‘But the US of A is no more. Replaced by the US-SSR. And our protection? Our special relationship?’
IF you don’t know it yet, a new world disorder is aborning. And it’s one where all bets are off as old alliances are taken apart and new ones are being created, however odd.
Not that there wasn’t enough warning.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton played the role of Cassandra the First, warning that Donald Trump was going to kowtow to Vladimir Putin and undo nearly eighty years of American leadership of the Western world.
Eight years later, Kamala Harris played the role of Cassandra the Second, warning that Trump, if re-elected, would be played by the dictators he admired. All they needed to do, Harris warned, was flatter him, targeting his ego. And voila! They had him in their pocket.
Democrats believed them, but MAGA didn’t and with more than 36% of eligible voters staying away from the polls, Trump was re-elected by 32%.
And the world order as we have known it since the end of the Second World War begins to collapse.
Last November, I was in Washington, DC to witness the elections, as I had done in 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016. Of course, Election Day didn’t turn out the way I hoped, but America decides what’s best for America. On the way home, I stopped by Seattle and there I met up with an uncle-in-law who I knew was a Republican. He didn’t gloat over their victory, but he expressed a single apprehension. “I only hope we don’t abandon Ukraine,” he said.
All I could do was smile.
Today, the new world order consists, on the one hand, of Russia, China, North Korea and what I now call the US-SSR. It’s not an ironclad alliance; each of the four has issues with the others. One example: China (I feel) knows it is now the more dominant partner in a China-Russia alliance while the latter bristles at the thought. Throw in Washington, DC, and this becomes one hell of a love-hate foursome.
Not sure how Ronald Reagan or George Bush would have described this foursome because Axis of Evil may be unfair.
The other side of the new world order are the European Union countries with Canada and Australia and New Zealand added in, plus perhaps Japan and South Korea. Taiwan, I’m sure, will be happy to be counted with this pack.
We have to wonder whose side the Middle Eastern countries will take (Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran, in particular) and where the big Central and South American nations will side.
And then there’s ASEAN. Which side will the ASEAN states take? For sure, they won’t be siding with any of the blocks as a bloc.
The new world disorder should be of interest to the Philippines because we may have lost a key bargaining chip. For so long, we have been able to cite our longstanding “special relationships” with the United States of America as a sort of shield to use against external threats, mostly the Communist threat in the 1960s emanating from Moscow and Beijing. More recently, the US of A was a protector against Chinese advances in parts of our economic zone, without which our World War 2 era Navy would be no match against the Chinese PLA ships.
But the US of A is no more. Replaced by the US-SSR. And our protection? Our special relationship?
It may be time to stop trusting America. Because in this new world disorder, all bets are off.
