's military superiority vis-a-vis its neighbours would help solidify US post-Cold War dominance over the strategically vital Middle East. The instrumental nature of the "special relationship" also shaped what seems, from outside, Washington's chronically ineffectual stewardship of the so-called Middle East peace process - especially in seeking a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Notwithstanding rhetorical professions, neither Israel nor the US has ever wanted a two-state outcome. Palestinian self-determination precluded Israel's national security strategy has long rested on a military doctrine - which Israeli officials misleadingly label "deterrence" - requiring that Israel's military be capable of using force first, disproportionately, and whenever and wherever in its neighbourhood Israeli politicians want. Pursuing a two-state solution seriously would ultimately curb this freedom of unilateral military initiative. Moreover, for a Zionist project with inherently religious roots, a two-state outcome would mean surrendering too much of the Jewish Biblical homeland to sustain the Jewish immigration on which Israel's long-term future depends. Likewise, the US never intended the peace process to help Palestinians achieve real self-determination - for that would inevitably constrain Israel's exercise of military supremacy over its neighbourhood, attenuating America's own drive for Middle Eastern dominance. The process has instead been conducted to empower Israel, to subordinate Palestinians and other Arabs into an increasingly militarised US sphere of influence, and to leverage Arab states' buy-in to this scenario. These dynamics are vividly displayed in Israeli and US approaches to Gaza. The roots of Gazans' current trials go back to 2005, when Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza. Widely credited with having pushed Israel to take these steps, Hamas won internationally supervised Palestinian elections the following year. But Gaza's occupation was far from over. While Israel had withdrawn soldiers and settlers, it hardly let Gazans exercise anything approaching sovereignty: Israel's military continued exerting strict control over their access to the world - whether by land, sea, or air - and over flows of food, medicine, and other essential goods into their territory. For nearly a decade, this siege has eroded living conditions for 1.7 million people. After becoming the elected governors of Gaza's population, Hamas offered Israel a long-term truce, if Israel withdrew to pre-1967 borders. Instead of negotiating with Hamas, to consolidate a sustainable and truly self-governing entity in Gaza that could ground broader conflict resolution, Israel and the US rejected Palestinians' electoral choice and worked in multiple ways to isolate Hamas and undermine its popularity by increasing civilian suffering in Gaza - including, in 2006, 2008-2009, and 2012, through military assaults inflicting thousands of Palestinian casualties. In some respects, this approach "succeeded", for a while. By this spring, Hamas was at what even ardent supporters described as its weakest point, in terms of financial resources and regional backing, since its founding. (To be sure, Hamas contributed to this by abandoning its base in Syria and counting on Egypt's short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government to become its biggest regional backer.) US failure But Israel's insistence on perpetuating occupation - even without settlements - is renewing Hamas' resistance agenda. Earlier this week, after Israel accepted an Egyptian ceasefire proposal that would have done nothing to address the ongoing siege, Hamas made its own proposal: a ten-year truce, including a comprehensive ceasefire - if Israel met a set of ten demands. Among them: opening all land crossings into Gaza, lifting the naval blockade, establishing an international airport and a seaport, freeing all prisoners arrested in the Israeli military's current campaign, and committing not to re-enter Gaza for a decade. Israel, of course, is not about to accede to any of this. And so the world waits to see if a ceasefire can be brokered, or whether Israel's military, after bombing at least 1,800 sites in Gaza since July 8, is mounting a "boots on the ground" operation there - which, Israeli officials warn, could last "many months". Among this situation's many tragic aspects, one is particularly galling: After strategically failed interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and (by proxy) Syria, it is abundantly evident that Washington's quest to dominate the Middle East has not just failed. This quest has sapped US capacity to shape positive strategic outcomes in the region and, at least in relative terms, weakened the United States as a global player. Looking ahead, the experience of the Arab Awakening casts further doubt on the long-term plausibility of co-opting unrepresentative Arab governments into a US-led regional order that, among other things, enshrines Israel's perpetual military ascendancy. Yet, US policy elites stick with their hegemonic script. The alternatives to Washington's failed quest for hegemony are twofold: to shift US strategy towards cultivating a stable balance of power in the Middle East and to promote greater reliance on international law and institutions as contributors to regional and global stability. Either or both would compel fundamental revision of US posture towards Israel. Cultivating a stable regional balance will take serious engagement with all relevant actors, including those (Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran) that seek to constrain Israel through both hard and soft power. It will also require the United States to stop enabling Israel's unfettered freedom of military initiative, which contributes to regional instability. Similarly, promoting international legal frameworks as strategic stabilisers is meaningless unless Washington stops shielding Israel from the political consequences of thwarting them - whether by regularly violating international humanitarian law or by opting out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and developing the region's only indigenous nuclear arsenal. Unfortunately for Gaza's people and US interests, the US' political class remains deeply resistant to these imperatives.

