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The story of two candidates in Washington and Beijing

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Greg Treverton was a great American fortune teller. As chairman of the National Intelligence Council, he oversaw the US government for four years Global Trends reports. His 2017 report had a careful acknowledgment of America’s weaknesses. It also called for “increasing levels of inequality” and “extremely unequal politics”. But the report affirmed that “all American interests. . . remains a great benefit ”.

Four years on Treverton, who is now in academic school, takes on a hopeless idea. Last week, he published story, by Karen Treverton, entitled “The Cold War Is Coming”. It argues that the division between red and blue America is now so dangerous that division of some kind is inevitable. This division can be peaceful, including “a very loose society”. But it can also be violent. The Treverton shockedly stated: “Republicans are twice as likely to carry guns as Democrats.”

If this were true, it would not be a burden. But some famous American scholars are approaching the same dystopian ideas. Next month sees the publication of How Civil Wars Start Writer Barbara Walter of the University of California, study director on the subject. He he protests that America agrees with what the world is at the brink of internal conflict. In his opinion this could be identified by “unscrupulous terrorists”, not by conflicts between the armed forces.

Even academics who do not focus on political violence are getting worse. Thomas Edsall, a follower of social events in the New York Times, he realized last week that political scientists are increasingly arguing that “returning to the traditional traditions of democracy (in America) will be too difficult, if not impossible”.

Such alarms and frustrations are not limited to “blue” America. Republicans are the same possibly than Democrats say the country’s democracy is in jeopardy – indicating Donald Trump’s insistence that the 2020 elections be rigged. Civil war reports are also common in right America. Senator Ted Cruz mused last month for Texas to leave the deal. Michael Anton, who served on Trump’s National Security Council, recently in comparison Today the United States is just like the world before the civil war, and he states: “Americans are More we are divided, not less, than we were on the eve of the great controversy. ”

The deep sadness of the US elite is linked to the decline of the country. One of the few things Republicans and Democrats agree is that America should now treat China as the world’s greatest and most dangerous enemy. Until recently, many Americans thought that, in spite of all the problems, the US would still have the technical expertise in China. But this can be taken lightly. In a recent article, Graham Allison of Harvard University and Eric Schmidt, a former Google executive, argued that “China will soon lead the US in technology.”

Frequent frustration in America is fostering mixed feelings among the Chinese elite – a growing conviction that their country is doing better than the US and will eventually displace it as a major global power. Speaking recently, Xi Jinping, Chinese leader, he announced that “east is rising and west is falling”.

The fact that America died 800,000 as a result of the Covid-19 epidemic, while China claimed fewer than 5,000 deaths, is often cited as evidence of China’s success.

China’s greater confidence spreads in the legal exchanges between the two countries. When US Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized China’s actions in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi insulted him. conflict: “The US has no qualifications to say it wants to talk to China from a strong point.”

Obviously, in closed systems such as China, it is difficult to know whether the official statements about the size of the Chinese system show genuine confidence. Xi’s opponents are often incarcerated. Zhang Zhan, a citizen journalist who questioned what happened in Wuhan, where the plague originated, was sentenced to four years in prison. But foreign observers are the most popular journalists outside of Beijing reports that the central government’s self-esteem and patriotism seem to be deeply divided among the local Communist party cards, as well as the general public.

The recent inclusion of a crisis in American democracy – as well as the rise of confidence in repressive regimes – is a reminder of the 1930s. The Great Depression convinced many in America and around the world that free democracy was wrong. The Soviet Union, Mussolini Italy and Nazi Germany have declared themselves doing well for their people – as well as for political activists from the West.

As it turned out, the glowing images of the 1930s dictatorship concealed their deep-seated grievances, while the Americas’ weakness weakened its deep resilience. Those who still look to the US as a global defender of political freedom should expect history to repeat itself.

gideon.rachman@ft.com

The article is designed to show that Donald Trump says the 2020 elections were stolen from him, not 2016.

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