My thoughts about a multi-polar world - Book Report/Review Example

The whole world saw how power changed hands from the United Kingdom to the United States of America for which conversion of the US dollar into gold as the international standard form of money exchange was a major reason. Although gold is no more a standard in currency exchange as it used to be when the League of Nations was the international organization but it died its own death because not playing an effective role in global matters of importance. Currently, the USA is the only super and default power because of its financial and military strength, and its dedication to the cause of democratic functioning of the government in power.

Predictions on the fall of the USA from its position of super power have been made in the 1970s by none other than Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, indicating that in stead of bipolar, the world was getting ready for five super powers. Predictions of similar nature had been made from time to time after a decade gap that the declining period would start for the USA but so far all these predictions have been proved wrong. The prediction of academic Yale historian Paul Kennedy that the United States would get devastated with the over-expansion worldwide and extravagance at home also proved false.

Kennedy put forth the argument that "the sum total of the United States' global interests and obligations is nowadays far larger than the country's power to defend them all simultaneously." Nothing such happened after three years of the Kennedy prediction. On the other hand, the USA’s military might was such that it sent 600,000 soldiers to jump into war with Iraq without transferring any burden of the war on its people although it had to pay the cost of aggression by bearing the affect of mild recession in 1991.

The 1990s was a period when the USA had no fear of declining influence over the world. Reason of an undisturbed maintenance of the status quo was the division of the USSR and no economic challenge from Japan, facing stagnation and had to acquire the national treasures like Pebble Beach and Rockefeller Center to come out of the “lost decade” of stagnation. It was a time when the USA took another plunge into the deep waters of economic expansion, which saw only eight months of negative performance economically in 2001; the wave of economic expansion continued till 2008.

It is the American capitalism that has been superseding the super power each time economic circumstances pose a danger to its unrivalled position. With the wave of globalization, the US is best positioned to get the maximum leverage from the economic restructuring of the business processes. The position of the US has been affected though the maximum due to the housing fiasco and the economic downturn putting the whole world into its impressions because of the globalization impact but like it has happened in the past, in the 1960s, 1970s and later decades, it would come out of recession and would be able to defend its position.

The current happenings of the killing of Al-Qaeda head, Osama bid Laden in Pakistan by the American military and military action against Saddam Hussein in Iraq indicate against the world going