Hegemony is an antiquated concept. The assumptions off the 50s can not meet current challenges like transnational terrorism or global flattening.Central European University15(Central European University is a graduate-level crossroads university where faculty and students from more than 100 countries come to engage in interdisciplinary education, pursue advanced scholarship, and address some of societys most vexing problems. See more at: http://www.ceu.edu/article/2015-03-13/multiplex-world-will-follow-us-hegemony-acharya-says#sthash.POqebGVv.dpuf2) The decline of the U.S.s global hegemony should not necessarily lead to instability, according to UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance Amitav Acharya, speaking at CEU March 11. In the lecture, hosted by the Department of International Relations and European Studies, Acharya discussed ideas recently published in his book The End of American World Order. The emerging alternative to U.S. hegemony is a multiplex world, he said, using his own term for the complex global system. It might be debated whether the power of the United States itself is declining or not, said Acharya, who is currently a visiting professor at CEU, and also professor of international relations at the School of International Service, American University. The U.S.-led liberal hegemonical order that has shaped the worlds history for the last 50 years, however, has undoubtedly come to an end. The shift of power has begun the question is what our world will look like in the future. Transnational terrorism is only one of the challenges that the liberal hegemony could not react to in a competent way, he said. The view held by many Western scholars that by rearranging itself, the present hegemony may retain its power, is false, he added. In his view, the world has changed too much in the past decades for a system that was based on the realities of the 1950s. This world, the complex global world, has never existed before. The institutions through which the United States could exert authority NATO, IMF and so on were created in a different time, and while reforms were promised many times to share authority and power, they only come slowly, Acharya added. He also contested the view that emerging powers China, India or Russia will uphold the system of liberal hegemony because they have benefited from it so far. They dont feel as sentimental about liberalism as those in the West, and their system of capitalism is vastly different - only take Chinas state capitalism as an example, he added.

Heg declining now. GDP gap closures, demographic decline, and advantage dissaparence are all reasons that the West has declined. Hellevig14(Jon Hellevig is a Finnish lawyer and businessman who has worked in Russia since the early 1990s. He is the managing partner of the Moscow-based law company Hellevig, Klein & Usov Llc http://orientalreview.org/2014/09/15/why-the-west-is-destined-to-decline/.)I think it was Eric Kraus who pointed out that it is not quite correct to refer to the increasing Western hostilities against Russia as a Cold War, because that connotes the idea of an antagonism between opposing ideological camps, as used to be the case between the Soviet block and the West. Rather, we must reach further back in history and recognize the latest Western pressure on Russia as a classical pursuit of imperial dominion. The fact is that the West, led by the USA and what we rightly should refer to as the EU elite, are assailing Russia in its capacity as the last roadblock to establishing their absolute hegemony in the world, the New World Order. But these Western powers are themselves empires in their death throes. They are ratcheting up the pressure on Russia now, because in a few years it could be too late for them. The West is fast shrinking in significance relative to the rest of the world. This is demonstrated by comparing the GDP of the Western powers as represented by the G7 countries (USA, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Italy and Canada) with the GDP of emerging powers of today. As recently as 1990, the combined GDP of the G7 was overwhelming in relation to that of todays 7 emerging powers: China, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and South Korea (not necessarily constituting one political block). In 1990, the G7 countries had a combined GDP of USD 14.4 trillion and the emerging 7 had a GDP of USD 2.3, but by 2013 the tables had been turned, as the G7 had 32 trillion and the emerging 7 had 35 trillion. Just imagine what the situation will be ten years from now! This is one of the Wests greatest fears. Growth There are fundamental reasons for the decline of the West. Those countries have simply lost their competitive advantages relative to the rest of the world. The Western system used to be superior over the rest of the world in a number of fundamental areas: democracy, market economy, freedom of press, education, technology, rule-of-law, banking and finance. Now these phenomena have been equally embraced or even superseded by the bulk of the emerging world. At the same time the West has had to relinquish some of its colonial powers. Therefore the emerging world will inevitably catch up with the West in economic strength and the accompanying power. Giving the balance in their favor in world population, the West risks being marginalized, a process which is going on with breathtaking rapidity. I will focus my analysis on the lesser empire, the EU, the junior partner of the New World Order.

