Zbigniew Brzezinski published an article for the New York
Times in which he wrote: “For the first time in history almost all of humanity
is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive.
Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and
economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial
domination.” This situation is made more precarious for elites as it takes
place in a global transition in which the Atlantic powers – Western Europe and
the United States – are experiencing a decline in their 500-year domination of
the world. Brzezinski wrote that what is necessary to maintain control in this
changing world is for the United States to spearhead “a collective effort for a
more inclusive system of global management,” or in other words, more power for
them. Brzezinski has suggested that, “the worldwide yearning for human dignity
is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political
awakening.” In 2005, Brzezinski wrote:
It is no
overstatement to assert that now in the 21st century the population of much of
the developing world is politically stirring and in many places seething with
unrest. It is a population acutely conscious of social injustice to an
unprecedented degree, and often resentful of its perceived lack of political
dignity. The nearly universal access to radio, television and increasingly the
Internet is creating a community of shared perceptions and envy that can be
galvanized and channeled by demagogic political or religious passions. These
energies transcend sovereign borders and pose a challenge both to existing
states as well as to the existing global hierarchy, on top of which America
still perches…
The youth of the
Third World are particularly restless and resentful. The demographic revolution
they embody is thus a political time-bomb, as well. With the exception of
Europe, Japan and America, the rapidly expanding demographic bulge in the
25-year-old-and-under age bracket is creating a huge mass of impatient young
people. Their minds have been stirred by sounds and images that emanate from
afar and which intensify their disaffection with what is at hand. Their
potential revolutionary spearhead is likely to emerge from among the scores of
millions of students concentrated in the often intellectually dubious “tertiary
level” educational institutions of developing countries… Typically originating
from the socially insecure lower middle class and inflamed by a sense of social
outrage, these millions of students are revolutionaries-in-waiting, already
semi-mobilized in large congregations, connected by the Internet and
pre-positioned for a replay on a larger scale of what transpired years earlier
in Mexico City or in Tiananmen Square. Their physical energy and emotional
frustration is just waiting to be triggered by a cause, or a faith, or a
hatred.
Important to note is that Brzezinski has not simply been
writing abstractly about this concept, but has been for years traveling to and
speaking at various conferences and think tanks of national and international
elites, who together form policy for the powerful nations of the world.
Speaking to the elite American think tank, the Carnegie Council, Brzezinski
warned of “the unprecedented global challenge arising out of the unique
phenomenon of a truly massive global political awakening of mankind,” as we now
live “in an age in which mankind writ large is becoming politically conscious
and politically activated to an unprecedented degree, and it is this condition
which is producing a great deal of international turmoil.” Brzezinski noted
that much of the ‘awakening’ was being spurred on by America’s role in the
world, and the reality of globalization (which America projects across the
globe as the single global hegemon), and that this awakening “is beginning to
create something altogether new: namely, some new ideological or doctrinal
challenge which might fill the void created by the disappearance of communism.”
He wrote that he sees “the beginnings, in writings and stirrings, of the making
of a doctrine which combines anti-Americanism with anti-globalization, and the
two could become a powerful force in a world that is very unequal and
turbulent.”
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