Thread by @britinfluence

WHAT THE FCUK IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD?
Well, here's a 1/13 thread about why #britain thinks it's powerful. We don't know if we're top-table or in the relegation zone #SmartPower.
A leader talks of his country's great past and its magic future. You believe him. Are you wise? 1/

You want your country to top every league table it can.
But maybe he's a charlatan who will take his country down, you’re sure of it.
The leader says he wants his country to be the world-beating number one nation.
Great, but one problem. The world we grew up in is over 2/

Imagine living at the same time after #Napoleon, the Kaiser, #Hitler, the fall of the #BerlinWall when the world order was overturned and a new way of life begun.

Well, that's now.

Every thirty years or so a battle is fought for the future... 3/

Once every 100 years everything changes. We had the Spanish century, the French century, the British century, the American century, now we face the Chinese century.

All were epic struggles and all needed a once-in-a-century bloodbath to separate the winners from the losers..4/

Every century a crisis arises not only to control the state but to change it and the way the world is run.
We're at the beginning of a new era in history.
A new battle for power is underway.
But what are the rules of the game, and how smart the leaders who play it? 5/

Rulers fought to win the battle over ideas, forcing events to convert winning ideas into actions and, finally, impose by law and violence inevitable change to people’s ways of life.

These events were preceded by major international turbulence and wars. 6/

All ended with new world orders, new epochs, entrenched in law by the Treaties of Augsburg (1555), Westphalia (1648), Utrecht (1713), Vienna (1815), Versailles (1918), and Paris (1990). All of these confirmed the victory of a nation and an idea about how people are governed. 7/

And since 1500 these new rules gave birth to new states: Augsburg created the princely state; Westphalia, the kingly state; Utrecht, the territorial state; Vienna, the state nation; Versailles, the nation state; Paris, the new globalised world of market states. Why? 8/

This is how history moves. In one hundred year cycles. We are now entering the 6th “market state” epoch.
All of these countries, Spain, France, Britain and the US, seized their moment and changed the world. How did they do it?
They supercharged their country’s power....8/

In fact a country has TWO POWERS:
Hard power is the stick: cash and threats to get your way. Soft power is the carrot: persuasion without force.
The rise and fall of nations depends on how well they use the smart power to get what they want.

But how do they use smart power? 9/

Smart Power enables a country to succeed by understanding past successes, present dangers and future options.
And to do that there are SEVEN POWER APPS
To win their epoch or era, rulers apply the power apps to win the war of the world. What are they? 9/

Smart Power has seven components - seven powerapps:
-Military power
-Economic power
-State power
-Energy power
-People power
-Cultural power
-Diplomatic power
And we are going to apply smart power to judge who is winning or losing the battle to make their country great. 10/

It happens every century.
We're here again.
And the question is who is going to win?

Well, as of now, we have no idea. Because the goals countries score, the games they win, the trophies they seek have no league table.

It’s a bit weird frankly. 11/

After all, Charles Dow created the first stock market index way back in 1885. William MacGregor devised the first football league table in 1888.
How can Britain’s future be judged if nobody can see how Britain is doing? 12/

Leaders and politicians, media and all of us must be able to tell whether the decisions of the politicians win Britain more games than she loses in the Champions League of international power.
Watch this space..... 13/
Longer read: leaguenations.com/blogs/news/wha…