What About What They Dont Want You To Remember....

I will never forget about the 3,000 innocent people that died unnecessarily on 9/11. I will never forget because not only did innocent PEOPLE die in the Twin Towers, this tragedy was then exploited by every media source to justify the killing of well over 100,000 innocent women and children in foreign lands. No, I do not feel more of an affinity for our 3000 because INNOCENT PEOPLE ARE INNOCENT PEOPLE to me. With the US logging in at 737 military bases worldwide, I hardly think of us as the victims.

The US government and appointed officials who have a vested interest in gaining capital from their war corporations have gone out of their way to get the US public to focus on the 3000 innocent people who died. Actions speak louder than words as the death toll for the first responders on 9/11 now exceeds 1000. Yes, 1/3 of the people who died in those buildings are heroes who helped save thousands and are dying right now. You would figure that these heroes would be first on the list for medical procedures and would get front row seating to memorial ceremonies but they get neither. They are denied adequate health care and are not even invited to the memorial ceremonies. You would figure that if the government and the media really cared about human life the way they are selling, the first responders would be on the TOP of every list as they are dying, literally as I write this.

The truth is they do not care.

Theres millions upon millions of dollars poured into exploiting the US publics emotions to secure a strong support for war which creates more capital (for them of course). Buzz words are all you see: "attacks", "remember","muslim terrorist". You can almost feel the pressure.

If there was any real humanity, they would also mention the 6,500 troops, mostly YOUNG men and women who have been killed so that US war corporations can keep their government contract money flowing. If they really cared about US citizens, they would ensure adequate mental care for the returning vets who are committing suicide in record numbers and worse than that, conspiring to murder more innocent US CHILDREN as we saw a bomb plot foiled at a high school which was planned by a Naval officer in my local city a week ago.

If you think that we are engaged in a war on terrorism and torture gets us leads on plots, then why didnt they take Bin Laden in and waterboard him for more answers for this "fight"? For the patriots who stand by our military choices and torture, why then do you think Usama was not pressed for more Al Qaeda answers being a sole "conspirator"?

On this day, they dont want you to remember any of that. They hope to rally a nation into joining hands in sending our children to die, killing other peoples children in other countries so that a select few can continue their wealth and bloodline.

I DO NOT write this to downplay the death of innocents in the Twin Towers, I write this to be consistent in our declaration of the importance of human life. I do not hate this country, I expect more of it. I feel I personally know some of the strongest and smartest individuals in US history. We all need to OPEN OUR EYES

Gabe Rosales (VNON)

Taking AIM on the Airwaves!

AIM East Coast (NJ) General & MC Enki Graftin Hard for AIM Clika & Guerrilla Republik

Listen to real revolutionary internet radio with The First and Last Radio on Blog Talk Radio, hosted by AIM East Coast Dirty Jerz General Enki and his homie The Apprentice. The First and Last is a potent combination of anti-bullshit political commentary and raw intelligent hip hop. The AIM Raptivist Collective and Guerrilla Republik artists took over the airwaves and killed the ratings records for the third week in a row. Our AIM East Coast New Jersey shot caller Enki has been working on this weeks' playlist to make sure this coming Thursday is just as sick as always. Hit the link to hear previous shows muthafuckas. AIM!

AIM POR VIDA! NO FRONTIN SINCE 2010!

~AK47~

Evolution of Revolutionary Sounds

In researching the music that was inspired by, and was the inspiration of the revolutions of the past, I am energized with the hope, strength and determination, though I analyze the mistakes and misperceptions of the masses and formulate a new interpretation and reason. Not only does this music echo the sentiment from these different societies but it is the breath and the heartbeat of the revolutionary mind. The composers and artists in history had inspired entire classes of people and struck fear in the hearts of the bourgeoisie from either the lyrics calling for an end to an oppressive regime, or by the sounds and notes played, relaying a feeling of triumph for the people. The musicians and composers had a sense of purpose and they gave the listeners hope. Family members would tuck their children in chanting the words from revolutionary marches. These chants and calls for social justice would become the youth’s “nursery rhymes” and would forever be engrained in their psyche. This was embodied in songs like “The Internationale”, to Shostakovich’s seventh symphony that had no lyrics but was a symphonic patriotic triumphant opus. Social change was a way of life and justice was the inspiration for the sounds created.

Just like the popular music of now where we see the youth glued to iPods listening to songs about erasing memories from drinking excessive amounts of alcohol in a “club”, there was popular music in every part of these older societies as well, and just like now, it was usually frowned upon by the revolutionary party. In revolutionary music, strife from the struggle of survival was the source of a message, not to complain, but to spend each breath living to see a better day and find justice for all people. We can also interpret these condemnations of popular music by the revolutionaries as a kind of elite dictatorship, as it was in many instances. We look at this negatively of course because of our negative association with dictatorships and rightfully so. We do however have to examine the elite dictatorship of our own popular music today in terms of what is played on the public radio waves, how it gets there, and who chooses its position in our society. There is still revolutionary music now but you have to search for it and like everything pure in a capitalist society, anything that captivates any amount of people’s attention is immediately processed and mass produced as something “new” to make a profit. Looking at our “radio-friendly” dictatorship today we notice that we are not encouraged to listen to music that upsets the status quo. We are not even taught to be content with what we have and be grateful. We are merely distracted and brainwashed by the commercials we call “music”, urging us to buy into things and that’s how we as a country whose economy is solely based on consumerism (seventy percent of gross domestic product) must function. We are bombarded by music with similar lyrical content aimed at alienating ourselves from ourselves, or the opposite, music encouraging becoming completely self-absorbed. We are herded like cattle to consume, by images of women scantily dressed and by shiny things, the same way we cling to foods high in salt, sugar and animal fat. We haven’t evolved that much in that respect. Our musical dictatorship has emphasized less thinking in music and more selling of ringtones.

