maybe the gloves need to finally come off so israel can fight these jihadi goat herders with both hands rather than one always tied behind her back.

The day is coming when israel is going to actually use its power.

I don't understand how Georgia, the Ukraine, and Belarus are important to America. The issues with Russia seem to be a European problem. Why can't the world's largest collective economy deal with the issues themselves if they are the ones threatened by them?

In addition, why are two of the world's largest economies, South Korea and Japan, so reliant on American support?

I don't know why we should maintain our massive security umbrella even though the mutual threat is gone.

Some of these are accurate, but I think the writer misses the real situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Regardless of how powerful the U.S is, Afghanistan is not going to get a strong central government at any point in the near future, and Pakistan is probably going to continue the trend to a state incapable of using its resources and de facto opposed to the U.S.

I like the title heading of this issue, "Endangered species". Korea and Taiwan would be seen as an emerging power with Ukraine bit of the offensive side si joint pain.

"Pakistan's political instability is its greatest vulnerability ............." and American influence and interruption in Pakistani politics is biggest cause of this instability. With due respect to writer and all, we might now know what democracy is and we might be "pre-modern" (whatever being pre-modern means) and identified with identities other than our national identity, but there is not a slightest sign that military-industrial complex ruling the mighty great USA is capable of teaching us "democratically-righteous" way of life or even if it's capable of doing so, it has any intentions to do so. Perhaps this "We are policemen and all the poor and miserable of world need us" way of thinking is the real problem of USA.

You have to love the "world would end without us" and the "you gonna miss us when we're gone" attitude. In spite of the doomsday scenarios depicted by the author, the world will do just fine. Arab countries won't be invaded randomly. Minor nations won't be artificially overpowered by foreign arms. A country won't be automatically qualified as "evil" just because it doesn't agree with the US anymore. Dream on...

Take Georgia for example. Without the confidence provided by the US money, arms and the promise of assistance, Georgia would never have invaded South-Ossetia, causing the war of 2008. In that case, the usual empty promises of Obama have directly led to the outbreak of a war and to the expected defeat of Georgia.

Other charges are outright ridiculous. The author makes us believe that the US is the only thing in the world preventing each nation from becoming Godzillas. Russia would eat whole Europe, China would annex the whole SE-Asia. Why not add others to the list? Germany invading France, Italy colonizing Northern Africa. Or maybe the Zulus would re-surge and overtake S-SE Africa again without direct US involvement!

Good god zbig!, I remember you from your days back with Jimmy Carter. With all your credentials, awards and honorary degrees, as a pragmatic and objective diplomat you were and still are as diplomatic and objective as a block of cement. In every case you mentioned, the fault you forget or refuse to come anywhere near is the fact that the majority of these problems and trouble spots is due mainly to the U.S.'s own uni-polar imperial myopic egocentric delusional, bull in the China shop foreign policy. In Georgia, with drunken bluster to poke the Russians (Your ethnic background may be a factor as to your feeling of animosity for the Russians), the U.S. and especially j. mccain encouraged the hapless and more delusional amateur shalikashvili to actually believe that if he started a war with the Russians, NATO and the U.S. would be there literally within moments to save him. Iraq, Afghanistan our own exceptionalist ego blinded us from any diplomacy, the costs and consequences of these two run amok most preventable quagmires will be felt for generations, they've brought us nearly to the brink of bankruptcy. The Afghans beat the Russians, now with schoolyard bravado we would show everyone just who we were and what we were made of, we'd go in and fix everything, Oh Yeah, both cases fixed!!!. In the Baltics you seem to forget or just want to ignore the large Russian populations. But the grand daddy of all is the Mid. East, where for over 40 years the U.S. tied it's fortunes and strategic interests with those of israel, a diplomatic anathema which today is threatening the peace of the entire world, a stonewalled unbending "israel can never do wrong policy" stranglehold, With no political will and fear of political suicide to mention or question with any diplomatic objectivity, we are fast approaching the brink of a catastrophe. We need Pragmatists, Diplomats and Statesmen, not bulls in china shops or arrogant pompous hack politicians sitting in their Geographic Society rooms smoking their cigars and drinking their brandy trying to relive the fantasy world of the nineteenth century where they spun their over sized globe Atlas's and fancied themselves playing "The Grand Game" drawing lines haphazardly everywhere and anywhere. The world and history is not what it was moments ago, it is in constant flux and ever changing, and not like some fool, who foolishly said and more foolishly believed "the end of history"!!

I think NICKGP points out the prblem with ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI's article. The world is indeed in in constant flux. BRZEZINSKI still lives in the Cold War. His failure to understand the real worl we are living in now is evidenced by labeling these 8 countried as endangered species and contributing the American decline as a main factor. It is so dumb and simple-minded, and I learn nothing from reading his writing.

