What a difference ten years makes

At the Ottawa Citizen last week, Karl Moore and David Lewis provided their take on how the world has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. This excellent retrospective almost reads like a summary of the key prophecies theTrumpet.com has been highlighting for almost 20 years.

First, Moore and Lewis recount the stunning demise of American hegemony over the last decade:

In 2000 Russia under Vladimir Putin turned its back on the West and much of democracy. America elected George W. Bush. Europe coined its own currency. The dot-com boom ended in a crash. The jihad and “clash of civilizations” Barber and Huntington warned about exploded on Sept. 11, 2001. Terror and anti-Americanism themselves became globalized. Bush’s invasion of Iraq poisoned America’s relations with much of the world.By the mid-2000s Niall Ferguson was writing about “sinking globalization.” Fareed Zakaria and others spoke openly of a “post-American world” and the “rise of the rest.” America’s relative economic power was fading, and no one talks of a geoeconomic Pax Americana any more. The triumphalism of the 1990s buried the words of Yale’s Paul Kennedy, who warned that geoeconomics ultimately dictates geopolitics. Kennedy’s warning that the United States was overextending itself militarily just as Spain, France and Britain had done, was ignored in the 1990s.Globalization in the 2000s is backfiring on the United States and confirming Kennedy’s warnings. Bush’s three-trillion-dollar/150,000-man war in Iraq weakened America’s position in Afghanistan and dealing with North Korea, Venezuela and Iran. American manufacturing went to China and services went to India. The former “arsenal of democracy” now entertained, speculated and consumed, going the way of Holland and Britain. America’s financial sector grew from 4 to 8 percent of gdp. A new generation of untrained real-estate entrepreneurs forgot, and then repeated, the horrendous mistakes of the 1920s.

Our regular readers know that theTrumpet.com and our predecessor, the Plain Truth, have been forecasting this decline for decades. Our forthcoming February issue of the print edition examines this forecast in some detail. Be sure to read the whole thing.

“The Pax Americana may be over a lot sooner than many think,” Moore and Lewis continued before asking, “Who will fill the vacuum?” (emphasis mine throughout).

This reminded me of a feature we wrote more than 10 years ago, right after nato’s war against Kosovo. “Who Will Fill the Power Void?” we asked on the cover of our magazine. “Increasingly bold challenges to American supremacy are coming from several quarters,” we wrote.

The post-Cold War era of the lone superpower U.S. has proved to be nothing more than an interregnum, a temporary anomaly.Nature abhors a vacuum. When we speak of today’s “dangerous new world,” we primarily are talking about the power vacuum being created by an ever-weaker America and Britain—a vacuum which will be filled by nations with far-from-benign intent.Of all the backlash from the war in Kosovo, the most worrisome has come out of Europe.

Writing about that June 1999 issue, we said that it would discuss “the current fall of the United States and Britain” and show “the alliance now building [in Europe] that will forcibly supplant the world’s present superpower.” Go back and study that entire issue.

Last week, Moore and Lewis asked, “If America declines, will Europe fill the vacuum, partly in response to the Chinese challenge? To some this seems unlikely [not us!] but think back to the world of only a scant 10 years ago when the Anglo-American model of stakeholder capitalism stood triumphantly (and perhaps a tad arrogantly) and practically alone on the top of the heap, and how much has changed since then.”

Yes, indeed. Look at how much has changed in such a short period of time. “Twenty years ago the European model was being dismissed as inefficient and unwieldy,” Moore and Lewis wrote,

no match for the “lean and mean” shareholder capitalism of the “Anglosphere.” Now the world is not so sure. … In spite of all the arguments of the Euroskeptics, the European Union has transformed itself into a unique global superstate. Europe now has a president, a foreign minister, a common currency, a passport, a defense industry, a supersonic fighter, and an international role in peacekeeping.If and when the United States begins to retrench, no certain thing but a real possibility, the European Union may well begin to fill the vacuum in the Western world. …For the first time Europe speaks with one voice, the low-key Flemish of President Herman Van Rompuy. A recent issue of the Economist insisted “We are all Belgians now.”

Europe has united! The final revival of the “Holy” Roman Empire is here! Of course, there are more changes ahead. As Moore and Lewis correctly note, the ever-quickening pace of world events may “demand more forceful leadership in the West.”

Yes, of course! And whom might they have their eye on? “Given the realities of geoeconomics it is not inconceivable that a far more dynamic leader such as German Economics Minister Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenbergmight one day be in charge.”

Guttenberg, as our regular readers know, is a rising political force in Europe. We have been following his career path for several months now. (Go here, here and here.)

Isn’t it time for you to begin following the sure word of Bible prophecy more closely? (See 2 Peter 1:19.) We can help with that.

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