Right off the bat – as Americans say though I ain’t one – let me say that having watched/listened to Yanis Varoufakis for years I truly respect this guy and his no-nonsense approach when talking economics – an area I’m familiar with but often need to listen while having a dictionary near by to look up terminologies. So as you’d expect I am swimming in quite shallow waters here when I read and/or listen to discussions covering this field let alone discussing it myself so to spare you the headache and spare myself as well I ain’t doing economics here 🙁 With that clarified from the outset let me suggest that as usual this yet another excellent discussion with Yanis largely covering his book Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism which I have every intention in buying/reading. However having watched the entire clip something bothered me and at first I couldn’t quite understand what it was, then I found the answer;
This is a discussion focusing entirely on the economics of super powers as a you’d expect from a specialist in this field. However in my opinion economic factors alone do not create a super power. Missing ingredients is the ability to maintain a solid value base and consistency in applying it both internally and in its relations with other nations particularly at a time where the war of ideologies is at its most intense moment and is key in terms of geopolitical influence. This is precisely where Soft Power comes handy something that was used successfully by the west in the past but unfortunately inconsistently. Now foreign relations for the west are more focused on a transactional nature/approach something that – in this day & age with an eastern block standing in the wings – makes it much more of near impossible proposition to achieve superiority in any form or even compete on equal grounds. This is something I’ve written about plenty on this site so I’ll not rehash here; suffice to say Europe still has plenty of leverage in many regions around the world due to historical connections – controversial as some may be – but thanks to flawed foreign policy/sloppy strategists this leverage is shrinking fast because the tank is running exceptionally low now. So if I could I would advise the EU to pick the cue championed by the US for so long (so long ago) and lead in developing a solid strategy around soft power in regions of remaining influence as a starting point before its too late; step 1 in my opinion would be to reassess the alliance in its current structure and whether some of the nations within the alliance present a vulnerability rather than strength to the EU because they seem to be in it for the wrong reason and are undermining its unity/influence because of a disconnect in values and/or allegiances.
Just a thought and I hope you enjoy the clip so long as its publicly available.