[kranke155]

It is absolutely a Chinese century. Even the comment above isn’t wrong per se - great power competition is normal during the interregnum, ie as Arrighi described it - one hegemon is rising while another is declining. But eventually one of them does rise and the world conforms to that - ie America in post WW2.

[bxk76]

Well China cant seem to make a single friend beyond North Korea and Russia. Everyone is a bit wary of them.

I mean when the US replaced the Brits as Hegemon a large part of the world wasnt nervous about it.

[wredcoll]

God, this is depressing.

I think it's difficult, if you're a millenial/zoomer/whatever we're calling these things, to understand just how much of the world genuinely liked and respected and wanted america involved in their local affairs.

America obviously wasn't perfect and many, many more people than trump were involved with squandering all of this goodwill, but we still had some left over before he showed up.

[bxk76]

Its not a static system. Things will swing back and forth like a pendulum. And through those oscillation we move forward. Diff today is everyone is getting their heads filled 24x7 with a whole lot of info their grandparents never had to digest about how the system moves.