I remember doing one of my first pop gigs and in speaking to the musical director he was explaining what kind of music he was creating for a track. He described it as “house” music. The joke was that he wasn’t speaking of the kind of dance club “house” music I was familiar with; he was talking about music he could purchase a house with. No doubt every musician composes for different reasons but in revolutionary music I’ve found the humble appreciation of being able to even own a musical instrument in the first place.

In this article I will examine the different types of revolutionary music in our recent history. We will analyze the lyrics and the context of where revolutionary music was most influential and how it has influenced the revolutionary music of today. Besides that we will see how this type of music has evolved to what it is today, the latest incarnation of revolutionary music: hip hop.

First off, one thing that needs to be acknowledged is the amount of revolutionary symphonies that were composed that did not have any lyrical content but still represented the revolution to the fullest. We cannot downplay the influence strings and woodwinds had on people’s actions. These symphonies from composers spoke volumes about the emotions the disenfranchised had, which voiced universal understandings that crossed all language barriers.

The early classical pieces of pre and post-revolutionary Russia were meant to inspire and rejoice in the hope for the success of the movement. The leaders themselves were greatly moved by these instrumentals though they wanted to stray away from what they called the elite or bourgeoisie culture and listen to pieces that were written specifically for the movement. Stalin addressed a classical piece: “I know nothing of which is greater than the Appassionata; I would like to listen to it every day. It is marvelous and superhuman music. I always think with pride - perhaps it is naïve of me – what marvelous things human beings can do.” These symphonies represented power but they also told tales of some of the strife that came from a war torn country such as what we hear in revolutionary Russia’s composer Shostakovich’s pieces. At a victorious time for the Red Army, Shostakovich composed his eighth symphony. When the piece should have embodied victory, honor and strength, Shostakovich created a dark and bleak work which in reality portrayed the devastation a war torn country was facing. Stalin himself was so perturbed by this lack of patriotism in the music he heard from Shostakovich that he banned this eighth symphony until 1960.

The Marxist regime in Russia, as in many other Marx inspired organizations, believed firmly that art reflects and advances ideology of the class that creates it. Their belief in a “class” form of music inspired them to try to define, identify and help create proletarian music. They classified most popular music and dance tunes in a category of what they called “light genre”, where “degenerates” influenced the laboring masses. They dismissed these songs as “musical surrogates” or “cast-off barroom garbage.” Some people maintained that there was still some value in these urban popular songs, but most Marxists maintained that most all urban pop music was the product of the working class’ assimilation of the second rate music of the bourgeoisie. They believed popular music literally had a narcotic effect which would take away from the working class’s drive to help with social work.

In the US a little later in the twentieth century, another completely different form of music was emerging and also was getting heat, not from a Marxist revolutionary regime but from the opposite: mainstream dominance. These were the revolutionary voices of the African American musicians who were creating jazz music in revolt against classical music of Western Europe. This is what the revolutionaries in Russia and jazz musicians had in common and were adamant about as well. The Russian Marxists were against the classical pieces of the bourgeoisie culture because they felt it represented the monarchy of the czar and his class of people. The young African musician’s musical voices, tenacity and prowess were directly influenced from the lack of tolerance in the United States. Their approach on their instruments was a certain attack on white supremacy and euro centrism. Jazz musicians played with a militancy aimed at contesting western classical music and eviscerating popular main stream music. Jazz’s predecessor was “blues” which was created in the rural African American community. As rural laborers traveled north to more urban industrial areas the music evolved from plantation chants and “field songs”, to music that envelops a high degree of sophistication and complexity, utilizing and combining features of both the compositional/notational and improvisational/oral traditions. Jazz musicians were fighting in their own way by specifically playing in places where no one could dance. This forced people to listen to the music and the intentions were to bring the listener to a whole different level of musical understanding and appreciation. These sounds were pioneered by musicians like Charlie Parker, and Art Tatum.

Lyrical content of patriotic chants throughout the ages have been very similar to each other as most of the time revolts occur from similar circumstances. As Defranzo points out in Revolts and Revolutionary Movements, mass frustration is the largest reoccurring theme in an overturn. The frustration leads to the people looking for some leadership with answers, and in many of the Marxist inspired revolutions, religion wasn’t enough of a focus in hard times. Religion was thought of a convenient way for the masses to stay docile while the church stayed a lucrative business and remained in a tyrannical position of control. Though in Latin American, in countries such as Nicaragua, where revolutionary ideas were stirred up by the holy men, most revolutionaries fight against organized religion as just another part of a corrupt establishment. It is important to also recognize that revolutions are not always backed by a leftist or liberal agenda but some are backed by a “right” or conservative agenda such as in the Iranian revolution where fundamental Islam was at the forefront of the cause. Similarly this occurred in nineteenth century China where a converted laborer led the Chinese to one of the biggest Chinese revolts racking up the highest death toll in human history. In this aspect, the lyrical content of revolutionary songs are not always coming from the same ideology. Some chants may be coming from an actual prayer to overcome “evil”, or in Latin American revolutionary lyrics, songs were written specifically about revolutionary leaders like Che’ Guevara. In any circumstance, these antiestablishment lyrics emphasize overcoming an adversity and general success of the repressed peoples. With many of the world revolutions; we see a draw on Marxist ideas. These ideas shaped revolutionary thought, though many times the movements strayed off course from what Marx actually envisioned. The rural classes weren’t aware of this and/or some didn’t care about the inconsistencies in what Marxist revolutionaries preached. They went along with it anyways, some being educated and some not, similarly to how millions celebrate the birth of a Christ on December 25th every year.