Heg susThe American century will become the American centuries. The United States is still the holder of the largest military, has economic clout and lacks a viable rival. Walsh15(Bryan Walsh the Foreign Editor at TIME, handing international news in the magazine and online. Previously I covered energy and environmental issues for TIME, and was the Tokyo bureau chief in 2006 and 2007.)Today a rising China is the great rival. A 2013 Pew poll of 39 countries found that most people believed China already was or would eventually become the worlds leading superpowerand that included nearly half of Americans. To which Nye says: Not so fast. A pioneer in the theory of soft power and the dean of American political scientists, Nye knows geopolitics. In his new book, Is the American Century Over?, Nye makes a strong case that American geopolitical superiority, far from being eclipsed, is still firmly in place and set to endure. And the biggest threat isnt China or India or Russiaits America itself. Its easy to forget what a global behemoth the U.S. remains today. Take military power: the U.S. not only spends four times more on defense than the No. 2 country, China, but it also spends more than the next eight countries combined. The U.S. Navy controls the seas, and the countrys military has troops on every inhabited continent. Americas armed forces have become more dominant since the dawn of Luces American centurynot less. For nearly 50 years after World War II, U.S. power was checked by the Soviet Union. No longer. The relative decline of American economic clout might seem obvious. By one measurement, China has already passed the U.S. to become the worlds largest economy. But thats in part a trick of perspective. In 1945, thanks largely to the devastation of World War II, the U.S. produced nearly half the worlds GDP. By 1970 that share had fallen to about one-quarter, but as Nye points out, that was less a matter of American decline than a global return to normality. Nearly half of the top 500 international companies are owned by U.S. citizens, and 19 of the top 25 global brands are American. But the most important reason the U.S. will continue to dominate is the lack of a viable rival. Nye dismisses each in turn: the European Union is too fractured, Japan is too old, Russia is too corrupt, India is too poor, Brazil is too unproductive. As for China, Nye expects that as the country keeps growing, it will take up more space on the international stage. But Beijing faces major internal challenges that could derail its rise: a polluted environment, an aging population and inefficient state-owned industries. More important, China conspicuously lacks the ingredient that has made the U.S. uniquean openness toward immigrants. As Lee Kuan Yew once told me, Nye says, referring to the founding father of modern Singapore, China can draw on a talent pool of 1.3 billion people, but the U.S. can draw on the worlds 7 billion.' Its the potential loss of that openness that worries Nye. Should the U.S. decide to shut its borders or turn its back on international affairstwo recurring impulses in U.S. historyall bets are off. If political gridlock becomes permanent or income inequality keeps rising, that too could threaten American supremacy. The question is whether well keep living up to our potential, says Nye. He bets yesand believes that on the whole, thats a good thing for the world. A strong U.S. has helped keep tensions in check in East Asia and has worked to integrate a rising China into the existing international system. In July a NASA probe will visit Pluto for the first time ever, and our exploration of the solar systemled from start to finish by the U.S.will be complete.The US is still the global hegemon. There is no country of the same power level to compete let alone replace US Heg.Lehmann15(Jean-Pierre Lehmann is Professor of International Political Economy at IMD and the Founding Director of The Evian Group at IMD. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jplehmann/2015/04/02/china-and-the-us-the-aiib-fiasco-americas-colossal-loss-of-face/)There is today, I think, little disagreement that the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was the US most monumental foreign policy error since the Vietnam War. Until then during the previous four decades on balance the US could be described as a benign hegemon. With the collapse in the early 1990s of the Soviet Union as a military threat and Japan as an economic threat, the US emerged as the global uncontested hyper-power. Then with the illegal and ill-considered invasion of Iraq George W Bush blew it. In the last dozen years it has been pretty much downhill for both American power and American prestige. The US, according to many, is in decline. That, however, does not mean that it is about to be replaced. As Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote almost twenty years ago (1997): No state is likely to match the US in the four key dimensions of power military, economic, technological, and cultural that confer global political clout. It was true then, it remains true now. The US