One world scenario - from the late 20th into the mid-21st century

Whole Earth Review, Fall, 1990 by Robert Fuller

* Central Europe rejoins Western Europe to re-create prewar Europe. This Europe, with the European Community of twelve as nucleus, continues to unify economically during the 1990s. By the beginning of the 21st century Europe has reassumed her pre-World War H status as the center of world culture and commerce.

* Japan also re-assumes her preWorld War n role as the center of a de facto greater East Asian coprosperity sphere.

* A Greater Europe and a Greater Japan shoulder America aside and assume leadership in the global marketplace. America, burdened by domestic and foreign debt, and distracted by rising domestic troubles, turns inward.

* In the Soviet Union nationalist yearnings and economic distress lead to chaos. To America - the introspective, solitary superpower - falls prime responsibility for holding be world together during the tremors and the world-quake that occur as the cold war system of superpower hegemony collapses leaving a power vacuum. In trying to maintain international stability America further exhausts her financial, political, and spiritual resources. Being the only cop on the block is a thankless task. America, in a reprise of pre-war isolationism, all but withdraws from world affairs.

* It has been long in coming, but now America suffers - economically and spiritually. A deepening loss of confidence leads to depression both psychological and economic). It is America's long-postponed mid-life crisis, which she never knew because adulthood was thrust upon her when World War II forced the older nations to abdicate their paternal roles. Drafted into the role of elder statesman, while still adolescent at heart, America's anti-authoritarianism and can-do optimism not only dazzled the world for fifty years, they also set an example that a great many subjugated and impoverished people emulated in their struggles for freedom and prosperity. Like a prince become king before his maturity, America played the juvenile - for better and for worse. She could model youthful qualities like rebelliousness, audacity, extravagance, and passion. And for a time, the world was star-struck. But with the end of the cold war people everywhere suddenly felt their age. They were tired -tired of hype, tired of hope. America, which had suffered so little adversity, had yet to absorb the sober values of maturity - moderation, self-restraint, and sacrifice; compassion for the less fortunate; responsibility for the whole. As the 20th century ends, we see that it wasn't America's century after all. She'd been good for a dash of leadership, but was unprepared to provide stewardship. In retrospect it appears rather that Europe's star dimmed for a half-century during which America's seemed bright only by comparison. At the end of the century, America's glory seems but a flash in the pan. Europe is back in her historic role of world leader and Japan has risen independently to join her as peer and partner.

* World War II is seen in retrospect as a temporary setback in the long march of a few seasoned civilizations to world leadership. America and the Soviet Union, the ostensible victors, were still young nations, and were not ready to shoulder continuing responsibilities. They held the limelight only while the world remained mesmerized by their cold war with each other. The older civilizations - Europe and Japan - once back on their feet, resumed their leading roles, hardly missing a beat.

* The historic consequence of America's ascendancy was that she had been in a position to insist that Europe and Japan rid themselves of empire, and to hold an expansionist Soviet Union in check until internal pressures forced her too to grant freedom to her satellites and her citizens. One after another, the imperial powers of Europe - Britain, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal and finally, momentously, Russia - released their colonial possessions. The postwar period is, first and foremost, a period of world-wide decolonialization, and a brash America the first nation in modem times to escape empire (from the British, back in the 18th century) - served as a beacon and as a bulwark in the decolonialization of the world. Scores of liberated nations set out to imitate America. However, while being admired and widely imitated, Americans gradually ceased to appreciate the genius of their own political system - handed them on a platter by the founding fathers. Precocity is seldom aware of its sources and the adulation and narcissism this encourages delay maturation. By the end of the 20th century, Americans had lost their sense of historic mission.

* America was spared the horrors of the 20th century that were visited upon Europe, Asia, and Africa. It was as if God had indeed blessed America. She had never suffered. She had not earned her place in the sun. America had been free so long she had forgotten what tyranny was. Her civilization hadn't ripened. She found herself in the spotlight before she was ready for world leadership. Her compassion was sentimental, opportunistic, and episodic. She acted like a precocious, spoiled teenager: prodigal, chauvinistic, patronizing, self-centered, callous, greedy - in short, still possessed by adolescent arrogance and the pre-adult's sense of immortality and hubris. At the end of the 20th century, America remained an innocent among nations, and was vulnerable to a fall.