Is U.S. superpower status waning?
Everyone talks about China as an economic threat. But Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, the head of Pace Communications and former ambassador to Finland, said the European Union "has the power to shut us out" at an event Wednesday at UNCG.
McElveen-Hunter said U.S. firms must pay more attention to Europe -- specifically its ability to prevent genetically modified food from entering the EU and that the United States must keep an open dialogue with Europe to craft mutually beneficial economic policies.
She made the remarks during a question and answer session with former Finnish Ambassador to the United Nations Max Jakobson, who spoke about the future of the European Union to a small, but packed room in the Elliot Center.
At a time when the vigilantes patrol the Texas and Arizona borders, hoping to prevent illegal immigrants from crossing into the United States, Jakobson said Europeans fixate on Muslim immigration.
"We do not want people from Islamic countries," he said. "I do not know how we will settle the matter."
Without increased immigration Europe will struggle to grow its economy, he said.
Residents of countries including France and Germany are critical of Muslim immigration because of economic issues, he said. They fear a flood of cheap labor arriving and jeopardizing their jobs, he said. Those countries also oppose open borders for service jobs within the European Union for similar reasons: workers from new EU countries like Slovakia and Slovenia will work for less than those in established EU countries.
But he also said it was a religious question. "The EU is not just a political union, it is a religious union." While the vast majority of Europeans do not attend church, many people fear adding Muslim Turkey to its ranks would radically alter the culture.
He touched on other issues, including Europe's desire to sell arms to China, which the United States opposes, and the hatred of many new EU countries for Russia. Newer members see Russia as an oppressor while older members see it as their main source of oil.
Regardless of whether European countries vote to adopt the proposed constitution in the coming year, the economic ties binding the countries already are enough to make it a formidable world economic power, he said.
What he did not say is whether U.S. superpower status is in jeopardy. It's hard not to question the United States' continued dominance, however, with the rise of the European Union and China and India's fast track growth.
Is the sun setting on U.S. political and economic influence? What do you think?
Comments (1)
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Yes the U.S. superpower is waning and has been since 1971 when we went of the gold standard. We have an 800 billion dollar current account deficit, a 600 billion dollar Governmental deficit when including the raids on the trust funds, an economy over 40 trillion dollars in debt and for every 1 dollar of profit we are adding over 5 dollars in debt to the economy which when you look at that tells me that the economy is not really growing but shrinking.
Foreigners are buying us out at an alarming rate and many of our key industries now are controlled from Europe and Japan.
We have a military which has been drastically shrunk the past 15 years- we have 10 combate divisions, an airforce and Navy which is less then half the size of 15 years ago perhaps that is why Iraq is giving the U.S. so much trouble for the simple reason that the military does not have the punch it had at one time.
It is silly to keep this superpower image when it is just smoke and mirrors.
From the early 1900's until 1971 I would say America was the most powerful country by far but that is nolonger the case.
We accont for 18 percent of the world economy/we had a 50 percent stake just 25 years ago.
We have the most debt.
In the science fields we are slipping/ Europe publishes more scientific journals now then America. The Federal science budgets are declining which is a very bad sign.
We are living off the past wealth that our father's and Grandfather's made for us but that will not last forever.
WE are becoming a sharecropper society which we all work the fields but the profits go outside the borders to Asia and Europe.
Posted on September 26, 2005 4:34 PM