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COMPARING the 20th Century with the 19th, the
West showed a weaker hegemony, deficient entrepreneurship and creeping self-doubt concerning its traditional values and beliefs. This is consistent with a well established pattern behind long term strategic changes in the international scene. Global powers rise and fall in accordance with their ability to impose order, create wealth and maintain legitimacy in their own and others' eyes. The West is losing out on each of these fronts. The inexorable conclusion is that we are in an era of waning fortunes and mounting contrarieties.
As Western leadership degenerates, the whole world will succumb to conflict and impoverishment. Eventually Africans, increasingly desperate and out of control, are likely to sweep into the enfeebled but still opulent northern lands. After a period of turmoil, they may acquire the baton of human progress and lead the way to a future world renaissance. Africans will then stand on Western shoulders, just as the West has stood on the shoulders of many other peoples.
Today's world order is by no means sui generic, and by no means the product ofa unique Western genius. It represents instead the continuation, fulfilment and reiteration of long-standing and deepseated historical trends. There is nothing truly special about the configurations and achievements of the present era. History is a continuously unfolding saga and this is merely the latest point of it. There are many catastrophes behind us and, undoubtedly, catastrophes ahead.
Egypt produced a precocious and durable civilization. For thousands of years while Europe was occupied by scattered tribes, the Nile Valley was home to the sophisticated pharaonic state, characterized by taxes, markets, literacy, and many other trappings of an advanced society. At the exodus of the Jews in 1500 BCE, a remote time before even the Ten Commandments had been laid down, the pharaonic state was at the mid-point of its existence. The Giza pyramids were then already a thousand years old, older than the European cathedrals are today. With such a phenomenal head start, Egypt's citizens would have been justified if they expected their lead to remain unassailable. Yet from about 600 BCE, the country fell prey to a succession of conquerors. With the seizure of Alexandria in 30 BcE and the suicide of...