The end of Pax Americana and what lies ahead for South Africa and the world
Richard Haass, a former US diplomat and advisor to that country's executive, writes in the magazine Foreign Policy that last week's events in Washington DC when thousands of disgruntled Americans stormed the US Capitol marks the moment when the world moved into a post-American period.
"What took place last week was a distinctly American failure, but the consequences go far beyond American shores. A post-American world, one no longer defined by US primacy, is coming sooner than generally expected – less because of the inevitable rise of others than because of what the United States has done to itself," he writes.
Millions of people, including in South Africa, watched aghast as the famous dome of the Congress building came under siege from people who, from afar, subscribe to outgoing US President Donald Trump's post-truth, post-factual and hyper-nationalistic ideology and style of politics.
Trump, as Haass writes, not only disrupted American society and politics, but has disrupted the global post-World War Two consensus, which saw the global order remain unchanged for nearly 76 years.
But what happened – and is still unfolding in the US – is also happening elsewhere in the world. The further away the world moves from 1945, and as memory fades and anti-intellectualism and cynicism of established systems increase, populism and nativism spreads.
Next week, Trump will be replaced by Joe Biden as US president. Biden will not only need to heal a clearly broken country, but will have to navigate America in much stormier international waters than in 2017, when he left the White House as that country's vice president.
In this week's Friday Briefing, three analysts consider the instability in the US from a South African and world perspective. Can modern liberal democracy, with its attendant and established values hold?
Francis Kornegay Jr, born in Detroit, Michigan and now an analyst in South Africa, argues that we should not underestimate the impact of last week's events on America and that it "ranks as a national trauma with the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy".
Professor Ivor Sarakinsky considers Francis Fukuyama's famous declaration that "the end of history" arrived with the fall of communism (he was wrong) and sees a rather bleak future ahead.
Professor Tawane Kupe, principal of the University of Pretoria, writes that there is broad distrust of the political elite. "There is anger and resentment about what appears to be the never-ending rounds of corruption and plundering of the public purse."
All three are essential reading if you want to understand the world as it is.
Best,
Pieter du Toit
Assistant Editor: in-depth news and investigations.
America Quo Vadis: Biden transition, Trump insurrection
On 20 January, Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the next president of the United States, but already there are several challenges facing him and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, as they confront the toxic legacy of Donald Trump's presidency, writes Francis Kornegay Jr.
What does the future of democracy hold in a post-Trump world?
That Joe Biden won the US election, and that Boris Johnson's popularity in the UK is now collapsing, is no indication that the established democracies will soon be back to normal, writes Ivor Sarakinsky. He argues that a dynamic has been unleashed globally, which will not easily be contained.
The age of disruption: Lessons from the US for South Africa
Fed on a diet of manipulation and lies, Tawana Kupe writes that the excluded can easily become the puppets of corrupt autocrats in South Africa's party politics who take advantage of the context, just as Donald Trump did in the United States.
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