This has made it difficult for them not only to counter the advances of China and Russia, but, more broadly, to take the lead in addressing challenges to mankind’s future that increasingly require global solutions. In response, countries in the West have experienced a rise in populism and nativism, leading to an increasing domestic political divisiveness that has put Western governments on their heels. and Europe have seen domestic inequality increase dramatically, and many feel left behind by the impacts of free trade and immigration policies - they watch their economic situation deteriorate, and perceive their cultural values to be under threat. Though globalization has brought about a significant reduction in global poverty levels, and a prolonged period of relative peace, citizens in the U.S. status as the sole, global superpower, and Russia reasserts itself militarily on the world stage in such places as Syria and Ukraine, much of the West has descended into a crippling malaise. What a difference a couple of decades makes.Īs China pursues a broad range of political and economic strategies that directly challenge U.S. Certainly challenges remained to be addressed in the world, but it was felt that these could and would be surmounted as democracy and capitalism spread globally to those last outposts of darkness that still resisted its blessings.
With the end of the Cold War in 1990 a kind of euphoria swept through the West, a potent belief that Western political, economic and cultural values had prevailed over Communism, vanquishing the final contender to the throne and so becoming not only the dominant, but in fact the only rational order around which civilization needed to construct itself.
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