Putin and Trump have convinced me: I was wrong about the 21st century

[wjfox]

Putin and Trump have convinced me: I was wrong about the 21st century

Robert Reich
Sun 13 Mar 2022 06.00 GMT

Nationalism is disappearing, democracy is inevitable, nuclear war can’t happen: Ukraine shows old certainties were wrong

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... st-century

[Cyber_Rebel]

On one hand, I'd like to be hopelessly optimistic for once and state that his viewpoint may be pre-mature considering we're still only a few decades into the 21st century. Remember by this point last century, Mussolini had just come into power and Adolf had yet to be sent to prison, in which he'd write his famous piece. The Soviet Union was also established exactly 100 years ago with Stalin yet to seize power. We'd yet to split the atom, which would go on to dominate geopolitics to this very day.

If one were to gaze upon the formulative years, they'd be forgiven for thinking the 20th would've been an age of ceaseless totalitarianism all across the globe with humanity being set back into a new dark age. While completely unperfect, we advanced more last century on many fronts than any other prior. We somehow made it out alive and ready for an even more uncertain future.

On the other hand, I do get the point Mr. Reich makes, after all the assumptions he was wrong about reminds me of how early last century people were thinking Europe/modern economies at the time had advanced past the need for barbarism and warfare. Their naivety too was proven wrong.

I formed this belief in the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union had imploded and China was still poor. It seemed to me that totalitarian regimes didn’t stand a chance in the new technologically driven, globalized world. Sure, petty dictatorships would remain in some retrograde regions of the world. But modernity came with democracy, and democracy with modernity.

Indeed, they merely adapted to the new era and disruptive technologies it brought about. Stands to reason then, we too must adapt in order to counter them, and maybe we can look back on the 21st century as another truly transformative one. Another futurist once said that the "character" of any given century is decided within the first 20 years or so. Looking at Crimea annexation and the geopolitical fallout now that may be the case, but perhaps rather than viewing a single (or couple) bad actor(s) dictating the course, maybe it's the almost global solidarity shown in the face of it that will best represent this century's character.