China - but the bigger danger lies in the discrediting of democracy

Western policymakers risk another big mistake by identifying China as the most pressing challenge to the ancien regime. The US and its allies, we are told, must concentrate their energies on gathering their resources to see off the threat. What we need is more submarines in the South China Sea.

The sole superpower promised to remake the Middle East. Instead, as we saw last month in the fall of Kabul, Washington has been forced to cut and run. The rest of the world notices these things.

 The failure in the Middle East, however, pales into insignificance against the damage inflicted by the 2008 global financial crash. Historians will record the crash as a momentous geopolitical as much as an economic event — the moment western democracies suffered a potentially lethal blow.

 What Trump understood, as did populists elsewhere, is that the voters’ respect for established politics is rooted in a bargain. Public faith in democracy — in the rule of law and the institutions of the state — rests on a perception that the system at least nods towards fairness. 

Philip Stephens FT  30 September 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/9779fde6-edc6-4d4c-b532-fc0b9cad4ed9