ABSTRACT
The multidimensional crisis, affecting both pro-empire and oppositional forces, is creating an open-ended situation that allows for several possible outcomes depending on the nature and strength of political responses to the contradictions of the system. Washington's periodizing the new historical era with 9/11 involves a particular perspective that reflects its own losses and vulnerabilities in the search for hegemony. From the end of the Gulf War and the Bush Presidency to October 7, 2001, the United States won military conflicts in peripheral regions but suffered a serious loss of influence in more strategic regions. The decline in US influence and military losses can be briefly summarized. In the Middle East, the US strategy of overthrowing or isolating the Iranian government and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was a total failure. Many regimes have already seized upon this military definition of socioeconomic realities to repress popular and left movements and liberation organizations in Middle East, Latin America and Central Asia.
