The supposed decline of the United States. The impending crisis of the European Union this year when it becomes 30 states, while Britain contemplates leaving and making it 29. It confronts promised referenda on continuing EU membership and Scottish independence. The collapse of the postwar Mediterranean order — in 1945, a colonial order. All bears witness today to the end of the postwar Western system, built in 1947-1949.
It was Britain, not the U.S., which took the initiative in creating a new political order and a new security system after World War II.
It was not the U.S., which was preoccupied with demobilization and bringing the troops home, and where on the right, isolationist attitudes survived, and in the center and the left, sentiments of fraternity with the Soviet Union because of its immense role in the war.