Will 2022 turn out be a hinge year, as a moment when longstanding trends in geopolitics suddenly shifted in a different direction? This week two important writers, one a long-established and prolific historian, the other a provocative presence on the internet, have argued persuasively that the answer is yes. With one other interesting point in common: neither sees the U.S. as having played a decisive role in the sudden shift.
Ferguson has backed U.S. aid to Ukraine and has called for more. He is pleased that “Putin has shrunk in stature on the international stage,” as his plans to annex Ukraine have dissolved in pathetic failure. “A leader I have long defined as a Mafia godfather is looking less and less like Michael Corleone and more and more like Tony Montana in the last scenes of Scarface.”
Unlike Ferguson, Richard Hanania, an academic and relative newcomer to Twitter, advocates something like an isolationist foreign policy for America. But like Ferguson, he has been pleasantly surprised by Putin’s debacle in Ukraine. Hanania quotes tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s observation that China is “a weirdly autistic country.” He calls Xi’s Zero COVID program “an insane policy choice,” given that even China’s vaccine mostly prevents deadly illness in the non-elderly. China’s rigid lockdowns have choked off economic growth and personal initiative in ways that seem difficult to overcome.
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