since Iraq may have lost a good deal of credibility in its hard power clout, but, as Professor Joe Nye repeatedly reminds us: it remains supreme in soft power; hence the American century will survive the rise of ChinaChina is indeed an emerging great power, but Joe Nye is right: the notion that it will replace the US as global hegemon in the foreseeable future is fantasy. It is a notion, incidentally, that one finds mainly among foreign pundits, but that I at least have not come across among Chinese thought leaders. They are more than conscious of the immense challenges that lie ahead. There was no dancing in the Chinese street when the IMF announced that China had overtaken the US in aggregate GDP. At the per capita level, China is still a middle income country and the jury is out on whether it will succeed to graduate, as it hopes to by 2030, to high income status.Heg sustainable Laundry listBremmer 6/3(Bremmer is a foreign affairs columnist and editor-at-large at TIME. He is the president of Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy, and a Global Research Professor at New York University. His most recent book is Superpower: Three Choices for Americas Role in the World)But heres the thing: the U.S. doesnt need to be the most respected country in the world. Under Obama, the U.S. economy has managed to rebound from the depths of the recession; Washington maintains its military superiority over all challengers; American innovation remains unparalleled in technology and energy production; immigrants still flock to U.S. shores to start their new lives. In all the critical metrics, the U.S. remains the worlds only superpower.Heg not declining. China is still far behind in comprehensive capabilities and the US-Sino economies are to interdependent for China to challenge US dominance. Chen15(Dingding Chen is an assistant professor of Government and Public Administration at the University of Macau, Non-Resident Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi)http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/relax-china-wont-challenge-us-hegemony/)Needless to say, the Sino-U.S. relationship is one of the most important yet complicated bilateral relationships in the world today. This explains why Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yangs recent comments on Sino-U.S. relations have stirred up a debate online (here and here). Wang Yang stated that China [has] neither the ability nor the intent to challenge the United States. Partly because it is rare for a senior Chinese leader to make such soft remarks with regard to Sino-U.S. relations and partly because Wangs remarks are seemingly inconsistent with Chinas recent assertive foreign policies, there has been a fierce debate about the true meaning of Wangs remarks in the United States. Most American analysts, however, are skeptical toward Wangs conciliatory remarks and continue to believe that Chinas ultimate aim is to establish a China-centric order in Asia at the expense of the U.S. influence in Asia. In other words, China seeks to replace the U.S. as the new global hegemon. The reactions from the U.S. side, again, reveal the deep mistrust with regard to Chinas long term goals. But such skepticism is misguided and even dangerous to Asias peace and stability if left uncorrected. Why? Because Wang Yang was sincere when he said that China does not have the capabilities and desires to challenge the United States. The evidence of his sincerity is apparent. First let us look at Chinas capabilities, which need to be especially formidable if China wants to challenge the United States. Although Chinas comprehensive capabilities have been growing rapidly for the past three decades, almost all analysts inside and outside of China agree that there is still a huge gap between China and the U.S. in terms of comprehensive capabilities, particularly when the U.S. is far ahead of China in military and technological realms. Chinas economy might have already passed the U.S. economy as the largest one in 2014, but the quality of Chinas economy still remains a major weakness for Beijing. Thus, it would be a serious mistake for China to challenge the U.S. directly given the wide gap of capabilities between the two. Even if one day Chinas comprehensive capabilities catch up with the United States, it would still be a huge mistake for China to challenge the U.S. because by then the two economies would be much more closely interconnected, creating a situation of mutual dependence benefiting both countries. Besides limited capabilities, China also has limited ambitions which have not been properly understood by many U.S. analysts. It is true that Chinas grand strategy is to realize the China dream a dream that will bring wealth, glory, and power to China again but this, by no means, suggests that China wants to become a hegemon in Asia, or to create a Sino-centric tributary system around which all smaller states must obey Chinas orders. Perhaps these perceptions exist in the United States because many U.S. analysts have unconsciously let ultra-realist thinking slip into their minds, thereby