The end of Western hegemony ("..Europeans may well find ourselves missing..Bush before too long.")

The UK Guardian via The News.com ^ | Monday 25 May 2009 16.00 BST | Paddy Ashdown Guardian.co.UK

[2ndDivisionVet]

We are on the edge of one of those periods of history when the gimbals on which the established order is mounted shift and a new world order begins to emerge. And these are, almost always, the most frightening and turbulent of times.

[John Will]

The Islamic World has been the nation equivalent of Fail since the 1600’s.

[mrsmel]

Even when they bluff that they can’t wait for the US to be replaced by, for instance, China. If they truly believed that the US was an oppressive imperialist nation, how could they even say the words to hope that China, of all nations, overtakes us? But I have seen Euro posters on Euro newspaper sites claim to want just that. It’s hard to believe that they really mean it and aren’t just displaying their reflexive anti-Americanism.

[skr]

That one’s definitely all your fault!

[Darkwolf377]

Yeah, when reading that kind of thing you think of petulant teens who bitch about their parents because they know their parents will always be there to pay the bills and put a roof over their heads. If mom and dad suddenly said "We agree, we stink, so leave, we don't deserve to buy your food and clothing anymore," those kids would be singing a different tune.

It's because the #1 status of the US is SO accepted that these countries are free to vocally hope for something they don't really think will happen.

So what will happen when the unthinkable happens, and under their very own "messiah," who they praised the US for choosing?

[ImpBill]

Interesting read.

Although the author fails to insert the fact that Europe will be part of the Islamic world long before we are and that will definitely cause the split of NATO in that not too distant future. Most if not all the anglo European nations are at or close to zero population growth while Muslims are reproducing like rabbits!

Bottom line is that 911 changed the world in ways my and following generations of Americans will never even begin to comprehend, much less witness.

[marron]

if we want to get things done, such as re-designing the world economic order, or intervening for peace, we cannot any longer just do them within the cosy Atlantic club; we are going to have to find new allies in places we would never previously have thought of. And they will be less congenial and have demands of their own. The recent global financial crisis has made it very plain. If we want a more ordered world at a time of great instability, we are going to have to provide a space at the top tables for nations that do not share our culture, our history, our world view or even our values.

It sounds like his is recommending that Europe turn to the dark side. Not in so many words, but yes, in so many words.

[metesky]

I’ve been reading this story or a version of it every five/six years for over forty years now.

[eclecticEel]

perhaps it should be<\i>

I agree, but no one asked me.

[saganite]

The Europeans do not have the stomach for facing the world without the US. They have been too long inside our protective walls. If the US truly does shift it’s focus elsewhere Europe will likely become a client state of Russia.

[Cronos]

Chinese history is littered with instances when this great nation, as disparate and ethnically diverse as Europe, .

I would dispute that -- China is pretty nearly homogenous: ethnically 90 to 95 % HAN Chinese. All other groups have been assimilated -- there are no real Manchu left, ditto for any number of other minorities, all assimilated, just like the Tibetans and uighurs are now being assimilated.

[Cronos]

One will be a rise in regional groupings – of which history may say the EU was the first, albeit highly imperfect example.

AGain, incorrect -- I would theoretically say that India is the first grouping of South Asian nations -- each state in India is culturally and linguistically (and in many cases historically) distinctive.

[EBH]

Again, I have been reading the works of Thomas Paine and this paragraph brought to mind the story he tells of the innkeeper and the child. The innkeeper, while unwilling to take up arms to defend himself, family, etc. hopes for “peace in my time.” Paine describes this phrase as unfatherly, even selfish. Paine then goes on to say that a father would have said, “If there is to be trouble, let it be in my time so my children may have peace.”

This whole article is talking about who Europe should get in bed with to ‘keep their peace.’ At no point truly considering the evil and destruction such a stance brings to them. It is like the tories of colonialist America hoping Howe would not destroy them if the just went along to get along.

