NEW YORK (AFP) — First banks collapsed, then global economic stability -- could the United States' superpower status be the next, biggest victim of the financial crisis?
This is hotly denied by many who point out the country's role as the world's most dynamic economy and preeminent military force. But US foes say a dramatic shift has already happened and even some allies suggest the time is coming.
Doomsayers point to the costly and unending conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the worst financial upheaval since the depression of the 1930s, and a crisis of confidence in politics and the domestic economy with few parallels.
Countries like Iran and Venezuela gleefully pronounce the end of "the empire," while Russia trumpets the coming "multi-polar world" in which emerging giants like China, India and Russia itself will hold sway.
Even Peer Steinbruck, the German economy minister, broke ranks last month, saying: "The US will lose its financial superpower status in the global financial system."
A similar warning was sounded recently by British political philospher John Gray, who wrote in The Observer that the world is witnessing "a historic geopolitical shift in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably."
"The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over," he wrote.
There is no shortage of defenders of the United States.
They point to the extraordinarily way that US influence has penetrated every corner of the globe.
True, the rich lists include more Russians, Indians and Mexicans every year, yet all these tycoons eventually do business in New York and London -- and in the English language.
"There is no question that the U.S. will remain the dominant global power," said Nicholas Burns, a former US State Department spokesman and ambassador who now teaches politics and diplomacy at Harvard University, Massachusetts.
"Our military might and broad political reach will remain unrivaled. And, the US will remain the largest global economy with many strengths, including in innovation, biotechnology and nanotechnology," Burns told AFP.
Burns admitted that the financial crisis, which has shaken Wall Street to its foundations, posed a huge threat to the next president -- either Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama.
"The financial crisis is now the central American strategic concern. The first order of business for the new US president will be to right the ship and to provide a solid economic base without which a successful foreign and defense policy will be difficult to achieve," he said.
But Burns -- echoing the message coming out from Obama in particular -- stressed that Washington could not hope to go it alone.
"The lesson for us is that other countries are also rising to world power," he said.
"We will need a stronger web of multilateral relationships to tackle effectively the great transnational problems of the economy, terrorism, and climate change."
For some the spectacle of the US government partly nationalising financial institutions signals the end of the US model of laissez-faire capitalism.
Raymond Lotta, a Marxist writer and author of "America in decline" says "this crisis is unfolding globally, and in explosive and unpredictable ways."
"It's not 'socialism for the rich,' nor a rescue for the people. It's emergency capitalism for the rich, and more brutal capitalism for the rest."
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