believing that states are constantly engaged in the ruthless pursuit of power and influence. But the structure of international politics has fundamentally changed since the end of the Cold War, thus rendering any serious possibility of world hegemony ineffective or even impossible. In essence, the costs of hegemony outweigh the benefits of hegemony in this new era of international politics, thanks to rising nationalism, nuclear weapons, and increasing economic interdependence between major powers. The Chinese leaders understand this new and changed structure of international politics and based on their assessments, they have decided not to seek hegemony, which is a losing business in this new era.China is not working to overtake US Heg. Sino- US relations work to maintain international peace and American dominance. Zurong15(Wu Zurong is a research fellow at the China Foundation for International Studies. - See more at: http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/the-assumption-that-a-rising-china-seeks-hegemony-is-wrong/#sthash.hNo4dL60.dpufThe Assumption that a Rising China Seeks Hegemony is Wrong - See more at: http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/the-assumption-that-a-rising-china-seeks-hegemony-is-wrong/#sthash.hNo4dL60.dpuf)Chinas fast growth in the last few decades has caused certain misconceptions and anxiety among a few scholars on defense and security in the United States. A recent extreme case is the assumption that China has a secret strategy to replace the U.S. as the global superpower around 2049. Although it is claimed that this assumption has been formed by drawing on Chinese documents, speeches, and books (many of which have never been translated into English), Chinese scholars question the logic and inferences applied in the assumption that might have made a tiny error develop into an awful blunder. The strong desire from some American scholars to maintain U.S. dominance in world affairs is natural and easy to understand, especially when they are watching a rising China. However, they should be more objective in observing and conducting research on China and Sino-U.S. relations. To set the record straight in order to reach comparatively objective conclusions, the following facts are not to be ignored. It has become a mainstream idea in Sino-U.S. relations that for the last half century, China and the U.S. have been constantly searching for and expanding common interests in line with the international situation and changes in the world structure. It took about 22 years for the two countries to end estrangement and hostility and to open up a new historical period of cooperation and consultation based on common interest and mutual benefits. Factors leading to the Sino-U.S. opening have involved a number of key issues, such as Chinas position and role in world affairs, resolution of differences on Taiwan, the threat of Soviet expansionism, ending the war in Vietnam, and so on. Neither China nor the U.S. played a more dominant role in their relations because the historical situations have been so complex. It is harmful to purposely conclude that it is not the U.S., but China who dominated the processes, largely for resisting Soviet expansion. Since U.S. president Nixons visit to China, common interest between the two countries grew not only for their cooperation in the struggle against the Soviet expansionism, but also for the expansion of exchanges in the economic and educational areas due to Chinas policy of reform and opening-up to the outside world. It should be stressed that cooperation and exchanges in military and security areas are mutually beneficial, not bestowed as a U.S. unilateral favor to China. It is not realistic or even ridiculous to attempt to change China into a U.S.-style democratic state by providing China with technology or capital. Beyond all expectations, the breakup of the Soviet Union, or the evaporation of the original strategic basis for Sino-U.S. relations, didnt stop the momentum of developing bilateral relations between China and U.S. With Chinas economic growth even amid controversies over human rights, issues involving Taiwan and Tibet, arms control policies, regional security and business relations Sino-US relations have witnessed unprecedented expansion in the past 23 years. Last year the bilateral trade volume surpassed 550 billion USD, bilateral investment reached more than 100 billion USD, and there has been remarkable progress in exchanges and cooperation in the areas of culture, education and tourism. Military exchanges, though short of cooperation in technology and equipment, have also increased in recent years in more areas than ever before. The encouraging tendency is that the two countries are moving from avoiding accidental conflict or confrontation to sustainable cooperation by increasing strategic mutual trust. With world economic globalization surging, the two economies are merging together at an irreversible pace. When one suffers, the other cannot remain free from being encumbered. Chinas rise is inevitable, which can never be stopped by any force in