Well it requires no introduction that the occidental economies are on the phase of cycle which is referred as downfall. And I am not talking about recesessionary cycles that manifest themselves every three to four years. These cycles are centuries long and have a technological, demographic and geopolitical component, at least historically.
Think of it 5 centuries ago, only India and China had lion’s share of world’s GDP, remember the situation one century back?? When we would have just ahead of Africa. Today as they seem to reclaim the old glory, how will the orient remember the successful if not glorious past of occident. I seek to raise more questions than answer! Will we remember them as the technological steroid of human civilization giving us from steam engine to free us from the shackles of earth or with making us slaves of technology with giving us frankesteins of hiroshima, global warming and shallow happiness.
Will we remember the occident as the promoters of peace in Africa/asia as charitable nations or as the destroyers of meosopatamia/hiroshima. As promoters of democracy and the concept of a tangible nation state or as social engineers planting regimes in nations at their whims and fancies. Will their hands be able to wash away the blood stains of world wars with the spate of peace that has followed afterwards.
The questions are hard to answer and probably we wont live long enough to have their final answers as we are alive today to say about when the occident took over the orient.
Sitting in midtown New York as I think of these questions I fear that will the change of order be peaceful unlike before? New powers have to prove themselves before they are new powers. UK, Germany, US all did the same. Will Asian powers spar among themselves..these are questions that are scary enough to make heckles rise in a nuclear tipped MIRV/cruise missile world. Lets hope I dont live long enough to see the negative answers to these questions!
But yes the questions are interesting by themselves!!!
