None other than Brownen Maddox, Director of Chatham House, the British Monarchy’s leading foreign policy think tank, also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), has pronounced the Western alliance officially dead.
“We have had from President Trump what amounts to a revolution. He has given the U.S. a radically new role in the world…. He has dismissed international law and the interests of old allies. It is not grandiose to call this the end of the Western alliance,” Chatham House Director Bronwen Maddox declared Jan. 13 in her annual lecture on the state of the world. Do not count on this shift being rolled back; “in the case of the U.S.’s allies, they must now contemplate what was unthinkable: to have to defend themselves against the U.S. itself, in trade and perhaps security.”
But as big as that is, Maddox declared it of equal strategic significance that “the era of China as the world’s leading tech power has arrived.” In her evaluation, “the U.S. has never had a rival like China: its equal or more in technology, trade and military power.” She spoke with a touch of horror of China’s growing “supremacy” in manufacturing, and now the equal of the U.S. in artificial intelligence.
Her strategic bottom line: “We are in a world of two superpowers, in rising competition with each other. Each says it does not want a war with the other, but the possibility is not zero and it would be catastrophic for the world. Even without that, though, their competition for power is a threat to the peace and prosperity of others.” The U.S. and China, each in their own way, “are shredding … the principles that have underpinned the liberal international order”—as she calls the financier-run, neocolonial “rules-based order” so carefully crafted by the British imperialists.
So what does Chatham House/RIIA intend to do about this? What the British have always done: play all sides against the other. “This messy world does offer opportunities,” she suggested. “For countries that are not superpowers”—the U.K. is not one for sure!—"there is a chance to play both sides, a reason to make new alliances and pacts, a way to get access to new technology.”
Targets of such British double-dealing are both Europe ("To strengthen its hand with both the U.S. and China, the U.K. needs a closer relationship with Europe") and the Global South ("Advancing some kind of order, in private talks, in mediation, in policy proposals, with many countries involved including the Global South—that is at the heart of what Chatham House is now doing.")
Those interested in the specific “constraints” which Chatham House is eyeing to bring down the U.S. and China should refer to her full speech.
Sometimes what is not said is as interesting as what is said. Maddox makes scarce mention of Russia, and that largely in passing, and the U.K.’s self-declared eternal enemy is not mentioned whatsoever in the Chatham House/RIIA’s press release highlighting her speech.