Marx envisioned a state of society where equal opportunity was given to all classes of people by the working proletariat class. This was known as socialism. Eventually when everyone was provided for the need for a government distributing goods would diminish and people’s natural “good” nature would prevail and everything would be beautiful. This final phase would be the final utopian phase of what we call communism today. These are economic theories, not forms of government. Marx never suggested that the working class form political parties and fight for social change through nonviolent means. Even so, workers parties emerged and so did violent revolutionaries who thought the only path to change would be through violent means. In many of the countries that revolted we see it perpetuated by the rural and agricultural class whereas Marx described the revolution coming from the industrial and urban areas.

The final stage of communism was supposed to be “government free”, but that was the opposite of what happened. To add to the pain, the disenfranchised peoples of these societies still live with some kind of hardships in the eyes of the capitalist world when a “Marxist” revolution was successful. We see this in Cuba where social benefits are prized but a selection and choices aren’t. This is simply the nature of two systems. Capitalist markets adhere to the preferences of people who can afford whatever product while providing a diversity of products. Socialism defines needs in much more basic terms such as enough food to eat, clothes, health care and education for everyone. In our society we pride ourselves on being able to purchase the most useless cheap products, made by 3rd world exploited children and their parents. In fact we have been raised to believe this is one of our basic “freedoms”. The fact of not having basic necessities is what the majority of the poor across the globe at any given time are fighting for. This struggle is what unifies the ideas and is what makes revolutionary songs so powerful, regardless of how closely they or their leaders followed an ideal, and in Cuba the lack of musical instruments has not been a hindrance necessarily on the music created there, other than having an instrument being an indescribable privilege. Some of the most talented musicians come from Cuba to this day.

In examining the lyrical content of revolutionary pieces, none encompass such frustration and call for social change as The Internationale. It was created in France after the Paris Commune was crushed and was later used as the first Soviet Union’s National Anthem. It has been reformatted and the lyrics have been adapted at different times but the premise remains the same. These lyrics embody a few different revolutions and can be used to represent the morale of repressed peoples internationally:

Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

Refrain:
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Each at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.

I picked these lyrics from this song specifically because in many ways I feel they are relative to now. The first line calling for workers to arise from their slumber resonates with anyone who is not independently wealthy. Few of us are able to do what we love for work and few are able to utilize their passion in life to survive. In this context, and around the world around the late 19th century with the industrial revolution still progressing, Karl Marx believed factory workers were becoming increasingly alienated from themselves. They had no connection to the finished product and their labor was mechanical and automated. Many in the US today still live this reality, though not in the harsh conditions of a factory per se which we save for the 3rd world. The monotony of the same thing every day creates a zombie like state which is what I feel these lyrics are referring to. “Away with all your superstitions, servile masses arise!” This I interpret as a blow to the religious institutions at that time. The Catholic Church in Europe has ruled for the past 500 years and with it came the worst, untouchable corruption the world has ever seen. Not only have we seen the ideology of “god’s plan” promote servitude and compliance to oppressive dictators, we have seen huge amounts of money go to the church to create gold pillars while the poor starve. This is also relevant to today. The “Internationale unites the human race” is a powerful lyric echoing millions of people around the worlds struggle. In my interpretation it is uniting the human race that is the most essential thing. This includes the wealthy elite. We can only hope for such things if the elite were to have an immediate consciousness evolution, which is a fanciful idea to me but it helps in the way of unifying as opposed to separating. The “soldiers to will take strike action, they will break ranks and fight no more” addresses the huge amount of young men and women sent by governments to fight wars that essentially are for the benefit of a small few. In regards to Russia at that time, the Bolshevik party was strongly opposed to anymore war with Germany and this echoes their sentiments. “No savior from on high delivers” is a strong statement that waiting for a holy messiah to come and relieve you of your misery on earth is simply making you a sitting duck. Action must be taken and we are the only ones to be held responsible if we fail to rise against tyranny. “Our own right hands the chain must shiver, chains of hatred greed and fear” is a call for everyone to break the mental incarcerations that those who accuse the wealthy of having, are plagued by as well.

When 2% of the population of the world owns more than half the entire world’s wealth we still have a need for revolting today. If you would NOT take your chances being born any nationality, any religion, any sex in any place, than there is still much injustice in the world. Unfortunately the music today does little to portray or acknowledge the horror some live on a regular basis and through many of our religious institutions, especially here in the US, we are taught that we were “chosen” and “blessed” by a god and those outside were not. This was used to justify the genocide of the native American’s as well as used to justify the slave labor we capitalized on and then later took credit for as an American “hard work” ethic and an “American dream”. The US wouldn’t have survived and flourished as a country without the exploitation of people and cheap labor and a few artists know this and report on it.

