H
HagiaSophia
Guest
From 30 Gorni: (Italy)
The picture painted is not an end unto itself. It aims at furnishing some reflections on the political level. Chiefly in two directions. The area politically and economically dominant has been up to now the north-Atlantic.
Supremacy could, in not much time, move toward Asia. 800 million people, calculating the US, Canada and the 25 European countries, will find themselves competing with a population that is already over 3 billion and a half. History teaches that large empires become endangered when they think they can continue to play the same role they had in the past even though objective conditions have changed. So it was with the Roman Empire, with that of East, for the British, for the USSR.
The US themselves, after the collapse of the USSR and after the effects of the new economy spread to the whole planet, rightly think of themselves as the hegemonic power in the world, and they are so considered by everyone. In the Iraq question they believed they could challenge the UN and decide substantially by themselves. In future they won’t be able to ignore the new autonomy in Asia.
They will have to be even more cautious should two pieces of news recently aired turn out to be true: Russia’s possession of a multinuclear warhead capable of evading American satellites and hence of questioning the military supremacy, till now uncontested, of the United States, and Russia’s role as supplier of military technology to China.
The second point concerns relations with the Islamic world. The demand for oil products by China and its eastern neighbors will get ever more massive, and could become dominant. The ascertained reserves of oil are concentrated, at the present state of research, in the Islamic countries of central and west Asia. The consumer states could acquire a dominant position over the producer states
During its history China has not cultivated territorial expansion. But conditions might occur for economic expansionism. In such conditions, if one looks ahead to the long term, various questions arise. Is it sensible for the Euro-Atlantic area to exacerbate the quarrel with the Islamic world or should it not instead cultivate co-existence or integration of the kind which has been developing for centuries in many areas of the Mediterranean? Is not Islam as a link between the large cultural - even more than political - areas of the world preferable to an Islam pushed into the arms of China?
*****Driven by ethical principles, but probably also by ancient wisdom and an acute sense of its fittingness to history, the Roman Church preaches peace, tolerance and mutual understanding among the three great monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. But numbered all together they do not reach the population of South-East Asia.
The picture painted is not an end unto itself. It aims at furnishing some reflections on the political level. Chiefly in two directions. The area politically and economically dominant has been up to now the north-Atlantic.
Supremacy could, in not much time, move toward Asia. 800 million people, calculating the US, Canada and the 25 European countries, will find themselves competing with a population that is already over 3 billion and a half. History teaches that large empires become endangered when they think they can continue to play the same role they had in the past even though objective conditions have changed. So it was with the Roman Empire, with that of East, for the British, for the USSR.
The US themselves, after the collapse of the USSR and after the effects of the new economy spread to the whole planet, rightly think of themselves as the hegemonic power in the world, and they are so considered by everyone. In the Iraq question they believed they could challenge the UN and decide substantially by themselves. In future they won’t be able to ignore the new autonomy in Asia.
They will have to be even more cautious should two pieces of news recently aired turn out to be true: Russia’s possession of a multinuclear warhead capable of evading American satellites and hence of questioning the military supremacy, till now uncontested, of the United States, and Russia’s role as supplier of military technology to China.
The second point concerns relations with the Islamic world. The demand for oil products by China and its eastern neighbors will get ever more massive, and could become dominant. The ascertained reserves of oil are concentrated, at the present state of research, in the Islamic countries of central and west Asia. The consumer states could acquire a dominant position over the producer states
During its history China has not cultivated territorial expansion. But conditions might occur for economic expansionism. In such conditions, if one looks ahead to the long term, various questions arise. Is it sensible for the Euro-Atlantic area to exacerbate the quarrel with the Islamic world or should it not instead cultivate co-existence or integration of the kind which has been developing for centuries in many areas of the Mediterranean? Is not Islam as a link between the large cultural - even more than political - areas of the world preferable to an Islam pushed into the arms of China?
*****Driven by ethical principles, but probably also by ancient wisdom and an acute sense of its fittingness to history, the Roman Church preaches peace, tolerance and mutual understanding among the three great monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. But numbered all together they do not reach the population of South-East Asia.