The Elite Isn't Leading Anymore. It's Trapped.

To Balance China, The Democracies Will Need New Friends - And India With Its Fast-growing Economy, Youthful Population, And Democratic Politics Seems The Obvious Candidate.

When We Talk About Authoritarianism, We Conjure Up Out-of-date Visions From The 1930s. But We Are No More Likely To Do Authoritarian Government The Way They Did In The 1930s Then We're Likely To Address Or Talk Or Do Any Of Our Other Business In The Way They Did It In The 1930s.

It's Very Important To Understand That 21st Century Authoritarian Rule Does Not Look Like 20th Century Authoritarian Rule. You're Not Going To Have People In Parade Ground Formations. You're Not Going To Have A Police State. You're Not Going To People With Decorative Armbands Bullying People On The Sidewalks. And The Leaders Won't Stand At Microphones For Hours Ranting At People. All Of That Is So 80 Years Ago.

One Of The Great Drivers Of The Alienation That Has Made Donald Trump Possible Is That The Growth In The American Economy Has Been Weak. In The Decade From 2005 To 2015, There Was Not One Year When The Us Hit Three Per Cent Growth. And To The Extent There's Been Growth, Virtually All Of It Has Been Collected By The Top 10 Per Cent Of The Population. Obviously, If We Knew How To Make Growth Faster, We Would. We Don't. And It's Very Difficult To Make Growth More Broadly Shared. Because It's Not Just The Us That Has This Problem.

Civil Unrest, Civil Turmoil Is Not A Challenge To President Trump. It's A Resource For Him. He Needs To Create An Image Of A Polarized Country In Which The People Who Are Against Him Are Somehow Alien Or Anti-system.