Throughout the 20th century we saw revolutionary music blossom throughout the world in many forms. We saw reggae music take hold and call for social change with such revolutionary artists as Bob Marley. We saw the UK punk music scene take over in the fight against the establishment with artists like the Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedy’s, and Anti-flag. And here in the US we see the birthplace of one of the world’s newest forms of revolutionary music: hip hop. Hip Hop was born in the south Bronx and was originally the voice of 2 main groups, Puerto Rican Nationalists and black power groups. It eventually evolved to other expressions with its roots in West African griot culture which were groups of traveling singers and poets who were part of an oral tradition dating back hundreds of years ago. From this new hip hop culture emerged the Universal Zulu Nation formed by Afrika Bambaataa, who was a warlord in the South Bronx and founder of the gang the Black Spades. Afrika used his influence to encourage gang members to reform and put their energy positively back into the community after he went on a life changing trip to the mother land: Africa. He eventually became known as the godfather of hip hop and the father of electro funk sound. Hip Hop used elements of jazz, funk and rock backed by a strong beat as the canvas to “flow” over. This has become an amazing art form as hip hop culture has encompassed 4 elements: DJ ing or turntablism, emceeing, graffiti art, and break dancing. Most recently the 5th element has been added which is knowledge. Hip hop has been successful not only as a revolutionary music style as its origins lie in social justice but almost everything that it encompassed in its early stages represented a smack to the status quo. In some instances hip hop beat makers sample jazz music which in itself was rebellious and the verses in between the hooks themselves are jam packed with knowledge and calls for change. We hear chants like in the Internationale in modern day political emcees such as Capital X who stands for prisoners’ rights in a country where African American men make up 12% of the entire US population but make up over 50% of the prison population:

Man they've been feeding me lies, ever since I was an adolescent
Well now watch me flip the script and teach these fucks a lesson
Sure I've lied to survive, but I've never lied to myself
I know I'm going to heaven, cause I already been through hell
Lock down in a cell, a corporate slave
But now I'm rising, like Christ from the grave
And I ain't talking on some Bad Boy shit, or Roca-Fella
I'm talking Filiberto Rios, and Nelson Mandela
Malcolm-X, Karl Marx and Medgar Evers
I'm wielding my machete, till the dragons 7 heads are severed
I ain't just talking about, we need a change,
Man I'm breaking the shackles, handcuffs and chains

Or we see in political emcee, private investigator in human trafficking, S.A.I. (South American Immigrant) who states in his song entitled Breathe:

Someday before my death I’ll see life for what it is worth.
The birth of consciousness will spread the reawakening of all the living dead,
All the souls we’ve shed, freedom that we’ve bled.

Later he says:

Preparing for the day when the shame keeps the sun from shining.
Let’s unite and keep their false creation from rewinding.
Keep the dream from binding, keep the eye from finding.
Wake up and leave your cage put up your fist in rage.
It serves the nerves to surf the war they wage.

Also political emcees like Immortal Technique incorporate lots of research and studying in their lyrical content to enlighten the listener, causing those who are serious about revolution to research what he says. Education is the key always. He says in his song the 4th Branch:

Media censorship, blocking out the video screens
A continent of oil kingdoms, bought for a bargain
Democracy is just a word, when the people are starvin'
The average citizen, made to be, blind to the reason
A desert full of genocide, where the bodies are freezin'
And the world doesn't believe that you fightin' for freedom
Cause you fucked the Middle East, and gave birth to a demon
It's open season with the CIA, bugging my crib
Trapped in a ghetto region like a Palestinian kid
Where nobody gives a fuck whether you die or you live

Since the incarnation of these new styles of revolutionary music, the sounds have been plagiarized and used by people who want less of a pressing message and by people looking at the art forms strictly as “marketable” from a capitalist perspective. Reggae music has impressed a drug and sex culture in southern California turning revolutionary songs into songs promoting 40oz bottles of beer. Punk has evolved to slower soundtracks for multimillion dollar movies and hip hop has become a modern day minstrel show in a lot of circumstances. The famous Amen Brother break, which was a drum sample taken from a band called The Winstons in 1969 was mass produced by countless genres of music and can now be heard backing everything from gangster rap to car commercials.

The artists that stay true to revolutionary music are far and few between but they are out there. Some have been able to sneak their message in with catchy guitar riffs like Rage Against the Machine or use their clout to voice their activism like the late John Lennon but none the less, the roots of revolutionary music remain the same because the basic premise of slavery remains the same. If we are ever to respect life in its entirety, we cannot fall into too much of a capitalist system or too much of a socialist system. The biggest misperception the human race has, is its view on how everything we perceive with our senses is separate, and on a more defined scale, we think we came from different places and that people should be able to lift themselves by their bootstraps because it is a level playing field. This has never been the case and people’s right to excel on their own merits and their adaptability, on a level playing field, is always the last means of success. Wealth is accumulated the same way it always has, through inheritance and as long as imperialists and unfettered capitalists keep speaking solely in terms of pocket lining currency above the value of life, there will be a tremendous amount of energy put towards their overturn.

GO TEAM
PEACE AND SOLIDARITY,
VNON

HOW AMERICA WILL COLLAPSE BY 2025 - by Alfred McCoy

How America Will Collapse (by 2025)
Four Scenarios That Could Spell the End of the United States As We Know It -- In the Very Near Future
By Alfred McCoy

Topics:
U.S. Economy
Afghanistan War Logs
American History
Energy

A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don’t bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines. If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting.

Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.
Future historians are likely to identify the Bush administration’s rash invasion of Iraq in that year as the start of America's downfall. However, instead of the bloodshed that marked the end of so many past empires, with cities burning and civilians slaughtered, this twenty-first century imperial collapse could come relatively quietly through the invisible tendrils of economic collapse or cyberwarfare.

