Transcript
Thérèse Delpech: What I choose as a title for this talk is a question that the recent events did not make easier to answer, because the question is who is shaping the world at the beginning of the 21st century? And if we think about the situation in the 1990s, nobody in fact would have dared to ask such a question. The answer would have seemed too obvious. America was shaping the world. No one else could, either because of recent collapse of the U.S.S.R., or because of political immaturity of the European Union, or because of insufficient development of most of the rest.
At that time America’s wealth and creativity, America’s globalization lead movement, America’s numerous security commitments around the world, and finally America’s presence on the ground, as well as in the seas, in the air, and in space were so impressive that the unipolar moment looked supreme even if though not this time to last forever. Such was America’s chains at the time, that for many it even raised the specter of a global empire. Never mind that the American people lacked the will or even the desire to behave as an imperial power, such was at least the perception that one may even contemplate asking this question, who is shaping the world, at the beginning of the 21st century is therefore an indication of the profound changes that have taken place during the part 10 or 15 years.
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