(Remember also) Qarun, Pharaoh, and Haman there came to them Moses with Clear Signs, but they behaved with insolence on the earth yet they could not overreach (Us).

(Remember also) Qarun, Pharaoh, and Haman there came to them Moses with Clear Signs, but they behaved with insolence on the earth yet they could not overreach (Us).

Commentators have been warning since the 1980 s that the US may lose its global hegemony for economic reasons budget deficits, a declining share of global GDP, and the switch from net international creditor to net debtor with the historical hypothesis of imperial overreach gaining renewed attention.

Americans have long been skeptical of government, with a tradition of resistance to perceived government overreach that extends back to their country s founding years. This tradition has bequeathed to today s Americans a related rejection of public subsidies and a cultural aversion to dependence on state support.

Following the NATO led intervention in Libya in 2011, which the Kremlin regarded as another example of Western overreach, Russia has been more aggressive in asserting itself internationally, mainly in opposition to the US. This is most obvious in Russia s dogged support for Bashar al Assad s regime in Syria.

There always are. If the justified intervention in Libya by the US, the UK, and France had not later been conducted with such cloth eared indifference to Russian, Chinese, and developing country concern about mandate overreach, greater unity on Syria could have been achieved in the Security Council in 2011, when a united message might have stopped Assad cold.

For two decades, Myanmar behaved likewise, until Chinese overreach, particularly the now abandoned Myitsone dam project, revealed in full the subservient relationship that China envisioned. Indeed, China s arrogance 100 of the power from the proposed dam was to be exported to China was probably the key factor in precipitating Myanmar s democratic political transition and new openness to the world.

Likewise, the current turmoil in Turkey is, at least in part, a consequence of neo Ottoman overreach by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan s government. In seeking to establish the type of regional influence that Turks have not had since Kemal Atatürk founded the Republic of Turkey, Erdoğan has fallen prey to some of the Ottoman regime s hubris.

PARIS The demise of the Roman Empire resulted from a combination of strategic overreach and excessive delegation of security responsibilities to newcomers. Without making undue comparisons, the question for the United States today is whether it can remain the world s leading power while delegating to others or to technological tools the task of protecting its global influence.

Second, there was widespread agreement about what had caused the breakdown of consensus in the Security Council concerning how to respond to events in Syria (at least until the use of chemical weapons in August proved to be a game changer). The cause was not an attempt by the global South to revive outdated notions of unlimited sovereignty rather, it was a reaction to the perceived overreach of the NATO led military intervention in Libya in 2011.