Australian Left Review

Article Title

Comment: ALR 13

Authors

Abstract

POLITICAL CRISIS is not too high a term to describe the unprecedented American situation. Johnson still wears the presidential mantle, posing as the “most powerful man in the world”, with even less pretentions to this than the unworthy successor to Cassius Clay’s world heavyweight title. Johnson is in limbo, a discredited time-server waiting to hand over to a shadowy successor who will have to recast American policy in a world where the most powerful imperialist nation can no longer dominate. This is the most agonising re-appraisal of all; it is the logical end to the grandiose policy formulated at the end of the Second World War. While there are certain parallels with disintegration of the British Empire, the differences are striking. Britain’s decline was more gradual, more apparently inevitable; 40 years ago Ludwell Denny was able to write a book, called “America Conquers Britain’’.