Europe has had a good run. It has been at the top of world affairs for half a millennium, since the great age of exploration connected all continents and first gave man a global perspective. The great European empires – initially Portuguese, then Spanish, British, French – dominated much of the planet for some 350 years. The places that lay beyond European control were either inward-facing civilisations like China and Japan, or regional powers without truly global ambitions like the Ottomans, Russia and the United States in its first century of independence.
But over the past 150 years, Europe’s collective weight in the global balance of power has been on a declining path. Two world wars, the loss of empire, the rise of new players with global reach – first America, then the Soviets and now China – have seen Old Europe give up its primacy in international affairs but nonetheless retain a seat at the top geopolitical table.