the world. China had been the largest economy in the world for centuries before prior to the 19th century, but lagged behind in the early 19th century, and the gap with the rising world powers became larger after the Opium War in 1840. It is not a surprise that China will again be the largest economy in the world in the near future. China has two hundred-year dreams, one is from 1921 to 2021, that is the dream of the 100 years of the Communist Party of ChinaCPC, the goal of which is for China to resolve the problems of food, clothing, housing and daily necessities for its entire population, and the other is from 1949 to 2049, that is the dream of the 100 years of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), the goal of which is for China to reach a middle-level for developed countries in terms of economics and social development. Even by 2049, there will still be a big gap between China and the U.S., and there will be no such a thing as Chinas replacement of the U.S. as the global superpower. Chinas population is four times that of the U.S. When will per capita GDP of China be equal to that of the U.S.? Perhaps, the answer will not be available for a fairly long historical period. Therefore, it is purely an illusory assumption that China has a secret strategy to replace the U.S. as the global superpower in 2049, not to mention China does not have that intention at all. With a Cold War mentality and zero-sum game logic, such a stale approach to observing China often leads to misunderstanding and misjudgments, resulting in the theory of China threat. Neglecting all the important characteristics of Chinas rise are among the main causes for the blemish in observation and research. China is doing its utmost to make her rise peaceful and beneficial to all, believing that all countries, big or small, are equal in international affairs, and big powers, including China and the U.S., should and can build a new type of relations based on mutual benefit and win-win cooperation. A rising China can not only live in peace with the U.S., but also work together with the U.S. to realize the long-term goal of sustainable common security and common prosperity for the whole world.

China will not overtake US Heg. Chinas economy is declining, and demographic problems mean their human capital is on the decline also. Kim14(William Kim is the editor for the catalyst newspaper, The Catalyst is a weekly independent newspaper produced and managed exclusively by the students of Colorado College. Published for the benefit of the college community and the surrounding local area, the Catalyst aims to bring general interest and academic-oriented news, ideas, and opinions into greater collective viewto act as a catalyst for informed debate.)Predictions that China will overtake the U.S. in the near future assume that China will continue to grow at a tremendous rate. For example, the Economist predicts that China will overtake the U.S. in nominal GDP by 2021 if Chinas growth remains at an average of 7.75 percent for the next decade. However, it is unlikely that China will have a growth rate that high. Chinas growth last year was 7.4 percent. The World Bank estimates that Chinas economy will grow by 6.9 percent in 2015 and 6.8 percent in 2016. From then on, it gets even worse. Jeffrey Kleintop, chief global investment strategist at Charles Schwab, predicts that Chinas economy will grow at a rate of five percent and below in the coming decade. Chinas growth is slowing for several reasons. First, nothing goes up in a straight line forever, especially when it comes to economics. The other Asian Tiger economies grew at a rate of 9 percent for a couple decades before petering out at five to six percent or less. China has already had an average growth rate of 9.91 percent for over 30 years and is past its time. Second, Chinas investment strategy is very inefficient. The Chinese are spending huge amounts on apartment blocks, highways, airports, and high-speed railways. However, the returns on these investments are quickly diminishing since there is simply not enough demand for what China is constructing. One fifth of urban housing is unoccupied. Prices in Chinas top 100 cities have been falling for seven months straight. When I visited Beijing in 2012, I saw a huge shopping mall that was virtually deserted. At best, China will have to adjust to a significantly less ambitious growth model to avoid a crash. At worst, Chinas property bubble will burst, creating a similar situation to what happened when Americas housing bubble burst in 2008. Third, and perhaps worst of all, China is facing a demographic disaster. While the one-child policy has been effective in curbing population growth, it is starting to create nasty side effects. The UN estimates that China will lose 400 million people in the next 25 years. As this occurs, Chinas population will begin to gray as the old outnumber the young. The National Bureau of Statistics says that Chinas working age population is already on the decline. This is damning since Chinas main economic advantage has been its massive pool of cheap