Centre shifting in global order

A bow hunter once told me that killing an animal with an arrow was one of the most humane forms of the sport – because the blow is so devastating that the target will initially not realise it is mortally wounded.

I was reminded of that this week when watching left-wing US economist Richard Wolff on YouTube, detailing what he says is the decline of the “American Empire”.

One of the characteristics of the collapse of an empire is the fact that its rulers and many of its inhabitants ignore the signs and do not realise – and do not accept – that they are mortally wounded.

Fair enough, it is simple to dismiss Wolff as a Communist because of his leaning towards Marxism, but also on the video platform this week I watched US Senator Bernie Sanders – a one-time presidential prospect for the Democratic Party – saying much the same thing, that the United States of America is going down the toilet and that democracy there faces the biggest threat it has since independence in 1776.

Sanders says, quite correctly, that the country is in danger of becoming an oligarchy, effectively run by 1 000 billionaires (among them Donald Trump) and that the whole system is geared to making things better for them, at the expense of the people who can ill afford it – the majority of ordinary Americans who are battling to put food on the table and who die because they cannot afford quality medical care.

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While Sanders’ view may have been inward-looking, the broader picture is being ignored by most. And that broader picture is that the world is fundamentally changing, from one dominated by the US and its allies (the so-called unipolar dispensation) to one where China and its allies (including Russia and a host of developing nations, including influential and oil-rich states like Saudi Arabia) are taking over.

Wolff’s thesis is that Washington and its European allies failed dismally to destroy Russia via their support to Ukraine. The Russian economy didn’t collapse, nor did the Russian federation fragment. If anything, the massive Western sanctions just pushed Russia into the welcoming arms of China. Russia’s oil now gets sold to China and India and it has, in turn, become the biggest importer of Chinese vehicles.

As a petrolhead and someone who loves anything with four wheels, I have been following – with growing amazement – as the Chinese auto industry starts to swamp the globe. Within five years, many iconic US and European brands will be out of business thanks to Chinese competition, because the cars from the east are cheaper, more technologically advanced and, in many cases, better made than the current offerings in the West.

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Trump’s threatened tariffs – along with those proposed by the European Community – will not stop, but only delay, that tsunami. Likewise, his threats to take on the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries if they threaten the almighty US dollar could do more harm than good to ordinary Americans… not that he cares about ordinary people, his populist “Make America Great Again” promises notwithstanding.

All of this makes for a more interesting world – not in the least because it gives smaller countries like ours options other than the West.

But it also makes it less stable, even without someone as unstable as Trump running the world’s biggest military force…