An article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal written by Michael
Gordon on February 23rd of this year. He writes very smartly and helpfully about
something I think many people don't see, but Michael Gordon does: that we are in the midst
of a reorganization of the world economic and political order. I think he's right about that,
and I think it is something we need to think more about as we look at current events.
I do think however that he's wrong in how he describes it. He says it is something Russia and
China are doing. That seems to me to be a mistake. It is no more being done by Russia and China than
it is being done by the United States or Japan or Britain or Europe or a whole host of other actors.
Something as fundamental as the world order is always a collective project, whether or not the
people involved admit it or even see it. If you look at the 19th and 20th centuries, you might say
that the 19th was the rise of the British empire and the 20th was the decline of the British empire
and the rise of the American empire. That's a good argument. It's been made. But to say that it was
done by the British or done by the United States is a mistake. This is part of a global evolution,
and some periods of time global evolution raises one country and brings down another. That's been
the story for a very long time. Remember the rise of Rome, the rise of Greece the rise
of the Italian city-states or whatever other period of history you want to see? In my view,
what we're seeing is the evolution of capitalism. Just like in earlier phases, we saw the evolution
of the slave economy for example in ancient Rome or Greece and so on. What's going on
is a change in how capitalism as our current economic system is evolving.
Let me give you simple examples. Once upon a time capitalism made New England and then the Midwest
the core central success stories of American capitalism. Then, capitalism
evolved so that we refer to the Midwest not as the core of our capitalist system but as the Rust
Belt. And New England is a place where we have universities [and] medical centers,
but we don't have heavy industry because that's gone somewhere else. And so, the
capitalist system evolved and therefore certain areas were rising up and others were declining.
I think what's happening now, and this is the scary part for some of you: is that the dominant,
dominating role of the United States is over. We've had our shot. We've had us a century,
roughly. After World War One there was no real competitor to the opposition of the United States.
World War One decimated Europe. It never really recovered. The beginnings of a recovery
were smashed down by having another World War just a couple of decades after the first one was over.
I mean, it was impossible for the Europeans to play the role they had once played. That was true
for England, but it was also true for the other contester Germany. And World War II also decimated
Japan. So, the United States had a free ride after World War II, literally the last 70 years,
but it's over now. Capitalism is doing what it has always done. It's moved on. The core growth of the
production of goods and services has moved from the United States to China above all else, India,
Brazil [and] other parts of the world. And everybody is trying to figure out what the
new world order will now be. You can see it particularly with Germany. It's desperately
trying to catch up. It's been in that position for a long time. With Germany, it just got the
right to rearm on a scale no one thought would ever happen again. The United States says okay
because it needs an ally against the Russians. Out of these kinds of accommodations, we've
had real trouble in the history of the world. We'll see where this new world order takes us.