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

[Zhang Fei]

It’s kind of weird that Paddy Ashdown, the former leader of the UK’s ultra left-wing Liberal Democratic Party, is talking about Europe having to worry about security threats. I thought Europeans believed that the period of peace after WWII was the result of European moral virtue, not American military might. Maybe they’re not too coked-up to see reality for what it is, and there’s hope for them after all.

[Jonny foreigner]

well if the writer refers to the troops in Germany for example he is correct saying that they are not there to protect anyone but most of this “report” is just total wrong (to say it polite :-) The US will no longer have a euro centric policy? and so will Europe the other way around? Shuuuure ;-) this writer just ignores such little facts that only for example the US and Europes economys are tied so close together that this is just not possible without resulting in a total desaster for both. so i guess this will not happen.

[lentulusgracchus]

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.

I think you've just called them on it.

Anti-Americanism in Europe, in the last century, has usually been associated with Marxism. I noticed it in the writing of English youth writer Arthur Ransome many years ago, and I wondered why he seemed to dislike America. Years later I found out Ransome was a Eurocommunist who'd been to Russia during and immediately after the Russian Revolution, and he'd married Politburo member Grigoriy Zinoviev's personal secretary.

[Cronos]

True. Though, for 1,800 out of 2100 years, Europe and the U.K. were the major militaries and world-shaping forces. It can change pretty quickly nowadays, with our ever-more-intertwined economies, and everything happening globally at the speed of "bytes."

Quite wrong

If you say 2100 years, you mean from 100 BC. From 100 BC to 300 AD, the main power centres were Rome (Europe), Susa (Iran, the Parthian Empire), Magadha (Gupta / Nanda / Mauryan Empires), the Chola Empire in South india, the Armenian Empire in Asia, the Ethiopian/Axumite Empire in Ethiopia and Yemen, the Gok-turk, Hun and other Turkic empires in Central Asia and the HAN in China.

Then, from 300 AD to 700 AD, the power centres were Byzantium (Asia/Europe), Rome (decaying rapidly), Susa, Axumite Empire, north-indian Empire, Cholas and the Srivijaya Empire (Southern India stretching across the Indonesia archepalago), Champa, Mon in S-E Asia, Song Empire in China, Japan rising and the Central Asian confederations

From 700 AD to 1000 AD those powers also had the Islamic empire first centred in Mecca, then in Baghdad and Cairo.

From 1000 AD you had the rise of the Turkic peoples from the Seljuk to the Ottoman and the rise of the Mongols (and their descendents, the Mughals).

In contrast, Europe was NOT the world-shaping force until the age of discovery and it really took off after the Ottomans were defeated in the 1600s and when the Mughals collapsed around the same time.

[Cronos]

If the US slips, there will not be another pre-eminent superpower. THere will be many super-powers but no one completely dominating like the US did for 50 years after WWII.

[The Duke]

The Zero was invented by the Indians and carried to the Middle East by traders, from where it went to Europe.

The zero was invented by the first cave man who ran out of food. :)

[lentulusgracchus]

I would theoretically say that India is the first grouping of South Asian nations ....

And therefore is still a Raj -- an Empire without the Empress of India and Defender of the Faith.

Which an enterprising enemy could attempt to screw with by fomenting internal regional and religious resentments, Hindu vs. Moslem, Hindu vs. Sikh, etc., etc.

[Jonny foreigner]

In contrast, Europe was NOT the world-shaping force until the age of discovery and it really took off after the Ottomans were defeated in the 1600s and when the Mughals collapsed around the same time.

---

Agreed i guess it´s a pretty tough job to shape the world without having discovered it first. :-)

[lentulusgracchus]

he is correct saying that they are not there to protect anyone

If there were no political-protective or solidarity dimension there, our support activities would be run out of southern Europe or Turkey or Egypt.

If the Russians go charging into Poland, we'll be there in three days.

[lentulusgracchus]

The mandarin-induced collapse of China's admiralty also opened the door for the Portuguese.

By 1500, the only remnant of China's big-junk, ocean-going navy was a stone junk in the imperial palace grounds. Ostensibly a tribute to China's glorious navy, it was instead an inside joke, a self-congratulatory trophy put up by the mandarins to celebrate their political-infighting victory over the admirals.

It's still there -- saw it in the travelogue footage broadcast during the Olympics last summer.

[Jonny foreigner]

If there were no political-protective or solidarity dimension there, our support activities would be run out of southern Europe or Turkey or Egypt.

If the Russians go charging into Poland, we’ll be there in three days.

---

i never said that there is no political-protective or solidary between the US and most parts of Europe. but to be serious the troops in germany really don´t protect anyone any longer. btw. look at a map Russia doesn´t even share a border with Poland so charging Poland would be difficult for them.

[bert]

.....to have a rather more subtle and sophisticated foreign policy than hanging on to the apron strings of our neighbourhood friend, the world’s only super power......

How's this?