But have no doubt: when Washington's global dominion finally ends, there will be painful daily reminders of what such a loss of power means for Americans in every walk of life. As a half-dozen European nations have discovered, imperial decline tends to have a remarkably demoralizing impact on a society, regularly bringing at least a generation of economic privation. As the economy cools, political temperatures rise, often sparking serious domestic unrest.

Available economic, educational, and military data indicate that, when it comes to U.S. global power, negative trends will aggregate rapidly by 2020 and are likely to reach a critical mass no later than 2030. The American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of World War II, will be tattered and fading by 2025, its eighth decade, and could be history by 2030.

Significantly, in 2008, the U.S. National Intelligence Council admitted for the first time that America's global power was indeed on a declining trajectory. In one of its periodic futuristic reports, Global Trends 2025, the Council cited "the transfer of global wealth and economic power now under way, roughly from West to East" and "without precedent in modern history," as the primary factor in the decline of the "United States' relative strength even in the military realm." Like many in Washington, however, the Council’s analysts anticipated a very long, very soft landing for American global preeminence, and harbored the hope that somehow the U.S. would long "retain unique military capabilitie to project military power globally" for decades to come.

No such luck. Under current projections, the United States will find itself in second place behind China (already the world's second largest economy) in economic output around 2026, and behind India by 2050. Similarly, Chinese innovation is on a trajectory toward world leadership in applied science and military technology sometime between 2020 and 2030, just as America's current supply of brilliant scientists and engineers retires, without adequate replacement by an ill-educated younger generation.

By 2020, according to current plans, the Pentagon will throw a military Hail Mary pass for a dying empire. It will launch a lethal triple canopy of advanced aerospace robotics that represents Washington's last best hope of retaining global power despite its waning economic influence. By that year, however, China's global network of communications satellites, backed by the world's most powerful supercomputers, will also be fully operational, providing Beijing with an independent platform for the weaponization of space and a powerful communications system for missile- or cyber-strikes into every quadrant of the globe.

Wrapped in imperial hubris, like Whitehall or Quai d'Orsay before it, the White House still seems to imagine that American decline will be gradual, gentle, and partial. In his State of the Union address last January, President Obama offered the reassurance that "I do not accept second place for the United States of America." A few days later, Vice President Biden ridiculed the very idea that "we are destined to fulfill [historian Paul] Kennedy's prophecy that we are going to be a great nation that has failed because we lost control of our economy and overextended." Similarly, writing in the November issue of the establishment journal Foreign Affairs, neo-liberal foreign policy guru Joseph Nye waved away talk of China's economic and military rise, dismissing "misleading metaphors of organic decline" and denying that any deterioration in U.S. global power was underway.

Ordinary Americans, watching their jobs head overseas, have a more realistic view than their cosseted leaders. An opinion poll in August 2010 found that 65 percent of Americans believed the country was now "in a state of decline." Already, Australia and Turkey, traditional U.S. military allies, are using their American-manufactured weapons for joint air and naval maneuvers with China. Already, America's closest economic partners are backing away from Washington's opposition to China's rigged currency rates. As the president flew back from his Asian tour last month, a gloomy New York Times headline summed the moment up this way: "Obama's Economic View Is Rejected on World Stage, China, Britain and Germany Challenge U.S., Trade Talks With Seoul Fail, Too."

Viewed historically, the question is not whether the United States will lose its unchallenged global power, but just how precipitous and wrenching the decline will be. In place of Washington's wishful thinking, let’s use the National Intelligence Council's own futuristic methodology to suggest four realistic scenarios for how, whether with a bang or a whimper, U.S. global power could reach its end in the 2020s (along with four accompanying assessments of just where we are today). The future scenarios include: economic decline, oil shock, military misadventure, and World War III. While these are hardly the only possibilities when it comes to American decline or even collapse, they offer a window into an onrushing future.

Economic Decline: Present Situation

Today, three main threats exist to America’s dominant position in the global economy: loss of economic clout thanks to a shrinking share of world trade, the decline of American technological innovation, and the end of the dollar's privileged status as the global reserve currency.

By 2008, the United States had already fallen to number three in global merchandise exports, with just 11 percent of them compared to 12 percent for China and 16 percent for the European Union. There is no reason to believe that this trend will reverse itself.

Similarly, American leadership in technological innovation is on the wane. In 2008, the U.S. was still number two behind Japan in worldwide patent applications with 232,000, but China was closing fast at 195,000, thanks to a blistering 400 percent increase since 2000. A harbinger of further decline: in 2009 the U.S. hit rock bottom in ranking among the 40 nations surveyed by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation when it came to "change" in "global innovation-based competitiveness" during the previous decade. Adding substance to these statistics, in October China's Defense Ministry unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A, so powerful, said one U.S. expert, that it "blows away the existing No. 1 machine" in America.

Add to this clear evidence that the U.S. education system, that source of future scientists and innovators, has been falling behind its competitors. After leading the world for decades in 25- to 34-year-olds with university degrees, the country sank to 12th place in 2010. The World Economic Forum ranked the United States at a mediocre 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010. Nearly half of all graduate students in the sciences in the U.S. are now foreigners, most of whom will be heading home, not staying here as once would have happened. By 2025, in other words, the United States is likely to face a critical shortage of talented scientists.

Such negative trends are encouraging increasingly sharp criticism of the dollar's role as the world’s reserve currency. "Other countries are no longer willing to buy into the idea that the U.S. knows best on economic policy," observed Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. In mid-2009, with the world's central banks holding an astronomical $4 trillion in U.S. Treasury notes, Russian president Dimitri Medvedev insisted that it was time to end "the artificially maintained unipolar system" based on "one formerly strong reserve currency."

