Trump’s vision of an America in precipitous decline is all-encompassing. At home, he points to falling living standards for many Americans and the disappearance of well-paid manufacturing jobs. Overseas, he claims the world is laughing at the US and laments that “we don’t win any more”.
Many in Europe are tempted to see Trump as an “only in America” aberration. Yet the fear of economic and geopolitical decline that Trump is capitalising upon is widely visible across the west. The coalition of frustrated working-class voters and nostalgic nationalists that the Republican has put together is uncomfortably reminiscent of the alliance that voted for Brexit in the UK. Trump’s “make America great again” mantra has an echo of the Brexit campaign’s winning slogan – “Take back control”. Nor is this is just an Anglo-American phenomenon. Across the EU, including in France, the Netherlands, Italy and Poland, protectionists and nationalists are gaining ground.
As Trump might put it: “Something’s going on.” That something is a historic shift in economic and geopolitical power that is bringing to an end a 500-year period in which western nations have dominated global affairs. This erosion of the west’s privileged position in world affairs is creating new economic, geopolitical and even psychological pressures in both the US and the EU.
The driving force of this change is the extraordinary economic development of Asia over the past 50 years.…The Guardian
The rising power of China will create new political fissures in the west
Gideon Rachman
2 comments:
Rachman is one of the few intelligent and more honest analysts writing in the mainstream press. You won't get this stuff elsewhere. Rather you'll get baiting of minorities and warmongering. Rachman's analysis is always through the prism of geopolitics and international political economy. Always worth reading, even when you don't agree.
However.
bringing to an end a 500-year period in which western nations have dominated global affairs.
Western historians have indulged in revisionism. China was a world power, if not thee world power, from 1400 AD to 1800 AD. Reason why Britain used opium to destroy their society and bring them down (creating the British Empire). Reason why the Chinese revolution could take hold in the 20th C. The Chinese didn't forget.
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