Saturday Ramble: America has lost its ascendancy and has not yet found a role

In his invaluable book The Secret History of the World, Mark Booth, head of Century publishing (pen-name, Jonathan Black), mentions in passing an old Rosicrucian prophesy that European civilization will collapse, Russia will take over, and the spiritual flame pass to America.

You might think that it has already happened. At the end of the Second World War, European civilization had comprehensively collapsed, while the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe. America settled down in Central Europe to halt the march of the Russians, and the Cold War began.

The previous superpower, Great Britain, a major part of European civilisation, sank into the Statist socialism that over the following sixty years would drain its lifeblood and bring the country to its knees time and again.

The nation that in 1800 had more than fifty percent of the world’s warships and “ruled the waves,” as well as a quarter of the planet’s population, would end up in 2011 without a single aircraft carrier.

Is that the end of the story? If Francis Fukuyama’s declaration of “the end of history” were correct, we might think so. As ever, though, history is more vigorous than its historians, and moves on.

Consider the situation now: Russia has recovered rapidly from the obliteration of the sinister Soviet Union, plus a major default, to become one of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) the emerging economic superpowers, thanks to its huge reserves of fossil fuels and minerals.

Meanwhile, the US has fallen into an ongoing slump and a deep polarisation of its defining feature, democratic politics.

It’s not that it doesn’t have the strength to act, its will appears to have faltered. It faces a drift back into a folksy past of Appalachian fiddles and Davy Crocketts. America has lost its ascendancy but has not yet found a role.

Could it be that the Rosicrucian prophesy that Russia will be dominant while America will hold the spiritual flame, that is, turn away from power politics, is coming true?

Few commentators doubt that “European civilisation” is steadily collapsing under the absurd deadweight of the EU and the Mr Bean euro currency area. It’s a fair bet that what we now see across the Channel won’t be there in quite the same formation in ten years.

Russia has its problems too including a continuing battle against Islamic militants on its southern flanks, so has interests in common with the West, including the need to sell its gas and commodities. If it had intelligent and flexible leadership the country would have exceptional potential. Once it looks south to China for economic advice — given the authoritarian nature of its society — it could surprise us all later this century.

Russians are the descendants of the Aryans who remained on the Steppes, while their cousins headed south into northern India. These eventually formed the Brahmin sect, which still has great influence in the subcontinent.

Russia is a great nation by any standards, with a long and sometimes successful past. The peaks of its literature: Dostoievsky, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, speak of its intellectual grandeur.

Russia will become more powerful over time as American influence wanes, the UK continues to prefer introspective social engineering to the real thing, or finding markets around the globe, while Continental Europe yet again commits suicide for the third century running.

But will the Russians dominate the northern hemisphere?

However you look at it, the ancient prophesy does have a spooky momentum behind it.

John Evans

… who is the author of The Eternal Quest for Immortality: Is it staring you in the face? Available from Amazon and all good booksellers.

Muscular Mysticism is coming soon.