Simultaneously, China's central bank governor suggested that the future might lie with a global reserve currency "disconnected from individual nations" (that is, the U.S. dollar). Take these as signposts of a world to come, and of a possible attempt, as economist Michael Hudson has argued, "to hasten the bankruptcy of the U.S. financial-military world order."

Economic Decline: Scenario 2020

After years of swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant lands, in 2020, as long expected, the U.S. dollar finally loses its special status as the world's reserve currency. Suddenly, the cost of imports soars. Unable to pay for swelling deficits by selling now-devalued Treasury notes abroad, Washington is finally forced to slash its bloated military budget. Under pressure at home and abroad, Washington slowly pulls U.S. forces back from hundreds of overseas bases to a continental perimeter. By now, however, it is far too late.

Faced with a fading superpower incapable of paying the bills, China, India, Iran, Russia, and other powers, great and regional, provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace. Meanwhile, amid soaring prices, ever-rising unemployment, and a continuing decline in real wages, domestic divisions widen into violent clashes and divisive debates, often over remarkably irrelevant issues. Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal. The world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.

Oil Shock: Present Situation

One casualty of America's waning economic power has been its lock on global oil supplies. Speeding by America's gas-guzzling economy in the passing lane, China became the world's number one energy consumer this summer, a position the U.S. had held for over a century. Energy specialist Michael Klare has argued that this change means China will "set the pace in shaping our global future."

By 2025, Iran and Russia will control almost half of the world's natural gas supply, which will potentially give them enormous leverage over energy-starved Europe. Add petroleum reserves to the mix and, as the National Intelligence Council has warned, in just 15 years two countries, Russia and Iran, could "emerge as energy kingpins."

Despite remarkable ingenuity, the major oil powers are now draining the big basins of petroleum reserves that are amenable to easy, cheap extraction. The real lesson of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was not BP's sloppy safety standards, but the simple fact everyone saw on "spillcam": one of the corporate energy giants had little choice but to search for what Klare calls "tough oil" miles beneath the surface of the ocean to keep its profits up.

Compounding the problem, the Chinese and Indians have suddenly become far heavier energy consumers. Even if fossil fuel supplies were to remain constant (which they won’t), demand, and so costs, are almost certain to rise and sharply at that. Other developed nations are meeting this threat aggressively by plunging into experimental programs to develop alternative energy sources. The United States has taken a different path, doing far too little to develop alternative sources while, in the last three decades, doubling its dependence on foreign oil imports. Between 1973 and 2007, oil imports have risen from 36 percent of energy consumed in the U.S. to 66 percent.

Oil Shock: Scenario 2025

The United States remains so dependent upon foreign oil that a few adverse developments in the global energy market in 2025 spark an oil shock. By comparison, it makes the 1973 oil shock (when prices quadrupled in just months) look like the proverbial molehill. Angered at the dollar's plummeting value, OPEC oil ministers, meeting in Riyadh, demand future energy payments in a "basket" of Yen, Yuan, and Euros. That only hikes the cost of U.S. oil imports further. At the same moment, while signing a new series of long-term delivery contracts with China, the Saudis stabilize their own foreign exchange reserves by switching to the Yuan. Meanwhile, China pours countless billions into building a massive trans-Asia pipeline and funding Iran's exploitation of the world largest percent natural gas field at South Pars in the Persian Gulf.

Concerned that the U.S. Navy might no longer be able to protect the oil tankers traveling from the Persian Gulf to fuel East Asia, a coalition of Tehran, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi form an unexpected new Gulf alliance and affirm that China's new fleet of swift aircraft carriers will henceforth patrol the Persian Gulf from a base on the Gulf of Oman. Under heavy economic pressure, London agrees to cancel the U.S. lease on its Indian Ocean island base of Diego Garcia, while Canberra, pressured by the Chinese, informs Washington that the Seventh Fleet is no longer welcome to use Fremantle as a homeport, effectively evicting the U.S. Navy from the Indian Ocean.

With just a few strokes of the pen and some terse announcements, the "Carter Doctrine," by which U.S. military power was to eternally protect the Persian Gulf, is laid to rest in 2025. All the elements that long assured the United States limitless supplies of low-cost oil from that region logistics, exchange rates, and naval power evaporate. At this point, the U.S. can still cover only an insignificant 12 percent of its energy needs from its nascent alternative energy industry, and remains dependent on imported oil for half of its energy consumption.

The oil shock that follows hits the country like a hurricane, sending prices to startling heights, making travel a staggeringly expensive proposition, putting real wages (which had long been declining) into freefall, and rendering non-competitive whatever American exports remained. With thermostats dropping, gas prices climbing through the roof, and dollars flowing overseas in return for costly oil, the American economy is paralyzed. With long-fraying alliances at an end and fiscal pressures mounting, U.S. military forces finally begin a staged withdrawal from their overseas bases.

Within a few years, the U.S. is functionally bankrupt and the clock is ticking toward midnight on the American Century.

Military Misadventure: Present Situation

Counterintuitively, as their power wanes, empires often plunge into ill-advised military misadventures. This phenomenon is known among historians of empire as "micro-militarism" and seems to involve psychologically compensatory efforts to salve the sting of retreat or defeat by occupying new territories, however briefly and catastrophically. These operations, irrational even from an imperial point of view, often yield hemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the loss of power.

