The end of an empire ?

By Iaime  Fong Buckeridge (in La Prensa)

“After elections marked by accusations of fraud and vote-buying and an unusual –and suspicious for some– long wait to know the results of the elections, a coup riot was unleashed with deaths and injuries, and the implementation of a curfew in the capital of the country, the OAS calls for sanity and respect for institutions and democracy … ”. No gentlemen, this is not a rerun of the Panamanian elections of the 80s or of today’s Venezuela. In fact, it does not refer to any “third world” country of governments with questionable morals.

This news is from America (the country, not the continent), and as my old friend Mikhail Gorbachev would say “vieresh, ni vieresh”(Although you may not believe it), but that’s the way it is, the country that is the champion of democracy, the indisputable reference point for civilized command transitions and nemesis of authoritarian governments, is experiencing a kind of mutation, an inverted Stockholm Syndrome, the one where you adopt the personality of what you fight; as the song says, “if the north were the south.”

Alexis de Tocqueville is rolling in his grave because he will have to do a reissue of his book Democracy in America, which for 200 years was a must-read in political science; because what the world witnessed on Three Kings Day on Capitol Hill is far from the profile of Uncle Sam that Hollywood and the media have taught us. The smile turned grimace.

Waning influence

We have already seen how the United States has lost ground and lost influence at the international level, both politically (it could not prevent the Nagorno Karabakh war by handing over the diplomatic baton to Russia); commercially (China unseated it as Europe’s first commercial partner) and military (it could not prevent the Muslim brothers from conquering Libya hand in hand with Turkey over European interests); We also see how racial issues continue with the same rancid validity as 100 years ago, lighting up the streets and shedding blood because of the color of their skin. But to see the Capitol invaded by angry mobs as it happened a few months ago in Guatemala! That he did not see coming. As Don Quixote would say: ” Things you will see Sancho, things you would never believe.”

The question now is: Are we living the death throes of the empire? Is this is a lead up to an independence movement of the blue states and the red states? Will the world, without its de facto guardian, fall into a new dark age, as it did after the fall of Rome? Or, on the contrary, without the “Pax Pentagoniana”, the XXI century will redefine its profile in one that is multipolar and more self-determining?

Will a United States divided and more polarized than in 1860 be able to survive the unstoppable advance of China? Will it be able to face the increasingly strong Russia? Will Turkey’s neo-Ottoman expansionist drive deter? Will it be able to keep Latin America under its geopolitical control?

Be that as it may, personally, I do not like that this hopeful 2021 starts with something never imagined since it opens a door where only Schrodinger’s cat would be comfortable.