The Anglo-American world of today is in a constant state of hysteria and fear. About China, Covid, Russia, Nord-Stream 2, Trump, it’s a long and quite creative list of all kind of dangers. And it’s increasingly damaging for the power of these once so dominant and prosperous countries.
The Five Eyes intelligent alliance comprising the Anglo-Saxon states of New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain, Canada and the United States of America can possibly access far more information from all around the globe than any other power in this world. Still, it seems this possibility diminished their abilities to comprehend this data, leading to a mental overload to navigate their countries in the modern world.
One of the most striking similarities of these countries is the fact that all of them are positioned in an isolated area of the world. In fact, the US-Mexican border is the only land-border of any of these countries with a non-Anglosphere country. With this geographic background, they see the world from a somewhat outside position, and clearly struggle to unterstand many of the worlds age-old conflicts and political traditions that now are getting stronger every year.
And so they all pursue their individual approach to the challenges of the 21st century. While Canada, Australia and New Zealand had some of the most rigorous anti-Covid measures to be seen, acting like they could just isolate their countries forever from the outside world, the United States and UK temporarily lacked any kind of reasonable approach towards the virus, leading to high mortality rates and, especially in the USA, major inner-political disruptions.
While China is on its way to become the first serious economic competitor and rival for the United States since the Napoleonic Wars, the respond to this challenge isn’t much of a sophisticated strategy. First, it took a long time for the desperate five to recognise the scale of this challenge, outsourcing many of the industries towards Asia and living with the self-deception that China will become a democracy once they reached economic prosperity. Than, after realising this wasn’t happening, they changed towards a new cold-war mood, trying to isolate the country in the economic sphere, while at the same time still being dependent from the Asian giant in many ways. The obvious next step will include increasing pressure on different countries to reduce their economic relations with China, in a time when Beijing is already by far the most important nation in global trade in terms of the total value of exchange with other countries. Most countries in the world don’t want to decide between China and USA and will find ways to navigate around this guidelines from Washington.
A similar approach is taken towards Russia, the second pillar of the emergent Eurasian order. It’s no coincidence that the US and Great Britain are by far the most hysteric “participants” of the current Ukraine-Russia crises. In fact, they where the only countries in the world announcing an immediate threat of war, including both Ukraine and Russia! It should be clear to the European states by now that the main goal of this tactic is to separate the continental-European countries from Russia, ensuring the dominance of the USA on the continent and in NATO. But simple historic, economic and geographic circumstances put into consideration make it obvious that this account won’t hold for long anymore.
Despite this trouble with foreign perils, the ultimate damage of this politic was done in their societies itself. The storm of the Capitol in Washington a year ago and the current, Orwellian measures against the protests in Canada, despite the large extend and continuity of the protests itself, shine a light on the deep-rooted ditches in these societies. As it looks today, there is no sign of recovery from the recent setbacks for the desperate five.
Simon Dierich 