Embattled empires through the ages suffer an arrogance that drives them to plunge ever deeper into military misadventures until defeat becomes debacle. In 413 BCE, a weakened Athens sent 200 ships to be slaughtered in Sicily. In 1921, a dying imperial Spain dispatched 20,000 soldiers to be massacred by Berber guerrillas in Morocco. In 1956, a fading British Empire destroyed its prestige by attacking Suez. And in 2001 and 2003, the U.S. occupied Afghanistan and invaded Iraq. With the hubris that marks empires over the millennia, Washington has increased its troops in Afghanistan to 100,000, expanded the war into Pakistan, and extended its commitment to 2014 and beyond, courting disasters large and small in this guerilla-infested, nuclear-armed graveyard of empires.

Military Misadventure: Scenario 2014

So irrational, so unpredictable is "micro-militarism" that seemingly fanciful scenarios are soon outdone by actual events. With the U.S. military stretched thin from Somalia to the Philippines and tensions rising in Israel, Iran, and Korea, possible combinations for a disastrous military crisis abroad are multifold.

It’s mid-summer 2014 and a drawn-down U.S. garrison in embattled Kandahar in southern Afghanistan is suddenly, unexpectedly overrun by Taliban guerrillas, while U.S. aircraft are grounded by a blinding sandstorm. Heavy loses are taken and in retaliation, an embarrassed American war commander looses B-1 bombers and F-16 fighters to demolish whole neighborhoods of the city that are believed to be under Taliban control, while AC-130U "Spooky" gunships rake the rubble with devastating cannon fire.

Soon, mullahs are preaching jihad from mosques throughout the region, and Afghan Army units, long trained by American forces to turn the tide of the war, begin to desert en masse. Taliban fighters then launch a series of remarkably sophisticated strikes aimed at U.S. garrisons across the country, sending American casualties soaring. In scenes reminiscent of Saigon in 1975, U.S. helicopters rescue American soldiers and civilians from rooftops in Kabul and Kandahar.

Meanwhile, angry at the endless, decades-long stalemate over Palestine, OPEC’s leaders impose a new oil embargo on the U.S. to protest its backing of Israel as well as the killing of untold numbers of Muslim civilians in its ongoing wars across the Greater Middle East. With gas prices soaring and refineries running dry, Washington makes its move, sending in Special Operations forces to seize oil ports in the Persian Gulf. This, in turn, sparks a rash of suicide attacks and the sabotage of pipelines and oil wells. As black clouds billow skyward and diplomats rise at the U.N. to bitterly denounce American actions, commentators worldwide reach back into history to brand this "America's Suez," a telling reference to the 1956 debacle that marked the end of the British Empire.

World War III: Present Situation

In the summer of 2010, military tensions between the U.S. and China began to rise in the western Pacific, once considered an American "lake." Even a year earlier no one would have predicted such a development. As Washington played upon its alliance with London to appropriate much of Britain's global power after World War II, so China is now using the profits from its export trade with the U.S. to fund what is likely to become a military challenge to American dominion over the waterways of Asia and the Pacific.

With its growing resources, Beijing is claiming a vast maritime arc from Korea to Indonesia long dominated by the U.S. Navy. In August, after Washington expressed a "national interest" in the South China Sea and conducted naval exercises there to reinforce that claim, Beijing's official Global Times responded angrily, saying, "The U.S.-China wrestling match over the South China Sea issue has raised the stakes in deciding who the real future ruler of the planet will be."

Amid growing tensions, the Pentagon reported that Beijing now holds "the capability to attack… [U.S.] aircraft carriers in the western Pacific Ocean" and target "nuclear forces throughou the continental United States." By developing "offensive nuclear, space, and cyber warfare capabilities," China seems determined to vie for dominance of what the Pentagon calls "the information spectrum in all dimensions of the modern battlespace." With ongoing development of the powerful Long March V booster rocket, as well as the launch of two satellites in January 2010 and another in July, for a total of five, Beijing signaled that the country was making rapid strides toward an "independent" network of 35 satellites for global positioning, communications, and reconnaissance capabilities by 2020.

To check China and extend its military position globally, Washington is intent on building a new digital network of air and space robotics, advanced cyberwarfare capabilities, and electronic surveillance. Military planners expect this integrated system to envelop the Earth in a cyber-grid capable of blinding entire armies on the battlefield or taking out a single terrorist in field or favela. By 2020, if all goes according to plan, the Pentagon will launch a three-tiered shield of space drones -- reaching from stratosphere to exosphere, armed with agile missiles, linked by a resilient modular satellite system, and operated through total telescopic surveillance.

Last April, the Pentagon made history. It extended drone operations into the exosphere by quietly launching the X-37B unmanned space shuttle into a low orbit 255 miles above the planet. The X-37B is the first in a new generation of unmanned vehicles that will mark the full weaponization of space, creating an arena for future warfare unlike anything that has gone before.

World War III: Scenario 2025

The technology of space and cyberwarfare is so new and untested that even the most outlandish scenarios may soon be superseded by a reality still hard to conceive. If we simply employ the sort of scenarios that the Air Force itself used in its 2009 Future Capabilities Game, however, we can gain "a better understanding of how air, space and cyberspace overlap in warfare," and so begin to imagine how the next world war might actually be fought.

It’s 11:59 p.m. on Thanksgiving Thursday in 2025. While cyber-shoppers pound the portals of Best Buy for deep discounts on the latest home electronics from China, U.S. Air Force technicians at the Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) on Maui choke on their coffee as their panoramic screens suddenly blip to black. Thousands of miles away at the U.S. CyberCommand's operations center in Texas, cyberwarriors soon detect malicious binaries that, though fired anonymously, show the distinctive digital fingerprints of China's People's Liberation Army.