Brzezinski is a frayed sock puppet and the fingers belong to The First Sphere of Influence (TFSI), a group of dynastic men who reside in Rome. Hint: not the Vatican.

What he so arrogantly pontificates has been in the works for 50-100 years, so don't act surprised or think that you can actually do something about this mess in this late hour.

TFSI plans 100 years ahead and the original planners rarely see their fruits. Most often, they're lucky to see the roots of their evils push their way into the sun.

The geopolitical voice of TFSI, Nazi Brzezinski, is "accurate" in his assessments, because they're already well into completion, so far beyond help that it's even foolish to try. That's how this Nazi has appeared so adept and forward thinking for decades: his handlers in Rome give him his marching orders and he carries them out. And usually succeeds.

Keep your powder dry, Nazi Brzezinski; you may need it someday. Oh, the powder is the stuff that provides propulsion for the little lead thing in the barrel of that other metallic thing called a--wait, it's on the tip of my tongue--oh, a pistol.

Happy New Year,

William Dean A. Garner

Some of the items on this list, most particularly South Korea, but also possibly Taiwan and the Ukraine, have "nuclear proliferation" written all over them is the US "goes home." This is the response I would expect from a South Korea left to its own devices, as well as from Japan, if they were no longer able to rely on help from the US.

And I think he forgot one country, that he mentions a lot on the "giving end of problems:" Russia. Declining population, full of natural resources and right north of the biggest, and expanding, manufacturing nation of the planet, China. They will not be threatened w military invasion from the south, given their giant nuclear arsenal. They may be slowly absorbed by an immigration "invasion" and buy-ups from China.

But so do ALL of the worlds major economies right now and for the foreseeable future. The biggest losers in a world of shrinking america are the underdeveloped countries barely feeding their own. The expansion of free markets in the world promulgated by the US is THE leading reason for increased efficiencies and conservation of resources enabling the overall decline of the two biggest villians of humanity namely hunger and pestillence. Say what you will about US imperialism but without the stability generated by this country playing both sides of many issues and in many cases paying for balance outright. Europe would be a bigger mess than it is, China would still be collective farming and Israel would not exist. Smallpox, Tuberculosis and many other tragic diseases have been nearly or completely irradicated by strong US leadership and the spread of capitalist markets have brought about world supply chains to channel food and resources allowing the productive to produce and feed their children. These are not small feats to be quickly overlooked. Who among the bigoted races of the world will step into the breach? The work we have undertaken and the accomplishments garnered are THE reason why we have been able to live our lives during arguably the most peaceful time in HUMAN HISTORY. And for that I am grateful. Not always proud of our means but you sure can't argue with the ends. 

The Cold War is over Zbig, get over it. We understand you are Polish and try to be somewhat nationalist, though its pretty obvious you are a globalist, but will you put to rest the Russian bogey-man? It is quite tiresome.

Apparently from the picture, Taiwan has no qualms about gay men openly serving in the army.

"...or seek a much stronger, though historically unpopular, relationship with Japan out of shared democratic values and fear of aggression from Pyongyang and Beijing..."

The most ridiculous idea. Only someone who don't know Korea can think that it can happen. If the Koreans lose confidence in the US, they rather bow to China than ally with Japan.

Strange it may sound, but there is not a single South American or Latin American country in the list. Guess some will benefit from the American decline as well.

does obama get it? im not so sure....he seems to think that appeasement will work...its 3 yrs later since he pledged to sit down with ahmedinejad...SO?

LOL....

Israel will do what it has to do ....the hell with your stinking oil prices...that's of secondary importance.

World peace with the US decline. Looking at the underbelly of US efforts to maintain world peace in the latter half of the 20th century I wonder if we are going to be that much worse off without such "help"

Palijuwana® drug of choice for Trident, Walt, and smokenmirror
I think we should all have a boycott of Palijuwana® the drug that makes palestinian supporters conveniently forget important facts. Here are a delusions caused by smoking Palijuana.

DELUSION 1: JEWS HAVE LITTLE HISTORICAL CONNECTION TO ISRAEL

Jews have lived continuously in the land of Israel for over 3000 years; the Arabs arrived through multiple invasions, beginning in the 7th Century AD. In the year 70 AD, when the Jewish civilization was already over 1000 years old, the Romans forced most of the Jews of Judea and Samaria (now the West Bank) into exile. By the end of the 19th Century, the majority population of Jerusalem was Jewish.

