Anatol Lieven is a professor in the War Studies Department of King’s College London and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington DC.
Rather than a future in which Chinese hegemony will replace that of the United States, we seem to be rapidly entering a world in which no country will exercise anything resembling true world leadership. This bears a sinister resemblance to the 1920s, when the United States replaced Britain as the world’s leading economic power, but was wholly unwilling to shoulder additional burdens of global leadership.
Rather than a future in which Chinese hegemony will replace that of the United States, we seem to be rapidly entering a world in which no country will exercise anything resembling true world leadership. This bears a sinister resemblance to the 1920s, when the United States replaced Britain as the world’s leading economic power, but was wholly unwilling to shoulder additional burdens of global leadership.
When the Baltic countries entered NATO and the European Union a couple of years ago, many thought it was the end of the centuries-old "red line." Euro-Atlantic organizations had crossed into the former Russian and Soviet empires.
In September 2004, the Russian city of Novgorod hosted an international conference entitled Russia at the Turn of the Century: Hopes and Reality. Its organizers were the RIA Novosti news agency, the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Russia in Global Affairs, and The Moscow Times.