Friedman's Idea Research
Friedman’s idea is overall well-presented and generally thorough. His points are clear and his predictions seem precise and justified. However, there is one particular point which causes questions and may be argued to be wrong. The point is why do both Friedman and Mandelbaum think that fate of the future belongs to or depend entirely on the United States of America? (Friedman, 2016) The argumentation paper presented here will attempt to prove the following thesis: It has been almost a century since USA became a leader of first the democratic world and then the world in general and the recent events show that in the nearest future the “burden” of leadership may very possibly be passed to the Eastern countries like China and Russia and the question for America will no longer be about the methods of “helping” or “controlling” the world but about dealing with whatever prestige, authority, and geopolitical power will be left to the USA after the baton of leadership will be taken from it.
The problem as it is posed by Friedman and Mandelbaum is a really existing issue. America’s policy after the Cold War’s end failed in many ways. What demands criticism and another perspective is their idealization and overoptimistic forecast for America’s geopolitical role in future. Both Russia and China for the last year showed a lot more victories while the USA alongside with European Union did not show any. It means that “west” is losing its geopolitical points. Pro-Russian politicians won in Moldova and Bulgaria, Trump said earlier that he doesn’t really interested in Baltic countries, Russian aggression in Ukraine is punished very little and Turkey’s military uprising had only strengthened Erdogan’s power (he now has his military forces in foreign countries) after which he said that he desires to restore Ottoman Empire and doesn’t think that Iraq is an independent nation. And with all these events happening Trump aims at neo-isolationism as his political vector. Russia and China, therefore, with European Union suffering from terrorist attacks and immigrant crisis, have all cards to play a tough game with west for the world leadership. Maria le Pen has all the possibilities to become the next president of France and Brexit once again showed weakness of the European Union. Ukraine’s nearest neighbors are not really encouraged with the war against Russia in the Eastern Ukraine. And finally, Philippine’s president Duterte stated numerous times what he thinks about US-Philippine military alliance which together with South Korean protests make western positions weaker and weaker. So the problem for America should not be about how to rule the world but about whether it is even capable to do anything with the world now when its opponents are not weak anymore (Russian ambitions are higher than ever).
All in all, it seems that the current century is able to shake the foundations of the US leadership in the world. It is a big question who will replace the USA as a world leader because in reality …
