Philip Stephens in the Financial Times makes some important comments on the challenge the US and Europe face as economic power shifts to the emerging nations of what used to be called the south (subscribers only): “I have often heard it said that economic interdependence is a sure safeguard against great-power conflict. How could the US and China go to war over Taiwan when their prosperity is so intertwined? The next phase of globalisation, though, will confront established powers with the reality of relative decline. We have reached a dangerous moment.”
Ever since our ancestors learnt to think, mankind seems always to have considered itself to have “reached a dangerous moment.” But we seem to survive……