World in Flux

Influential contemporary thinker and author George Friedman observed that the modern geopolitical world changes after every 20 years. Towards the end of the 19th century, European ascendancy was complete. By 1920, the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German and Ottoman empires were gone. Communism was established in Russia; peripheral powers like the US and Japan started gaining strength. A defeated Germany of the First World War was on the rampage in 1940 and laid waste to almost all of Europe. By 1950, the sun had set on the victorious Britain, which shrivelled back to an island. The American era began after the Second World War. It was unthinkable to assail that power. Then a tiny Vietnam shattered its myth of invincibility. It was defeated but not down.