The author is correct in describing the power struggle the world is going through, but no one right now can predict who will become top dog. The middle-east has been (is) a destabilizing factor around the globe. The author looks to major countries, perhaps he needs to look to what is an emerging “religious” culture and their 57 states. The overthrow will not come from armies or bombs, but from their own failure to meet and deal with trouble in their own time.

[Madame Dufarge]

The last thing of note they did was invent zero

Even that's in dispute.

You state, "its mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption." The fundamental basis of modern mathematics had been laid down not hundreds but thousands of years before by Assyrians and Babylonians, who already knew of the concept of zero, of the Pythagorean Theorem, and of many, many other developments expropriated by Arabs/Muslims (see History of Babylonian Mathematics, Neugebauer).

What Arab Civilization?

[Alas Babylon!]

I doubt it. Russia will also decline. She has VAST problems, stemming from a very sharply declining birth rate of native Slavs, rampant alcoholism, and a surging Islamic population among non-Slavs.

The declining birth rate and rising Muslim tide is a problem for all Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals and beyond.

What happens in the next twenty years will probably determine Europe’s—including Russia’s—fate as to whether they become Islamic or not. If they become Islamic, they’ll lose their prosperity completely.

[Cronos]

we are reaching the beginning of the end of the perhaps five century long period of the hegemony of western power, western institutions and western values over world affairs.

500 years is not correct. That would put the beginning of western pre-eminence to 1509. That's wrong.

In 1509, the Portuguese and Spanish were exploring new worlds and new routes to India and Asia, but they were not dominant powers.

The dominant power in the Mediterranean was still the Ottoman Empire and that wouldn't change until 1660 and the saving of Vienna by Jan Sobieski III of Poland. The dominant powers in Asia were still Manchu China, Moghul India and the Safavids in Iran.

This position wouldn't change until the mid 1700s and it completely reversed by 1800. Western utter pre-eminence is only about 200 to 300 years old.

[Jonny foreigner]

The Europeans do not have the stomach for facing the world without the US. They have been too long inside our protective walls. If the US truly does shift it’s focus elsewhere Europe will likely become a client state of Russia.

---

you are aware of the fact that the EU states do spend a lot more money on defence (not in % of Gdp of course and still not enought in my oppinion but anyway because of the big size of the EU ecconomy the final result is a lot more money) than Russia does?

[lentulusgracchus]

What say you?

[Article] Such United States soldiers as are left in Europe, are here, not for our defence, but to support their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I say that the article's writer, Paddy Ashdown, errs on this point. The U.S. will always have an Atlantic-centered policy because the country has always had as its key foreign-policy and defense value the protection of its large East Coast population centers from attack, and the large trans-Atlantic trade, which by the way has included a really big chunk of the trade in imported energy.

It's also curious that the writer foresees the growth of protectionist economic policies. Exporting economies have generally been free-traders, as was the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries. The U.S. persists in free-trading, even though it's an importer now.

Therefore, with the rise of Asian exporting economies, I don't see where the author's predicted boom in protectionism will come from.

It's also interesting that this article appeared in a Pakistani newspaper.

[Cronos]

No, the Muz world will remain the cesspit of the world. Places that had dire poverty like China and India are now quickly eradicating poverty (ok, quickly is relative, but with populations of 1 billion +, things will take time and moving millions out of poverty each year is quite an achievement), South America is progressing and so too is Africa.

The Moo world on the other hand is regressing to the stone age.

[Cronos]

The last thing of note they did was invent zero, about a thousand years ago or so. Nothing since then, however

the Moos did NOT invent the zero -- the zero was invented by Aryabhatta about 500 AD in north-eastern india. Ditto for "arabic" numerals -- those are actually devanagri numerals from india. Ditto for all those astronomical discoveries -- that came from Iran, still under influence of the Zoroastrians and from Christian Iraq and Syria

[lentulusgracchus]

Good posts, meat on the shank! Thank-you BTTT.