George Friedman sobre como a crise de 2008 liquidou o mundo que havia e iniciou a transição para “outro mundo”

“The financial crisis became an economic malaise. The economic malaise created a social crisis. The social crisis generated a global political crisis. The class that had absorbed the existential blow of 2008 turned on the elite and their values.

The elite, focused obsessively on their interests and ideology, failed to notice the revolt. Donald Trump in the United States, Brexit in Britain and numerous parties throughout the European Continent challenged the orthodoxies of interdependence and the pre-eminence of the interests of the financial class. This class and its allies were completely unprepared for a fundamental challenge to the pre-2008 orthodoxies. They were struggling to return to those halcyon days. Their challengers sensed that there was no going back and sought a completely different paradigm that appeared to be witless to the elite. But then the elite appeared brutally indifferent to any interests but their own.

The political upheaval was not confined to Euro-American society. It can be seen in the evolution of regimes into dictatorships, determined to retain the personnel in power. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are the great examples of this. As they shift to a more repressive stance, attacking their own financial elite, they gain popularity and power. Rather than a Trump or a Brexit emerging from the bottom, their intention is to appropriate the movement to enhance their power. This process of co-opting can be seen in Saudi Arabia and Turkey as well.

The issue that has been raised by 2008 is the importance of nations and the primacy of a national leadership to protect the interests of the nation as a whole and not the global system or the interests of the financial community. The re-emergence of nationalism is the logical outcome of the failure of interdependence. Part of the assumption of the pre-2008 ideology was that aggregate economic growth benefits everyone. Post-2008 ideology is that stagnation is paid for by the middle and lower classes. And this leads to a political showdown.

It also creates a situation where maximizing growth is not the primary interest. If the economy grows at 10 percent, but you are unemployed, your self-interest is not with maximal growth. If those above median income benefit from 10 percent growth but those below see their ability to consume contract, the conclusion is obvious. It is possible that free trade, for example, benefits the economy as a whole, but the benefits flow to the top and the costs are absorbed below. In this case, someone earning below median income will vote for someone prepared to sacrifice aggregate growth in the long run for higher incomes below the median for the next 20 years. That is precisely what the argument against the pre-2008 ideology is saying.

Free trade may benefit the economy as a whole, but devastate a class. That class will accept lower growth to avoid the consequences of lower wages. For the pre-2008 ideology, this view is incomprehensible. But it has become the prevailing ideology of roughly half of Euro-American society.

A new ideology has emerged. It is not yet in power, but it is growing. It argues that the nation-state controlling and limiting its dependence is superior to interdependence. It also argues that the nation-state provides benefits globalism cannot: a sense of community, the preservation of culture, a sense of self. This argument says that humans without a nation are humans without a community. They are alone, lonely and helpless. And at the root is the argument that there are more important things than money.”

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/how-2008-changed-everything/