Contrary to what some headlines might have suggested, [President Obama’s speech to Parliament]’s central theme was not division and weakness, but strength ”“ the strength of what has traditionally been seen as the Western way, but is really something much broader. As such, it offered an upbeat prelude to the G8 summit which concludes in Deauville today, a prelude as fitting as it was unfashionable.
Unfashionable, because the prevailing transatlantic mood is pessimism. The philosophical consensus has been that the West, as embodied by the US, is in terminal decline and the future belongs to the emerging economies, chief among them China, with India snapping at its heels. Viewed from this perspective, the only realistic task for the “old” countries is to slow their decline and use the last years of their ascendancy to fix international rules to guard their way of life….
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(Independent) Mary Dejevsky: Don't bank on the eclipse of the West
Contrary to what some headlines might have suggested, [President Obama’s speech to Parliament]’s central theme was not division and weakness, but strength ”“ the strength of what has traditionally been seen as the Western way, but is really something much broader. As such, it offered an upbeat prelude to the G8 summit which concludes in Deauville today, a prelude as fitting as it was unfashionable.
Unfashionable, because the prevailing transatlantic mood is pessimism. The philosophical consensus has been that the West, as embodied by the US, is in terminal decline and the future belongs to the emerging economies, chief among them China, with India snapping at its heels. Viewed from this perspective, the only realistic task for the “old” countries is to slow their decline and use the last years of their ascendancy to fix international rules to guard their way of life….
Read it all.