Drezner: [1]
Another day, another online article. The topic of my latest Newsweek column is whether the West — i.e., American and Europe — can still act as the global policy leader. I’m not optimistic: America and Europe face political, economic and demographic challenges to their longstanding primacy. This is a delicate moment for a power transition, given the host of emerging global threats: global warming, nuclear proliferation, macroeconomic imbalances, terrorism, the need to reform global governance and so on. The question is, can the United States and the European Union continue to exercise leadership on these issues?
This is, as they say, a target rich environment. You correctly identify, Dan, that there are issues to deal with. Yet, you bypass their identification, being apparently more concerned with bemoaning the existence of them.
At the outset, it needs to be understood that the west has ALWAYS had “economic and demographic challenges to their longstanding primacy”. That, Daniel, is the nature of being on the top of the mountain; There’s always someone there trying their best to throw you off. Thats been going on since before our own Civil war.
The difference between then and now, is, over the years, we’ve changed direction as to staying on top, mostly with our own attitude. We’re more inclined now, as a nation to ALLOW others to throw us off the top of the mountain. I daresay there are many here in the US… somewhat less than half, in fact, who like the idea of American not being the world leader.Such peope tend to spend a lot of their time being worried about the fraud called ‘global warming’, placing Restrictions on the US but not on the rest of the world, and setting up some kind of ‘world government’, more than they worry about American being strong. They call that being ‘worldly” or supporting ‘one world’. I call it ‘self-destructive’.