In
an interview about his latest book, Superpower, Ian Bremmer stated that America
needs a strategy that doesn't just last for three months or a year, but for a
generation. And the world is moving in a direction where the promises of an ‘indispensable’
America are going to be increasingly hard to fulfill. He warns about the risks
in the world in terms of how much leadership there isn't in Europe, the
challenge posed by a rising China, the implosion of the Middle East, the rise
of terrorist organizations and even things like “quantum computing” which are
going to undermine the power of nation states.
Recently, the GOP candidates for the presidency of the United States are bringing a debate about immigration which, despite Mr. Obama's attempts have not advance as promised but it is now known that the largest number of
immigrants into the United States no longer comes from Mexico - as of 2014, it
comes from China. And that means that America is educating an entire generation
of Chinese elites to understand that there is actually a very different kind of
system out there.
However, in the past 35 years there's only been one geopolitical
constant in the entire world. Only one. And that's the rise of China. What's
really dangerous is that China is the only country of size right now that has a
global strategy. We should not pretend that that's not true. They have money
and they're spending it. They're building architecture and infrastructure.
They're trying to align countries more with their long- term strategic and
economic interests as they see them. The fact is the Americans, by far a
greater power than China in every aspect, have nothing to respond to that with.
That's ludicrous.
Bremmer also argues that: “ America massively underestimated the Chinese”. We spend
virtually no time thinking about them. There's no question that China has very
real problems, and those problems are going to affect them a great deal over
the long term. But they understand what they need to do to resolve them; they
are taking very significant steps both domestically and internationally. And America
is not. It's one thing to cede space to the Chinese out of a strategy. We're
ceding them space that we haven't even considered.”
In
my view, Americans have gotten disillusioned with the inauthenticity of their
own leaders, and the politics and politicians in Washington. After living
through the 2008 financial crisis, Bush vs. Gore, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib -
all of this stuff – and now we’re facing a $5 billion dollar election campaign
where the most recognizable names are another Bush and another Clinton - one
can't ignore the disillusion.
So
any candidate aspiring to win the “White House” and battle against the status
quo will not only compete against recognizable names and their coffers of money
(Trump included with his delusional 10 Billion dollars of wealth!) but this is
really not about the next five years, this is about setting us up for the next
generation. And there, I think China could change an awful lot. If we don’t act
now by electing the candidate with a coherent long-term planning strategy (including an immigration policy consistent with what made America great) we might
be headed instead into a period of profound and long-term creative destruction
geo-politically.
Coherent
long- term planning is the only way to go...!
