Leaving Rome while the Middle East in on Fire

We are ready for our trip, we leave tomorrow and our adventure in the heart of the US looks more and more challenging. WE are not going cross country in the 1970s or 1980s, we are crossing a continent crucial to the stability of our world in a very delicate moment.

Many have written that the Iranian attacks against Israel are benefitting Trump during the last stretch of its campaign, but I doubt that Americans are interested and fully aware about what is happening in the Middle East. I doubt that people will vote because of they condemn the war in Gaza and the esclation of violence in a region far away from home. My gut feeling is that people will vote one or the other candidate based upon domestic policy and their wallet. And I also believe that very few of them know how much of their money is used in this conflict and in the war in Ukraine.

However, regardless of what Americans know and think of their foreign policy, this election will be crucial for the political equilibrium of the Middle East, for the future of Europe and of the rest of the world. I will test this theory talking to people and watching what is happening on the US media and social media.

The fact that on one side of the Atlantic and of the Pacific people have a different feel for the election is disconcerting, are there two America? one where the Americans live and vote and one where the rest of the world exists? This discrepancy, a tear in the political vision of the world order is dangerous and could lead to a new period of isolation of the US and of instability everywhere else. One thing is sure, the US world leadership has been weakened for years and because of that we are entering a new face, the end of the post Cold War period, 35 years in which the US has tried to redesign its role of leader of the free world and has failed.

But there are several silver linings in this scenario, the possibility of a new multi polar world order which could deliver another long period of peace providing the many checks and balances find a new equilibrium. Europe will have to find its own voice, the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia will have to push forward their modernization process, the Brics nations will need to play a bigger role in the pacification of the Ukraine, the UN will need to be reimagined. Not easy tasks, non easy solutions but it could happen. And the US could finally abandon a role it has disliked for almost a century, to be the policement of the world.

LINK VIDEO