Transcription
The US till today in its delusion is aiming for hegemony. Clearly it's not a propaganda. It's the stated policy of the United States to have what they call primacy or what the military calls full spectrum dominance. This is the idea I'm trying to say in Washington for 20 years. You guys are crazy because you're the US alone. Okay, you're 4.2% of the world. We are not in 1945 or 1950 or even 1990. China is bigger than the US economy properly measured. That's not a myth. That's a reality. China is far bigger in industrial capacity. And if you go to China, as I do several times a year, China is ahead of the United States on many technologies. Not all, but many technologies.
That's an important reminder. The US once had the luxury of uncontested dominance after World War II. But today, the world has shifted dramatically. China's rise in industrial strength and technological innovation is not hypothetical. It's measurable and visible. Anyone who's walked through cities like Shenzhen or Shanghai in recent years can see how quickly they've leapfrogged. The real question is whether the United States can adapt to this new reality or whether it will keep clinging to outdated notions of primacy.
History shows that empires who fail to adjust often decline faster than they expect and notably technologies that the world really needs right now. Uh it will dominate electric vehicles for 20 years to come. uh it will absolutely dominate uh uh solar power production of which it has essentially no rivals in the world.
And we're seeing that play out already. China controls over 80% of the global solar supply chain from panels to critical minerals. The US talks about green energy independence but it's starting from far behind. That imbalance isn't just economic it shapes geopolitics too.
Uh it will dominate zero emission ocean shipping, something of interest to Greece and interest to to to the world uh because it makes the ships. The United States doesn't make the ships. Europe doesn't make the ships except in much much smaller numbers and you could go down a long list of technologies like this. So the point is to just realign our understanding and our uh delusions of grandeur that come understandably from several hundred years of actual power. Not power nicely wielded, not power responsibly wielded in my view. So I think from a moral point of view, nothing very attractive about it. And as an economist, I have followed Adam Smith all my life because he was an anti-imperialist very explicitly said, "Give up the US colonies and trade with them. You don't need to own them. Uh you just need to trade with them." And that's a very good point of view.
Those who say, "Well, at least Europe spread its knowledge and science and so forth." Well, yes, Europe did that, but it didn't have to do that through empire and war and conquest.
This is such a crucial point. Trade and cooperation often spread knowledge more effectively than conquest ever did. In fact, the colonial model left behind deep scars that many nations are still healing from. Today's multipolar world is forcing us to reconsider what genuine partnership should look like.
And forced famines and many other uh things that went along with European Empire. It could have done that through trade, commerce, decent human relations with other countries. So we have the world now much more equal in of course in literacy, in schooling, in technology, in industrial capacity, even overtaking uh the western world in in many different areas. And we still have in the west uh this idea that this is a we're preserving the westernled world, but that's over. And then we ha happen to have one of the most uh sorry to say it but one of one of the least knowledgeable uh conceivable presidents in the United States who sorry but knows nothing about any of this. He was a real estate developer. He has no training in anything of this sort. I granted he knows how to build golf courses I think in many places in the world but understanding these changes in the world.
Actually requires something more. Strangely in Britain the idea that the British Empire still exists through the US Empire.
It's remarkable how much nostalgia still drives foreign policy. Instead of accepting limits and focusing inward on health care, infrastructure or education, leaders keep chasing ghosts of empire, that misalignment between public needs and elite ambitions creates real instability at home.
And it's going to be defended and we can use every means from MI6 and covert operations to uh global dominance and so forth somehow still persists. I marvel at it. uh as you say every day, better to take care of the national uh health system rather than uh worrying about running the world 80 years after losing uh the empire. But that mirage still exists and France still has it and God knows what's in the German mind of Mr. Mertz right now, but none of it makes any sense. And when you come to uh Europe, the point of my article is precisely what you said. Europe is still battling its 19th century and 20th century delusions and wars well into the 21st century. And the idea that Russia's greatest aim in the world is to invade Western Europe is an insanity. uh and such a violation of any basic knowledge of history that you cannot believe a grown-up could say this, much less a grown-up in a position of any responsibility. Yet Europe is twisting itself into a pretzel that is completely uh useless because of fears that have no basis in reality whatsoever.
Fear has always been a powerful political tool, but when it's disconnected from reality, it becomes dangerous. We saw this during the Cold War and now again with the way Russia is portrayed. Rational dialogue is often replaced by emotional posturing which only deepens divisions.
And those fears are not dispelled because Europe doesn't understand anymore. I mean, European leaders, I should say, do not understand anymore. If you want to understand the other side, pick up the phone, take a flight, invite a counterpart to sit down and have a cup of coffee. They'd actually learn something. So bottom line the reality is a multi-olar world. You see it in the economics, you see it in the technology, you see it in the military force. The delusions are still western dominance and within that US dominance. That gap between reality and uh delusion is large and extremely dangerous. Donald Trump illustrates it uh almost every day by giving orders to the Chinese or to the Brazilians or to the Indians or to the Russians. Literal orders. You must have a ceasefire unconditional by August 8, he tells Russia. Uh you must stop a court case, he tells Brazil. You must stop buying Russian uh oil, he tells India.
And here's the irony. Countries like India with huge populations and growing economies simply won't take orders from Washington anymore. They have their own interests, their own alliances. Treating them like subordinates only accelerates the decline of US influence.
But in any event, it's not right to say that this is his doing, not Donald Trump's doing because ultimately I don't agree with Truman on many things with our President Truman who needlessly dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and rather blightly did so. But he was right when he said the buck stops here in the presidency. And we need a presidency that functions. That really functions. And we don't have it right now. And it's just swinging in the wind every day because they don't have even the depth of knowledge with inside the White House to know what they're doing right now. And so yes, you're right. Trump is responding to these I mean basically to the military-industrial complex which is you know 80 years built into the US system. He is responding to that but it's actually the job of the president to say no that's really the president's job and he doesn't he he can't do it.
That sums it up well. Leadership in this era isn't about issuing ultimatums. It's about navigating complexity with humility and foresight. The world is multipolar now whether Washington accepts it or not. A president's responsibility is to recognize that reality and steer the country toward cooperation where possible and restraint where necessary. Ignoring that shift doesn't preserve American power. It erodess it even faster.