For centuries up to and including the 20th century, Europe seemed to be the pivotal point in the history of the world.
Then came the Great Civil War in the West, our Thirty Years’ War (1914-1945), where all the great European powers – Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia – along with almost all the others, fought some of the greatest battles in history.
The result: the greatest nations of Europe were all bloodied. All European empires have fallen. The colonial peoples were all largely liberated and began the great migration to the metropolises. And Europe was divided between a West led by the United States and a Soviet bloc dominated by Moscow.
Yet even during this cold war of four decades, Europe was seen as the phone number library price of the struggle.
By the time the Cold War ended with the triumph of the free world, a European Union modeled on the American Union was being formed and nearly all of the newly liberated nations of Europe began to join the alliance of NATO.
However, today we feel that the role of Europe in the history of the world is passing, that the American pivot towards China and the Indo-Pacific is both historical and permanent, and that the past belongs to the world. ‘Europe, the future belongs to Asia.
Asia, after all, is home to the world’s most populous nations, China and India; to six of the nine nuclear powers in the world; and almost all of its major Muslim nations: Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Iran, as well as the world’s largest economies outside of the United States: China and Japan.