labor. Paul Krugman estimates that the demographic crisis will cause the investment rate to fall by 20 percent of GDP. Japan faced a similar crisis in the 90s. Although many observers in the 70s and 80s predicted that Japan would become the worlds largest economy, Japans shrinking and graying population ensured that this did not happen. Even if China overtakes the U.S. as the worlds largest economy, that wont make it a global superpower. After all, the U.S. economy overtook Britains in the late 1800s and Germany surpassed Britain in 1901. Yet Britain would remain the dominant world power until 1939 and the U.S. would not become the hegemon until 1945. Germany never became a global superpower. Being a global hegemon is about more than just having more money than everyone else; it is about being able to project power throughout the world. China is unable to do this because of simple geopolitics. In order to project power globally, one must be safe enough at home to have a surplus of security. Britain is an island and was thus separated from potential threats by water and bad weather. The U.S. is flanked by vast oceans and the two nations that border it have never posed much of a threat. Thus, both countries could afford to spread their foreign policy attention and military resources across the globe. On the other hand, China is surrounded by potential adversaries. It has India to the southwest, the ASEAN nations to the south, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand to the southeast, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan to the east, and Russia to the North (not to mention the string of American military bases that surrounds China). All of these nations have reasons to fear a rising China and many of them have historical hostilities with the Middle Kingdom. While none of them pose a serious threat on their own (except perhaps Japan and India), together they form a formidable barrier that will keep China focused on its own neighborhood rather than the globe.Our evidence assumes your China takeover scenario. US heg sustainable now. China does not have the bond system to compete with the US. Shedlock14(Michael Shedlock, Investment Advisor Representative at Sitka Pacific Capital Management LLC Primary Tel: 707.933.0322,http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/michael-shedlock/end-u-s-dollar-hegemony-not)Over the course of the past decade there has been countless articles on the end of U.S. dollar supremacy, the crash of the dollar, and the rise of the Yuan and Ruble. Recent Examples Libertarian News, August 27, 2014: Petrodollar Tyranny Coming To An End As Russia-China Trade Oil Without Dollars. Zerohedge, August 27, 2014: Nail In The Petrodollar Coffin: Gazprom Begins Accepting Payment For Oil In Ruble, Yuan Kitco, August 26, 2014: Will the U.S. Succeed in Breaking Russia to Maintain Dollar Hegemony? Zerohedge, August 5, 2014: The Rise of the Petroyuan and the Slow Erosion of Dollar Hegemony The Telegraph, July 19, 2014: The dollar's 70-year dominance is coming to an end Global Research, April 08, 2014: Russias Petro-Ruble Challenges U.S. Dollar Hegemony. China Seeks Development of Eurasian Trade. "Russia has just dropped another bombshell, announcing not only the de-coupling of its trade from the dollar, but also that its hydrocarbon trade will in the future be carried out in rubles and local currencies of its trading partners no longer in dollars." Gold Silver World, January 7, 2014: Signs of A Cracking Dollar Hegemony Zerohedge, November 21, 2013: China Fires Shot Across Petrodollar Bow: Shanghai Futures Exchange May Price Crude Oil Futures In Yuan Financial Post, October 4, 2012: China mounts challenge to dollars hegemony Prime Petrodollar Nonsense The most ludicrous of the above articles is by Clive Maund on Kitco. It's a perfect example of misguided, overblown, petrodollar hype. The central thesis of these articles is: It takes dollars to buy oil Oil is starting to trade in yuan and rubles Oil will start trading in other currencies Collapse of the dollar is at hand Yuan will soon supplant the Dollar as world's reserve currency The starting thesis that it takes dollars to buy oil is wrong. As I have pointed out for at least a decade, it does not take dollars to buy oil any more than it takes dollars to buy gold. Gold is priced in dollars. But you can walk into any coin store in the U.K. and buy gold with British Pounds; You can walk into any coin store in China and buy gold in Renminbi (yuan); And you can walk into any coin store in France and buy gold with euros. Oil is priced in dollars. So what? Currencies are fungible. Even if one did need dollars to buy oil (they don't), the pound, Swiss francs, euros, and every other major currency on the planet can instantaneously be exchanged for any other currency at will. [Read: The Emergence of the U.S. Petro-Dollar] That holds true at both the front and back end. Thus, there is no need for Saudi Arabia (or any other oil exporter) to demand euros, or francs, or whatever, when the exporters can instantaneously convert to whatever freely traded currency t