Reading the news these days one cannot be unaware of the American election. On the one hand it is quite entertaining with several larger than life characters. On the other hand, I have a sense that something of a tragedy is also unfolding as neither of the two political parties seems that happy in itself. This is especially true of the Republicans who seem to be tearing themselves apart. Beyond all the rhetoric and histrionics, one tries to discern deeper trends. Is it really America itself that is coming apart? The demographic trends suggest that parts of the USA will become predominantly Spanish speaking before the end of this century. Whether building a wall along the Mexican border will change this prospect or not, it has to be a significant factor in looking at the future of the world's number one military power. Then there is the fact that American democracy looks less and less democratic as so much manipulating and fixing goes on. Then there is the question of debt. Debt is one of the big factors in international politics these days - look at Greece, look at Japan. To eliminate its dept the American government would have to sell everything it owns and all the public property of the nation and still find some more cash from somewhere. In the meantime it goes on spending more than its income. In this sense, America is a mortgaged nation in a state of negative equity. Not a happy position. Will America retrench into protectionism, leading to negative trade wars all over the world? What will that do to Euro-American relations? Is NATO now redundant - or even just too expensive? Will there then be a knock on effect on Russo-European relations? We could well be edging toward a set of changes as portentous as those that happened when the Iron Curtain fell. Whether one likes their proposed solutions or not, it does appear that Mr Trump and Mr Sanders are both making noise about important issues that nobody else really wants to look at but which do have implications for all of us.
And before all that, the UK is going to have a referendum on whether or not to stay in the EU. This could turn out to be something of a non-event if it results in more than 55% of the population voting to stay in Europe. This, however, looks increasingly unlikely and a much closer result could have all sorts of knock on effects depending not only on the vote but its distribution, especially if, as does seem likely, Scotland votes differently from England. There are scenarios here capable of breaking up the United Kingdom, changing the UK-Europe relationship, and changing the UK-USA relationship. We live in interesting times.
Although news from the Middle East is fairly unremittingly awful, the increasing likelihood that there may be changes in relations between the most powerful countries in the world is likely to be even more consequential in the long run than whether President Assad does or does not stay in power, whether IS continues, transmutes or disappears, or whether the Israelis and Palestinians ever do come to some kind of accord or not.
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