Frankly, I think the world is waking to a new reality: old allies might never have been friends as such; they may simply have been playing the cards they thought, at the time, might suit their own tribal interests best. The problem is population: as we love to screw around so much, we are too many, and with not enough useful space and resources to go round, all of which eventually ends up as yet another existential crisis nations face.
The more technology advances, the fewer of us become necessary and the greater the number surplus to requirements. We create unemployment across the board, for the highly skilled as for the others. Global war was once a semi-natural way of resolving some of the procreation issues, but the nuclear deterrent has put paid to that old solution, so minor battles come along for fear of mutual annihilation if anyone steps that step too far. So you end up with struggles as in Syria where deaths are large in number, but nobody outside really gives much of a damn, other than as a means to gaining a new foothold as, with Russia, another outlet to warm seas. We lose real shops and create online, faceless institutions that are struggling to become monopolies so that they can then abandon competition and milk the public dry, the objective of most business models that deal with the public; why else would anyone have anything to do with it?
In order to keep unemployment figures low, MacJobs are created in civvy street, and/or the military continues to take people into its arms even when it costs more to train them for two years of compulsory "service" than there is work or need for them. Governmental book-faking and figures massage. If youth has little prospect of working its way to a reasonable standard of life, no wonder it goes underground and takes to crime and the accompanying violence that scares reasonable people off the streets at night.
My friend, the Cuban tenor player, was having lunch today at the same place as I, and I stopped to chat on my way out. His take was that as there are so many robots working for us now, the pensions deficits might be solved by making the buggers pay taxes and National Health contributions too. I thought that Boris might take that up if he hears of it, or unless Farage thinks of it first. I think my musical friend was playing a little scherzo of the mind...
