Alarms are ringing as negative trends come together in a perfect storm. Is the United States sleepwalking into economic and geopolitical decline?

WASHINGTON, May 29 (UPI) -- Gen. David Richards, the British chief of staff, in the understatement of the week, says the strategic landscape is "worrying" and the outlook "bleak."

The United States as the world's strongest geopolitical player has become ungovernable, saddled with a dysfunctional Congress. House and Senate together, with 535 members, maintain 250 committees and subcommittees and micromanage muscular government decisions into unworkable policy directives.

No fewer than 108 committees have oversight jurisdiction on Homeland Security.

The latest book of Edward Luce, the Financial Times' chief U.S. commentator, and former FT Washington bureau chief (2006-11), is titled, "Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent."

America, he says, is sleepwalking into economic and geopolitical decline.

Ian Bremmer in "Every Nation for Itself" writes about "Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World."

Fareed Zakaria, a leader of the "Successor Generation" to Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft and a single handful of others, understands the United States' leaderless dilemma better than most. His weekly CNN program "GPS" dramatizes the negative trends now coming together in a "perfect storm."

David Fuller's view I suspect that I will not be alone in finding much to agree with in this article, such as the USA's problems of governance. However, I also find much to disagree with and I do not think that we are necessarily worse off with a multilateral rather than unilateral world, which seems to be Arnaud de Borchgrave's implication.

The biggest change, I believe, is the rise of corporate Autonomies - the most successful multinational companies which have outgrown the countries from which they first emerged. An increasing number of Autonomies are now wealthier than many smaller countries. Their influence is growing and I think it will be more beneficial than destabilising, because as the Autonomies create wealth for their shareholders and employees in numerous countries, they help to elevate people out of poverty and into the middle class. Many Autonomies are also at the forefront of mankind's technological and scientific achievements.