COMMENT | This year of living dangerously

COMMENT | Indonesia’s founding president Sukarno delivered his annual independence or National Day address on August 17, 1964, anticipating the forthcoming year as tahun vivere pericoloso, the "year of living dangerously". This year 2020 may well be the world’s turn and not only due to the obvious Covid-19 threat to the world.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the US became the world’s sole superpower. Many argue that after abandoning its pre-Second World War isolationism to become the post-war hegemon, the US has needed threats to justify ever-rising military spending for the US "military-industrial complex", as president (General) Dwight D Eisenhower warned.

The more recent rise of US President Donald Trump probably reflects these two seemingly contradictory claims, both the re-assertion of post-Cold War dominance as well as jingoist paranoia about American decline due to neoliberal globalisation.

After George W Bush saw god ...