When, within two years of each other, the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union fell, we witnessed a change of historical cycle. It was the end of ideological confrontation and the triumph of capitalism over communism. Only the United States seemed to be in a position to lead the new world order. In 1991 China was nowhere near ready to challenge American power, and NATO even considered admitting Russia.
No one imagined that the end of the supremacy of the West would be at stake. When in 313 Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan (actually two, one for the East and one for the West) proclaiming Christianity as the official state religion and granting freedom of worship, few could have guessed what a radical transformation this would be for the European world.
In 711, Tariq crossed the Strait of Gibraltar with his troops; just three years later, Muslim forces stood at the foot of the Cantabrian Mountains. The Roman world had disappeared. The confrontation between Islam and the Christian world that was to last for many centuries was inaugurated. It was another end of an era that would last until the Renaissance.
Donald Trump does not create the current disorder, but he intensifies it and challenges the whole world. The disorder began with the economic crisis of 2008, with the inability of the United States to lead a just development, with Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine, with the bewildering emergence of China as a global commercial and economic power, and with the inability of the European Union to make itself important.
We are living through the end of a cycle that heralds the end of an era, one born after the French Revolution and solidified by the Second Industrial Revolution. The political and ethical values of the Enlightenment and the values of liberal capitalism are in crisis. China and Russia have neither known them nor are they interested in managing the new international order (disorder). For Trump’s United States they do not seem important either. America has elected a president who has only personal interests. He is a dangerous narcissist who does not understand principles and who appeals to the return of a world before globalization without realizing that it is impossible.
Meanwhile, neither the leader nor the country that inspires confidence to get us out of the quagmire is anywhere to be found. There is a change of era when those who command become obedient, when ancestral principles are replaced by urgent interests, when traditional methods of government yield to the pressure of those who only want to command.
In this mess, only the European Union can delay the end of an era. But a strong and intelligent EU that abandons all nationalism and decides to be a great political power as well as a commercial and economic power.
Leave A Comment