Nations Are Becoming Weaker
Opinion (Philip Stephens, an associate editor of the Financial Times): “Globalisation has tightened the ties of economic interdependence. Threats to nations are recognisably international in character – from climate change to pandemics, from terrorism and the proliferation of unconventional weapons to mass migration. Mobile capital, cross-border supply chains and the connections of the digital age leach power from individual states. The way to recapture lost authority is to act in concert.
“The mood has changed. As the rising have become risen powers they are reluctant to embrace a rules-based system – the more so since the rules were largely written by the established powers. For its part, the US is stepping back from the role of global policeman. Even postmodern Europe, where rescuing the euro demands another leap towards integration, is wrestling with tensions between the national and supranational.
“But a US challenged by a rising China and obstructed by a morose Russia has tired of internationalism.
“The unipolar moment has made way for the age of the self-sufficient superpower. More than anyone else, the US has the geography, natural resources and economy to stand back. It now prefers coalitions of the willing to grand multilateral designs.
“In Europe, things are more complex. The 17 nations of the eurozone are committed to the pooling of more sovereignty, yet the euro crisis has awoken nationalist ghosts.
“This interdependence is an inescapable reality for large as well as small states. National moods may have changed but the facts of globalisation have not. If anything, the diffusion of state power to non-state actors has accelerated.
“As an ageing continent with a fast-declining share of global output, Europe has to act as one to uphold its values and interests.
“The paradox we are left with is a world in which state sovereignty is at once greatly prized and, when properly defined as the ability to act, increasingly ineffective. States share an unavoidable interest in replacing the old order with new arrangements to recognise mutual as well as national goals.”
My Comment: Only by correcting human nature and relationships can we combine all the requirements of modern society and Nature. These opposites can be connected only by rising above our nature, no matter how unfeasible it seems, but for the first time humanity is in conscious transition from the Animate (natural, egoistic) degree of existence to the Human degree— conscious altruistic behavior.
[110442]
Related Material:
Transformation Of The Familiar World
Looking At The Group In The Light Of Love
In Nature’s Clutches