DELUSION 2: THE KORAN DESCRIBES JERUSALEM AS HOLY TO ISLAM

The Koran does not mention Jerusalem because Mohammed never set foot in the city. Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies in 636 after the death of Mohammed. Muslim jihadists claim that the Koran mentions “The Furthest Mosque” — Al-Aqsa in Arabic – and that this is a Koranic reference to Jerusalem. This is a lie. The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem had not been built when the Koran was written, so the reference is to some other (or any other) “furthest mosque.” In contrast, Jerusalem is and has always been a holy city to Jews. The daily prayers of the Jews are focused on Jerusalem. The Hebrew Bible mentions Zion and Jerusalem a total of 809 times.

DELUSION 3: THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON IS NOT JEWISH

This lie is one of many designed to steal the history of the Jews in order to justify erasing them from the Middle East. When the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, it immediately began a campaign to delegitimize Israel by rewriting history with the intention of denying Israel’s right to exist. Among its false claims is that the remains of the Temple of Solomon – the Western Wall – are in fact the remnants of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Al-Aqsa Mosque was deliberately built on top of the Temple after the Muslim conquest to humiliate the conquered. This is the same imperialistic tradition that prompts jihadists today to build a mosque at Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 attack.

DELUSION 4: ISRAEL OCCUPIES ARAB PALESTINE

This is a genocidal claim made by the Muslim Students Association and other pro-Arab groups. It is genocidal because it obliterates the Jewish state. If Israel is actually “Occupied Palestine” then there is no legitimate Jewish state in the Middle East.

In fact, there never was an Arab state called “Palestine” and no one even claimed there was until well after the United Nations created Israel in 1948. The land on which Israel was created by the U.N. was also used by the colonial powers to create Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. It was land that had belonged to Turkey for 400 years. The Turks are not “Palestinians” and are not even Arabs.

There never was an Arab country called “Palestine” or inhabited by “Palestinians.” Before the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, which was sixteen years after the birth of Israel, no Arab political entity was called by that name.

DELUSION 5: ISRAEL IS AN APARTHEID STATE

“Apartheid” refers to the system created by South Africans in which “non-white” residents of that nation were denied citizenship and basic civil rights, and were forced to live in separate residential areas with segregated and inferior educational and medical services. Those wishing to demonize and destroy Israel now falsely call it “an Apartheid state.” But the only true Apartheid states in the Middle East are Islamic states in which Jews are not allowed to live and where Christians, Baha’is and other religious minorities are objects of discrimination and persecution.

There are 1.4 million Arabs living in Israel with civil rights that are the envy of the Arab world. Israeli Arabs vote in Israel’s elections, have representatives in the Israeli Parliament, sit on Israeli courts and on the Israeli Supreme Court, and serve as tenured professors teaching in Israeli colleges and universities. The Arab citizens of Israel have more rights, and enjoy more freedom, education, and economic opportunity than the inhabitants of any Arab or Muslim state.

DELUSION 6: THE ARABS WANT PEACE AND A STATE ON THE WEST BANK

The Arabs rejected peace and a state on the West Bank first in 1948 when it was offered to them by the U.N. and then in 2000 when it was offered by Presidents Clinton and Barak. In 1949, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which the U.N. had designated as a homeland for the Arabs, were annexed respectively by Jordan and Egypt. When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.” Today the “liberation” of Palestine “from the river to the sea” is still the goal of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The war in the Middle East is about the desire of the Arabs and Muslims to destroy Israel; it is not about the desire for a Palestinian state.

DELUSION 7: THE HOLOCAUST IS EUROPE’S PROBLEM; PALESTINIANS HAD NO ROLE IN IT

The Arabs generally and the “Palestinians” specifically were supporters of Hitler in the 1930s. The father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, was a devoted Nazi who spent the war in Berlin and worked with members of the Third Reich to plan death camps for the Jews of the Middle East. Today he is revered by the Palestinians as the George Washington of their cause. The Muslim Brotherhood translated Mein Kampf into Arabic in the 1930s and called for the destruction of the Jewish state at its birth. Today Arab leaders call for the destruction of the Jewish state and routinely deny that the Holocaust with which their forbears collaborated actually took place.

DELUSION 8: ISRAEL’S SECURITY FENCE IS AN “APARTHEID WALL”

This is two lies in one. The West Bank fence is a fence, not a wall. About 97% of the fence is made of chain-link material. The remaining 3% is concrete, designed to repel sniper fire in particular areas. The fence was built in 2003 in response to thousands of suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli citizens by Palestinian terrorists, sponsored and armed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. The fence was built to keep out terrorists, not Arabs.

In the years since the construction of the fence, terrorist attacks have declined by more than 90%. The fence is Israel’s legitimate defense against a ruthless and amoral terrorist aggressor.

