Former US Ambassador Chas Freeman: 500 Years of Western Dominance Come to an End

'Several transitions are going on. The five century long global dominance of the west has passed. The west no longer has moral authority, it does not not even have unity and the values that it once expressed it now ignores or repudiates. 


'....The institutions that the West created after World War II, the United Nations, a great body of international law, are all behind us. They're not respected anymore by the West. Ironically, they've been taken up by others. The centrepiece of Chinese foreign policy is the effort to restore international law and fidelity to the United Nations Charter. Very ironic given the way in which the modern Chinese state was born in a repudiation of international law and in a framework totally outside
the post-war World War II American led order.

'So we have an odd situation where United States is now trying to tear down the order it created and those countries like China that have benefited most from that order and from the the rules set by powerful capitalist states are trying to restore that order or keep it alive.

'...Europe has all of the characteristics of a superpower except coherence and leadership and vision. And I think it's a great shame, by the way, that the meeting in Budapest between Donald Trump and and Vladimir Putin is not taking place because one of the few Europeans who does seem to have a vision of maybe the wrong one but at least a vision of European security is Viktor Orban
and he seems to recognize along with a few others the necessity to craft a  sustainable relationship with the Russians, with the Chinese.

'And you know, Hungary may have its problems and certainly it is not an example of a liberal democracy, but it does seem to have a pretty clear vision of its own place in the world. 

'I mean you see this with something like the European effort to confiscate funds from the Russians to indemnify Ukraine for its damage, where the Hungarians abstained. Everyone else apparently voted in favor. And what's the point of that? What does that do other than continue the fighting to the last Ukrainian?  

'At some point the last Ukrainian will die. What then? Nobody's talking about how do you deal with the prospect of a Russian victory in Ukraine.'

Chas Freeman talking to Glenn Diesen here.