The entrenchment of the Chinese Communist Party and the resurgence of socialism in Latin America, along with the resistance of Islam to accept the Western separation of religion and politics, means that the Western model of capitalism without a mechanism of social/political/religious control has been resoundingly discredited. Fukayama's 1992 pronouncement that we have reached the "end of history", embodied in the Western model of electoral democracy and capitalism, was thrown in history's dustbin. A BBC poll in 2009 revealed that 90 per cent of those polled disapprove of the current capitalist order.
This decade, as acknowledged even by the mainstream Western media, was a turning point for the West and the US in particular. It was dominated by US military interventions and threats, and the attempt to turn NATO into the world police force through wars in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan. However, these wars have been indecisive and did more to bankrupt the US economy than consolidate its influence around the world.
The rise of the BRICs and the growing influence of especially Russia and China on the world stage contrasts with the crises, both domestic and internationally, of the US and its imperial world order.
Though Africa experienced a few glimmers of development and democracy (South Africa, Ghana), its headlines were dominated more by tragic pandemics and civil wars, as China and the West plotted to control not only its oil and mineral but land resources.
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