Recent searches
Search options
As the FT points out:
'In a matter of days [Trump] has undone trusted global relationships that have taken decades to build. The task of reviving such trust, even after Trump is no longer in office, will be gargantuan — if it is possible at all'.
What will happen when a global hegemon's 'leadership' crumbles. If we are entering an interregnum, will a new hegemon emerge or multipolarity (a series of regional blocs) will become the norm.
As you will know, I think the latter!
@ChrisMayLA6
And where do you think we'll sit? Cast adrift in the Atlantic?
@dave @ChrisMayLA6 maybe CANZUK if your government can stop appeasing Trump and seek better allies elsewhere.
pretty much unless Starmer pulls his finger out
I'm not holding my breath. He's atrocious at foreign policy.
@ChrisMayLA6 @dave It would then be quite funny were Canada and Greenland to join the EU, leaving the UK as a pointless American exclave.
@BashStKid @ChrisMayLA6 @dave But not funny ha ha
@ChrisMayLA6 I quite agree. I always thought Delors was exactly right about moving towards a federal Europe with local & regional subsidiarity - effectively unraveling the nation states - as the direction of travel has seemed clear for some time in my view
@ChrisMayLA6 Following your argument to a more +ve outcome. If the resultant mini-blocks are allowed to flower into 'political maturity' then there is hope for the rise of 'anarcho-syndicaliste' politics. It would work in those conditions.
Hmmm... I'd think the blocs would still be too large scale for anarcho-syndicalism, which I've always assumed (perhaps wrongly) would work best in relatively localised circumstances?
@ChrisMayLA6 "What will happen when a global hegemon's 'leadership' crumble"
We'll be presented an offer of vassalage. In order to access their market we pay feudal dues for protection, or we fend for ourselves
Team Trump wish to retain the dollar as a reserve currency AND have US rust belt areas manufacturing again. This is their roll of the dice at it because globalisation cannot deliver both of this things together.
Yes, I think that's a fair conclusion... and one that Dani Rodrik would concur with (I expect)
@ChrisMayLA6 To me there are a lot of parallels to Brexit. An instant to break, a generation to repair. Humpty Dumpty politics.
@ChrisMayLA6
I think it’s possible that China will fill the vacuum left by Trump. Whether or not that’s a good thing, it would certainly be sweet irony, given Trump’s dislike of China.
Well, that's certainly their game plan on the African continent
Multi-poles, eventually leading a conflict and war, as history has repeatedly shown.
Yes, the only difference being whether the UN would continue to exist as an overarching diplomatic arena for multipolar negotiation & cooperation.... which given its current continued existence, might be its residual role in a fragmented multipolar world - but equally inter-bloc conflict & war is a distinct possibility
The League of Nations couldn't stop war. Neither can the UN - unless it was the coordinating front for US hegemony.
There's an old International Relations exam Q. which asks:
Did the League of Nations fail or was it failed by its members?
Which of course invites an argument for the latter, and to argue that the UN has 'managed' its members better (although clearly not perfectly!)
But neither has their own army or ability to enforce their decisions - or than through the actions of its members. And so, any failing of the LoN or UN are automatically failings if its members. It's an intentional design to keep supranational bodies inferior to national ones.
But I highly doubt I'm telling you anything new.
I don't disagree, but the outcome may not be so grim; there is considerable evidence that actually for the most part states will follow International Law, not all the time, but most of the time.... in a new multipolar world that may be enough (if the ropes are still held by the UN) to ensure relatively peaceful interaction between the emerging blocs.... it may not be perfect, but equally its unlikely to be chaos (or in a formal sense, anarchy - the absence of rules).
I hope you're right.
My reading of history is that multiple poles inevitably lead to war as they jockey for position. That's what I'm worried about, not chaos.
Boy, I hope you're right.
@ChrisMayLA6
Not sure the U.S. has ever been fully trusted over the decades. It took Japan’s erroneous bombing of Pearl Harbor a day before the war declaration to jolt a U.S. response & bring it late into WWII, when its interests were imperilled.
Comment too is being made in parallel how little the U.K. is now trusted in international negotiations, possibly having had the likes of Johnson, Sunak, Truss, May & Cameron as Premiers.
Yes, I think that's fair (on both points); however, to some extent the C20th American 'empire's less based on trust than convenience - the US provided a range of global public good (or supported their provision) that pragmatically many states were happy to have supplied & then acquiesced with other US actions pragmatically.... but this is what recent administrations have been dismantling... and yes the UK has thrown away any soft power it had wilfully in the last couple of decades!