The United States wielded near-total hegemony from at least the early 1990s to 2014 or so, at which point the first big irreversible cracks began to form. Russia took back Crimea, and took the Donbass under its wing. China began to methodically divest itself of US IOUs. Those acts of defiance threw down the gauntlet, serving notice not only to the masters of empire, but to lesser powers around the globe who were sick and tired of being pushed around and pillaged by the saphead American cowboys...