FLASH
Shkruar nga Lucio Caracciolo
The Soviet parallel is on a much larger scale. Gorbachev wanted to free himself from the European yoke to save the USSR. He lost both...
Will America suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union? When the renowned historian Niall Ferguson published this bombshell in June 2024, it might have seemed provocative. Today, in America’s struggle for identity, the joke might seem like common sense. Kissinger’s biographer cited the monstrous federal debt, which has since exploded to $38 trillion, the struggling armed forces, the false ideology of the elites, the precarious health of the population, and aging leaders.
Ferguson’s grim fantasy comes to mind when I examine the body language of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping at the Busan summit in South Korea. The Chinese leader’s immobile, almost blank expression, ignoring the supposed world leader who is busy spouting his own meaningless hyperbole, symbolizes the end of an era. For eighty years, the United States has stood above the power struggle and regulated their trade. America is no longer superior to the rest of the world. Trump is the portrait of an empire giving up hegemony to save a nation in mortal danger. A sense of emptiness emanates from the former center of the world.
The South Korean meeting will not be remembered for the vague truce on the trade front, inevitable as long as the duelists are aware of each other's need. Instead, it will be marked as the first Sino-American summit in which the number one is no longer considered as such by the rival. And by a large portion of Americans themselves, 70% of whom confess that they no longer believe in the American dream. That is, not in themselves. Not because of some fantastic comeback from China, which is far from being in the best of health. But because the star-studded giant is tired of holding the reins of humanity, and he says so with all his heart.
When has an American president ever summoned eight hundred generals and admirals to order them to fight the "enemy within," meaning the fellow countryman of the opposing tribe?
The American withdrawal is vague, and the protests are vague, and Beijing is controlling the disputed island. Almost a gesture of resignation. This is how Taipei interprets it: we can no longer rely on Washington if Xi tries to invade us. The chances that, one way or another, perhaps in ten or twenty years, Taiwan will fall under Chinese control without going through war seem less slim than they were yesterday.
The Soviet parallel is on a much larger scale. Gorbachev wanted to free himself from the European yoke to save the USSR. He lost both. Trump explains the need to focus on America with imperial fatigue. The Monroe Doctrine (1823). Zero-sum game: Beijing is entering, or preparing to enter, the space from which Washington is withdrawing.
Without firing a shot, Red China is creating its own sphere of influence in Southeast Asia, not even twenty years after Obama’s Asia pivot, which aimed primarily at ASEAN. Not to mention post-Soviet Central Asia, Moscow is losing momentum because it is focused on the war in Ukraine, which risks reducing it to a partner in Beijing’s war. Nor is Washington providing direct aid to the Chinese. Trump announces modest but evocative reductions in US troops on our continent. After Romania, he warns Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia that he intends to bring home several thousand fighters.
Worse: urged on by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a neoconservative in a Trumpian guise, Washington is preparing to strike Venezuela to overthrow its narco-terrorist regime. A return to the illogicality of the "war on terror", a strategic error always denounced by Trump. And Xi? He sits Confucian-style on the riverbank and waits to see the corpse of his rival pass by./ Adapted from "Pamphlet" by "LaRepubblica"
Lini një Përgjigje