Oh absolutely. I don’t think we’re seeing Behemoth rising [1].
I’m just pointing out that the structural source of American power is our unity across a continent. Nobody else has that hegemony. Our markets are rich because they’re big, and they’re big because they’re unified.
That bigness also reduces the incentives for others to unify, given they can gain our economies of scale through trade and without the pesky reconciliation (or annihilation) unification would require.
I’m not arguing that Eurasian unification is probable. Just that it’s more likely now than it was before, and that’s a real diminishment of American power irrespective of what the accountants say. (I’d also argue that the aforementioned economies enacting a break with America wouldn’t require long-term unification, just a short-term alliance of the power-balancing types that put America and the USSR on the same side of a war.)
I’m just pointing out that the structural source of American power is our unity across a continent. Nobody else has that hegemony. Our markets are rich because they’re big, and they’re big because they’re unified.
That bigness also reduces the incentives for others to unify, given they can gain our economies of scale through trade and without the pesky reconciliation (or annihilation) unification would require.
I’m not arguing that Eurasian unification is probable. Just that it’s more likely now than it was before, and that’s a real diminishment of American power irrespective of what the accountants say. (I’d also argue that the aforementioned economies enacting a break with America wouldn’t require long-term unification, just a short-term alliance of the power-balancing types that put America and the USSR on the same side of a war.)
[1] https://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-world-ocean-versus-the-c...