Re CIVILIZATIONAL COMPETITION WHAT USED TO BE CALLED THE WEST AND THE REST

No one here, or there, wants to put it this way, now. 


Not politically correct......


It is partly, still, here, the great American underdog spirit: help all refugee foreigners in distress. The last great melting pot frontier...........


We used to take many refugees from elsewhere, and such things. 


At least that was the ancient history.......

David McCullough refers to France, now, NYT today, re their justifiable ire re our overly free press and overly dissolute moral and legal compass re their darling Strauss-Kahn. I sympathize, truly.


And of course there is a lot of history here, behind the scenes, really, for most Americans, who understandably cannot fathom such distant historical details. Great Power disputes, 1500s 1600s,  leading to the American republic in the first place.....


What of this? 


And what of England, and America, and where we now find ourselves?

I would say that there were perhaps several chances, only a few, in the last 500 years, to preserve 'Western hegemony', 


not to preserve Britain versus France, or Britain or France or The Netherlands, versus Spain or Austria, 


in a world hurtling forward no one knew where.  


The last clear chance, at least for Britain, then barely standing, the last weak hegemon, and the last clear chance for the West assuming a Western coalition, was at the end of World War II. 


Even assuming no Patton alternative, some approach other than laissez faire expansion of non communist regimes might have saved the situation, 


yet even there, the chance to preclude nuclear competition would also have been forfeited, a huge nagging cost and drag on the hegemons still standing.  


That was the huge missed opportunity of 1945. (Maybe someone more strategically perspicuous than I will correct me on this little detail.) 


Now that the pattern of present and future world dominance, centering perhaps on The Rest, and based on that blind Western laissez faire free market expansion, is shifting and emerging, some things, in hindsight, seem rather obvious, setting aside, for a moment diplomatic politeness.


What are some of those things?


I will let you take some guesses, for now.