The first overt strike is one nobody predicted. Chinese "malware" seizes control of the robotics aboard an unmanned solar-powered U.S. "Vulture" drone as it flies at 70,000 feet over the Tsushima Strait between Korea and Japan. It suddenly fires all the rocket pods beneath its enormous 400-foot wingspan, sending dozens of lethal missiles plunging harmlessly into the Yellow Sea, effectively disarming this formidable weapon.

Determined to fight fire with fire, the White House authorizes a retaliatory strike. Confident that its F-6 "Fractionated, Free-Flying" satellite system is impenetrable, Air Force commanders in California transmit robotic codes to the flotilla of X-37B space drones orbiting 250 miles above the Earth, ordering them to launch their "Triple Terminator" missiles at China's 35 satellites. Zero response. In near panic, the Air Force launches its Falcon Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle into an arc 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean and then, just 20 minutes later, sends the computer codes to fire missiles at seven Chinese satellites in nearby orbits. The launch codes are suddenly inoperative.

As the Chinese virus spreads uncontrollably through the F-6 satellite architecture, while those second-rate U.S. supercomputers fail to crack the malware's devilishly complex code, GPS signals crucial to the navigation of U.S. ships and aircraft worldwide are compromised. Carrier fleets begin steaming in circles in the mid-Pacific. Fighter squadrons are grounded. Reaper drones fly aimlessly toward the horizon, crashing when their fuel is exhausted. Suddenly, the United States loses what the U.S. Air Force has long called "the ultimate high ground": space. Within hours, the military power that had dominated the globe for nearly a century has been defeated in World War III without a single human casualty.

A New World Order?

Even if future events prove duller than these four scenarios suggest, every significant trend points toward a far more striking decline in American global power by 2025 than anything Washington now seems to be envisioning.
As allies worldwide begin to realign their policies to take cognizance of rising Asian powers, the cost of maintaining 800 or more overseas military bases will simply become unsustainable, finally forcing a staged withdrawal on a still-unwilling Washington. With both the U.S. and China in a race to weaponize space and cyberspace, tensions between the two powers are bound to rise, making military conflict by 2025 at least feasible, if hardly guaranteed.

Complicating matters even more, the economic, military, and technological trends outlined above will not operate in tidy isolation. As happened to European empires after World War II, such negative forces will undoubtedly prove synergistic. They will combine in thoroughly unexpected ways, create crises for which Americans are remarkably unprepared, and threaten to spin the economy into a sudden downward spiral, consigning this country to a generation or more of economic misery.

As U.S. power recedes, the past offers a spectrum of possibilities for a future world order. At one end of this spectrum, the rise of a new global superpower, however unlikely, cannot be ruled out. Yet both China and Russia evince self-referential cultures, recondite non-roman scripts, regional defense strategies, and underdeveloped legal systems, denying them key instruments for global dominion. At the moment then, no single superpower seems to be on the horizon likely to succeed the U.S.

In a dark, dystopian version of our global future, a coalition of transnational corporations, multilateral forces like NATO, and an international financial elite could conceivably forge a single, possibly unstable, supra-national nexus that would make it no longer meaningful to speak of national empires at all. While denationalized corporations and multinational elites would assumedly rule such a world from secure urban enclaves, the multitudes would be relegated to urban and rural wastelands.

In "Planet of Slums," Mike Davis offers at least a partial vision of such a world from the bottom up. He argues that the billion people already packed into fetid favela-style slums worldwide (rising to two billion by 2030) will make "the 'feral, failed cities' of the Third World… the distinctive battlespace of the twenty-first century." As darkness settles over some future super-favela, "the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression" as "hornet-like helicopter gun-ships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts… Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions."

At a midpoint on the spectrum of possible futures, a new global oligopoly might emerge between 2020 and 2040, with rising powers China, Russia, India, and Brazil collaborating with receding powers like Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States to enforce an ad hoc global dominion, akin to the loose alliance of European empires that ruled half of humanity circa 1900.

Another possibility: the rise of regional hegemons in a return to something reminiscent of the international system that operated before modern empires took shape. In this neo-Westphalian world order, with its endless vistas of micro-violence and unchecked exploitation, each hegemon would dominate its immediate region -- Brasilia in South America, Washington in North America, Pretoria in southern Africa, and so on. Space, cyberspace, and the maritime deeps, removed from the control of the former planetary "policeman," the United States, might even become a new global commons, controlled through an expanded U.N. Security Council or some ad hoc body.

All of these scenarios extrapolate existing trends into the future on the assumption that Americans, blinded by the arrogance of decades of historically unparalleled power, cannot or will not take steps to manage the unchecked erosion of their global position.

If America's decline is in fact on a 22-year trajectory from 2003 to 2025, then we have already frittered away most of the first decade of that decline with wars that distracted us from long-term problems and, like water tossed onto desert sands, wasted trillions of desperately needed dollars.

If only 15 years remain, the odds of frittering them all away still remain high. Congress and the president are now in gridlock; the American system is flooded with corporate money meant to jam up the works; and there is little suggestion that any issues of significance, including our wars, our bloated national security state, our starved education system, and our antiquated energy supplies, will be addressed with sufficient seriousness to assure the sort of soft landing that might maximize our country's role and prosperity in a changing world.

Europe's empires are gone and America's imperium is going. It seems increasingly doubtful that the United States will have anything like Britain's success in shaping a succeeding world order that protects its interests, preserves its prosperity, and bears the imprint of its best values.