During the 2008-2022 period the reality of the ‘multipolar world’ became obvious to many citizens, intellectuals, and leaders around the world, but not to the dominant elites of the West. In the West, political and cultural leaders sealed themselves off in a virtual reality bubble of the “unipolar moment”, and refused to see the world as it is. They sat on their golden thrones, iPhone in hand, and ordered the tides of history to stop. Like Canute, they failed.
Yet many in the West, including this modest author, saw their folly and called it out. Still the Western elites insisted that the sea stop. The prophets had told them the liberal world order had brought history to an end. All who opposed the prophecy were denounced as heretics and exiled to the undemocratic world. But by 2022, the facts of history and the changing tides of globalisation threatened to overwhelm these Western Canutes.
Why did Western leaders blind themselves with their madness? It is the West’s blindness to the changing tides of globalisation, not the birth of the multipolar world, which defines this period in my brief history of the multipolar world.
The final instalment of my brief history of the multipolar world follows for full members. While you are thinking about joining, why not check out my article published yesterday at the wonderful www.johnmenadue.com, Across the US Empire, deranged shrieks drown out talk of peace.
And watch my discussion and reading of this essay, with background and explanatory notes, on that I broadcast this afternoon on YouTube.
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