Eric Liu Quotes

What I'm really worried about is war. Will the former rich countries really accept a completely changed world economy, and a shift of power away from where it has been the last 50 to 100 to 150 years, back to Asia?

With the rise of America, the global balance of power shifted away from the old European powers.

Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the U.S. seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline.

Europe has united, China is growing speedily and Russia possesses immense power in terms of fuel resources. The US administration cannot do anything about it.

The 21st century will be quite unlike the preceding two centuries, in which power was located in Europe and the U.S., and the rest of the world consisted of mere supplicants and bit players.

What people recognize is that there's a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward.

Europe’s slow political decline has been disguised for decades by American power.

The U. S. is not the Boss, not the Boss any longer.

Most of the conversation about how geopolitics is changing in the 21st century focuses on the shift from west to east and on how we're moving from the bipolar power equation of the Cold War to a new bipolar relationship, that of the U.S. and China, that determines the mood music for everyone else.

American presence is, you know, the major cause of balance of power and the stability in this region.

The U.S. will lose its status as the superpower of the world financial system. The world will become multi-polar.

The U.S. might enjoy overwhelming military advantage, but its relative economic power, which in the long run is almost invariably decisive, is in decline. The interregnum after the Cold War, far from being the prelude to a new American age, was bearing the signs of what is now very visible: the emergence of a multipolar world.

I love Washington, D.C.; I love this country, but I think over the last hundred years we've built up would I call an arrogant empire: people who think the rest of us are too stupid to make our own decisions.

Since the end of the Cold War, hegemonism has become increasingly unpopular.

The day of small nations has long passed away. The day of Empires has come.

I often heard Latvians compare Russia and America. Latvians find both countries and their leaders possessed of the same mysterious confidence.

This radical transformation of world power relationships reflects primarily in the case of both the USA and the USSR the growth of the productive forces.

Naturally enough, I couldn't have foreseen the vast sea change which has come upon that scene as a result of German reunification and associated events.

The rise of China as a new power is another great challenge for the US. Our failure to properly handle Germany and Japan earlier in the 20th century cost us and the world dearly. We must not make this same mistake with China.

American power in the Middle East is collapsing. It doesn't need much more than a shove, and it will - and that's not going to be a good thing.

So is it always nationalist to resist US globalization? The US thinks it is, and wants you to agree; and, moreover, to consider US interests as being universal ones.

The era when the United States was the dominant global power is steadily coming to an end, and it must find a way of acknowledging this and framing its ambitions and interests accordingly. Instead of claiming the right to continuing primacy in east Asia, for example, it should seek to share that primacy with China.

It's not possible for two countries to be the leading dominant political power at the same time.

We're living through the twilight of American economic dominance.

Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history.