DELUSION 9: ISRAEL IS THE CAUSE OF THE REFUGEE PROBLEM

The Palestinians claim there are 5 million Palestinian refugees who fled Israel during the 1948 war. This is false. There were only 500,000 Arab refugees from the 1948 war – an unprovoked war that Egypt and four other Arab states had launched against the newly created state of Israel. In the aftermath of the war, 500,000 Jewish refugees were driven out of the Arab states in the Middle East. There are no Jewish refugees today, sixty years later, because Israel resettled them. Why are there still Arab refugees? The Arabs have been given billions of dollars by Israel and the United States to relocate their refugees. But the Arabs are still in refugee camps. While Israel resettled Jewish refugees, no Arab country would take in the “Palestinians” who were forced into camps and were kept there by the Arab regimes to stir up hatred against the Jews. The refugee “issue” has been created by the Arab regimes as a weapon in their war against the Jews. It should be resolved by resettling the inhabitants of the refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza where almost all of them have lived all their lives.

DELUSION 10: ISRAEL COMMITS WAR CRIMES BY KILLING CIVILIANS

This is the Big Lie, coming as it does from Palestinians who have made terrorist attacks on civilians a weapon of choice, and who make martyrs and national heroes out of suicide bombers.

The Gaza strip was a base for 7,000 rocket attacks against schoolyards and townships in Israel before the Israelis responded in 2007. During Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza rocket sites there was one civilian death for every 30 terrorists. By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”

STOP SMOKING PALIJUANA

This is an interesting article. Many of the issues brought up are cause for concern. Specifically, the issue with Israel is particularly concerning due to the support many Americans have for Israel - I can see the US actually taking action against Iran if there was a conflict. Most of the other issues, I'm sure the US will continue to take a more passive approach. My friend, a Seattle chiropractor expressed concern about how up-and-coming nations will handle issues in those small countries nearby. For example, what will India do if the US doesn't interact as much with Pakistan and Afganistan. I guess we'll have to see what the future holds. But this is simply a shifting of power from the US. Hopefully, good leaders in other countries don't rush to fill the power vacuum.

At least Israel is grateful to the USA. So are most of the other countries in this article, who understand what their fate would be without America. I love what Ann Coulter recently said about ingratitude towards the USA on the part of much of the rest of the world:

".......Ron Paul is not electable as president for several reasons, including that he is only a congressman, is bad on illegal immigration, favors drug legalization and is off the charts on foreign policy.

But it would serve the rest of the world right to have Paul running the show for a term or two. Then they'd find out what it's like to be entirely on their own, protecting their own sea and air lanes, digging themselves out of their own earthquakes, getting invaded and nuked by hostile powers, having their computers hacked by terrorists and buying oil from the new Islamic caliphate. After eight years of President Paul, it would be generations before we'd hear a peep of anti-American sentiment again....."

if you cared for world peace, which you clearly dont, but if you did, you would have big issue with people like hezbollah and hamas...do you have a sister smokeboy? you have any gay relatives or friends? you have any christians in your family? Good Work ! well guess what? in their world, all of them are either harrassed, jailed, beaten or beheaded... massagistas
aeronaves
ar condicionado

One of the readers above stated Iran would have nukes within two years. I tend to think they've already perfected them. We are in such a world where all we do is focus on who is right and wrong, instead of just trying to make peace and agree not to agree or for the sake of things just agree to disagree. I am still trying to figure out why my country, USA, ships out so many barrels of oil when in fact us Americans keep seeing rising gas and oil prices. I just don't get it. Sometimes foreign policy is really foreign to me. Whatever our opinion is of the right and wrong or who should bow to who i in Europe or the Middle East the fact is all of this fighting will eventually impact us here in the States whether we choose to accept it, embrace it , despise it, or ignore it. For it is a small world after all. Regards, VChalets

Brzezinski writes:

" Since 1972, the United States has formally accepted the mainland's
"one China" formula while maintaining that neither side shall alter
the status quo by force. "

This is a gross, basic error, the kind that could and should have been
rectified with a ten second internet search. The US has never formally
accepted China's "One China" formula. Our One China position does not
include Taiwan. The official US position is that the status of Taiwan
is undetermined and has been since the San Francisco Peace Treaty came
into effect in 1952. See this recent Congressional Research Service
report, for example, by the well-known Taiwan specialist Shirley Kan:

https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41952.pdf
""U.S. “One China” Policy
The United States has its own position on Taiwan’s status. Not
recognizing the PRC’s claim over Taiwan nor Taiwan as a sovereign
state, U.S. policy has considered Taiwan’s status as unsettled....""

It's terrifying that someone with so much influence over our policy could be so ignorant of the facts.

Michael