I had studiously avoided watching the Olympics, much less write anything about it when they were on. I had caught a section of the opening ceremony on the news and it was a stunning spectacle.
In that I was drawn to the closing ceremony as I expected the same eye-popping, jaw dripping display. I was not disappointed. For all the majesty, energy and synchronisation of motion I was unsettled by the similarity to the Nazi Olympics.
This was all too much like “Triumph of the will” for the digital age.
This is an empire on the rise. Obese, historically illiterate Americans sat on their couches and watched their nemesis-although I doubt that they can conceive of such an animal.
If these Americans were not historically illiterate then the shuffling entrance of the original global superpower – the British.
It is impossible to parody Boris Johnson or how he looked on the global stage. Hands stuffed in his pockets looking on with a confused disinterest at what the natives were getting excited about.
This will be China’s century. By 2040 her economy will be larger that that of the USA.
It seemed to pass everyone by that the centrepiece of London’s Olympian “hello” to the global village was an exploding bus.
Truly 2012 will be the Al Qaeda Olympics.
Blair’s war of choice against Iraq will be played out in stadia, streets and, even perhaps, the athlete’s village.
Not since Munich 72 has an Olympic games been so threatened.
The British security services will, and indeed should, watch all ports and airports for possible Jihadi slipping into the country determined to achieve martyrdom.
However the threat is more likely to have been born and reared in Bradford.
Empires are built on slaughter and chaos. The demise of an empire is not really such a different experience.
Yorkshire born Jihadis detonating themselves in crowded London streets killing as many infidels as they can will be a bloody reminder of the price Britain will continue to pay of Blair’s delusion that the UK was capable of striding the world stage as a partner of the USA.
The British Army is now only capable of deploying 12000 soldiers in the field on a fulltime basis.
Now, as the global financial system implodes into chaos all of the developed world’s economies are slipping into recession.
There is one major economy that will grow next year-at around 7%.
China.
It is 500 years since Zheng He’s voyages of exploartion and a century since the defeat of the Boxer Rebellion.
China has a long history and waiting another few decades to achieve global domination is not a problem to the old men in Beijing.
However the spectaulcar collapse of US led capitalism in the last few weeks may bring Chinese domination that bit closer.
The Chinese are rapidly building up a blue water navy, including aircraft carriers.
This time the dockyards and the plans for ships will not be burned as they were in the Ming dynasty.
China is coming out.
The USA will increasingly be crippled by the three deficits identified by Professor Niall Ferguson in his work “Colossus”.
The British historian Ferguson argued that the US Empire suffers from a manpower deficit, a financial deficit and an attention deficit.
China has more than enough of all of these to dominate the planet.
With the collapse of the British banking sector and it HAS collapsed British Prime minister will have to bring in budget cuts.
He has no choice.
One project that may well be axed is the controversial £3 billion project for two aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy.
Meanwhile the Chinese are building the modern day equivalent of dreadnoughts as quick as their dockyards can produce them.
Britannia no longer rules the waves, but in this century maybe reduced to having little more than a coastal marine.
When my father’s father lay in wait at Carrowkennedy, Count Mayo with a rifle and some home made grenades we was, with his comrades in the West Mayo flying column, fighting the world’s superpower.
Britain was capable of fielding huge armies and had the world’s biggest, most professional navy.
Now Britain can’t field more than a brigade in any permanent deployment. The Royal navy’s surface fleet is less than 25 ships for the first time in its history.
First comes economic decline then military and political decline.
People in the USA looking at Boris Johnson with his hands in his pockets in Beijing were looking at their shuffling future.