This sentence was chosen for response because seems to make the point. How can a foreign policy that consists mostly of doing very little become more subtle and sophisticated. Perhaps the diplomats can be more decisive in their choices of wine and hor’derves.

Then there is the part about the gathering into groups to project power. There have been attempts in the Western hemisphere that are failures. He left out the Gulf where there is the grouping of the GCC countries that are making steady progress toward becoming a very strong economic force and more important in world affairs than the stodgy Euros.

George Bush changed the world by invading Iraq and destroying the status quo. That action and the results flowing from it removed the Euros from having a voice in the change in the mid east. America, The GCC and Iran are now the players. Israel became less important because the moderate Arabs learned that fighting the Palestinian battle was small potatoes compared to the coming war with Iran. It is better to have an ally you don't like than fight a bad enemy alone.

When Iraq joins the GCC and the might of the military there is honed to American quality, the power shift will be complete. Iran will be isolated and all alone. In ten or fifteen years, there can be a resumption of the ostracicing of Israel except by that time there will be enough trade to temper animosity.

The rise of the Gulf is already a threat to the Euros. Trading companies owned by UAE Arabs and staffed by Indians are making strong inroads into the century old trading relations between excolonial Africa and Europe. Stodgy French trading companies are losing out to fast moving and technically savvy Gulf traders. Plastics and such derived from oil are being made in the Gulf because there are better, newer plants staffed by non union Asians. The oilless Euro petro chemical plants are doomed.

The Gulf states know that there can be extremely rapid progress when American organizational skills, oil money and third world labor are combined. Those forces will be applied by Kuwaiti, Saudi and Dubai companies to cause Iraq to explode with economic capability. Now that the shackles are gone, the pent up power can be released.

This growth will obsolete Europe.

Meanwhile in the Western hemisphere, most will stagnate. Brazil and USA/Canada will do well but the rest will writhe in the slime of the patriarchs fighting against the masses.

Then there is Asia...... India, China, Japan? how will they get along?

[Cronos]

Well, no, and yes — it could be called a Raj, but more correctly is a confederation, like Switzerland. And yes, enemies have tried to screw with the Swiss too — the Zurich wars as an example.

[Cronos]

If the Russians go charging into Poland, we'll be there in three days.

I sure hope so -- I'm marrying a Polish girl later this year and am terribly pro-Polish -- lovely people.

[Cronos]

By 1500, the only remnant of China's big-junk, ocean-going navy was a stone junk in the imperial palace grounds. Ostensibly a tribute to China's glorious navy, it was instead an inside joke, a self-congratulatory trophy put up by the mandarins to celebrate their political-infighting victory over the admirals

EXACTLY! Both China (Mandarins) and India (Brahmins) shot themselves in the foot by trying to keep knowledge with a specific class. The Chinese lost it in the 1400s, while India lost it in the 6th century.

[Cronos]

Israel became less important because the moderate Arabs learned that fighting the Palestinian battle was small potatoes compared to the coming war with Iran. It is better to have an ally you don't like than fight a bad enemy alone.

I'm hoping that Shia Iran picks a war with Sunni Saud quickly.

[Cronos]

When Iraq joins the GCC and the might of the military there is honed to American quality, the power shift will be complete

Not a chance -- Iraq has a large Shia population who will look to Iran, while the Kurds are an Irani people. in the East, the Baluchis (who are related to the Kurds), the TAjiks (who are Iranis, descendents of the Sogdians and Bactrians) who feel Irani, and the Uzbeks, Azeris and Turkmen are really Iranis with a thin veneer of Turkic language on top.

There will be a greater Iran, a return to the Achaemenid Empire -- I only hope that the Iranis realise that the thing holding them back isIslam and they would return to the worship of Ahura Mazda.

[bert]

Remember if you will, in the 70’s armed Iranians attacked Mecca and were killed off to a man. That fight is at least 30 years old already

[lentulusgracchus]

So now you know why I'm so eager to identify and exile all Harvard grads with nicks in their ears and death-interdicts on their heads, exile the Harvard faculty, distribute their library, and turn their campus into a green commons.

Ditto Yale, Cornell, Princeton, Columbia, and Georgetown and the other privilege academies.

Dartmouth, however, earns a reprieve for having given us Dinesh D'Souza, Laura Ingraham, the Dartmouth Review, and Poisoned Ivy (with foreword by Wm. F. Buckley).

I might relent on Yale for similar reasons, but the Bonesmen would have to go, for the same reasons as Harvard's Porcellians. No "Brotherhoods of the Bell" in America, thank you.

[Cronos]

you want to read something even more fun, read about the Qarmatians -- these guys were Mazdaists or Ibadis who ruled over what is now Bahrain (and which was a Persian satrapy for millenia), they sacked Mecca in the 8th century and carried off the black stone in the Ka'aba. They then shattered it and sent back the fragments, which are now kept in a silver box which the Moos worship.

Read too about Yazdegerd III