Europe’s century?

Recent foreign affairs events indicate a clear separation of Donald Trump/US values and those of Europe. Mr Trump is not a dictator — he could only be elected by a people that shared his values and who were drawn to his personality. President Trump is therefore no longer leader of the free world for this reason: the American people became tired of leading it and so chose a president not interested in doing it.

Already we can see the UK, Germany and France working hard together to fill the leadership vacuum. We can no longer talk simply about Western values any more. We are now living in a multi-polar world, the poles now being the US, Europe, Russia and China. Other poles may develop over time.

The so-called American Century, which could be said to have started with the US’s involvement in World War I in 1918, is unarguably now coming to an end. Mark Twain famously said that history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Empires usually fall because of a collapse in the moral foundations on which they are built — this happened to Rome, to Great Britain, and to the Soviet Union. There is no reason why it should not happen to the US’s Empire of Influence, whatever the US’s present economic or military power, which happens anyway to be diminishing, just as Britain’s did.

The question is, where does the rest of the world go from here? If the history of empires is to be any judge or guideline, they should seek to align themselves with the pole in the moral ascendancy, which is clearly Europe.

ANDREW PHILLIPS