Politico:

A new report by the intelligence community projects that the United States will no longer be the world’s only superpower by 2030.

“In terms of the indices of overall power – GDP, population size, military spending and technological investment – Asia will surpass North America and Europe combined,” the report concludes.

“Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds” — prepared by the office of the National Intelligence Council of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — projects that the “unipolar” world that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union will not continue.

“With the rapid rise of other countries, the ‘unipolar moment’ is over and no country – whether the U.S., China, or any other country – will be a hegemonic power,” the report argues.

[…]

“The United States’ relative economic decline vis-a-vis the rising states is inevitable and already occurring,but its future role in the international system is much harder to assess,” it argues.

“Global Trends” projects that the United States will retain a unique role in the international system — in part because of its history and past leadership.

“The U.S. most likely will remain ‘first among equals’ among the other great powers, due to the legacy of its leadership role in the world and the dominant role it has played in international politics across the board in both hard and soft power,” it argues.

And the intelligence community does not believe the United States will be supplanted as the world’s only superpower by another country.

“The replacement of the United States by another global power and erection of a new international order seems the least likely outcome in this time period,” the report projects.

If you are frightened that the facts of the report seem to be at odds with the conclusion — there will be no new international order?  Really? — think back to Benghazi, when we learned that the intelligence community has an interest in feeding the Administration the results it wishes to hear.

An end to US hegemony — with global power distributed among a class of equals with varying ideologies (who will then be brought together to set the trajectories of global governance) — is the subjective dream scenario of someone like Obama so deeply steeped in anti-colonialist theory.  It is in fact the long-time dream of nearly all progressives who interest themselves in global (as opposed to merely national) politics.

Obama wants to “level the playing field.”  Which, in progressive Utopian terms, is the creation of global “fairness” — while in practice it means a resurgence of communism, the spread of global Islamism, and pockets of semi-capitalist soft socialist countries all in a permanent state of tension.

Had Obama truly believed in American exceptionalism, or that the US was a net force for good, he would never have taken us down this road.  And yet he did, relying on the mental infrastructure of envy, victimization, and collective historical guilt that took hold in the hearts and minds of the ill-informed and historically ignorant, having been preached at us for decades. What was to Reagan a shining city on a hill is to Obama a repository of decadence and anti-egalitarianism (a conformity of the masses, to be managed by a class of betters), preventing a permanent political and social caste system to form and ossify.

It may be too late to turn the country as founded around.  But it’s never too late to fight for liberty and freedom.

Be an outlaw.  Be the American phoenix.

(h/t geoff B)