This is the question that came to my mind when I heard him talk on TV recently.
He was responding to a question by Fareed Zakaria about another possible Cold War between the U.S. and China in this 21st century.
In response, Tony Blair, the former PM of the UK, had the following to say: "The relationship between the U.S. and China particularly, but let us say more generally between the West and China, is gonna be the determining geopolitical relationship of the 21st century."
I do not question his observation about the delicate political relationship between a leading power and a rising power becoming a determining geopolitical relationship of the 21st century.
As a matter of fact and as a layperson in geopolitics, I can't say which power is the contemporary leading power after it felt that King Trump has already acknowledged, perhaps inadvertently, that President Xi is the leading power after the former accused the later of having a lab from where Coronavirus came out.
It was later reported in the news that intelligence from the five-eye-countries, which include the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, does not support the accusation by Trump.
As much as this pandemic is colossal, it still feels that Trump's accusation, even if it was inadvertent, sounded as if to say Japan had pulled off a Manhattan project before the U.S.
I do not personally think that humanity needed the Manhattan project or needs a Wuhan project, if such a thing was ever conceived. But what do I know about what the powers be think?
However, I can be as concerned as Bill Gates who said about five years ago during his public talk, which came across recently, that, as a kid, he grew up worrying about the potential consequences of the Manhattan project and that he had started to worry more, as an adult, starting at least some five years ago, about a pandemic, such as the current Coronavirus pandemic.
During a TV appearance a few weeks ago, Laurie Garrett also expressed her worries about this pandemic as follows: "The worst case scenario is that this virus actually becomes endemic and it joins the ranks of HIV as a new lethal, horrible disease that is permanently plaguing [deleted] sapiens, that didn't previously bother our species."
Laurie Garrett rightfully spoke for our collective species, not in terms of the delicate relationship between the leading and rising powers, U.S. and China, or geopolitical relationship between the U.S. and China in particular and the West and China in general, as Tony Blair did.
I understand that sovereign countries are free to engage in bilateral and multilateral agreements and relationships as they see fit. I came across the term "five-eye-countries" recently and can imagine it as a multilateral relationship. Evidently, I can hardly imagine it as a multilateral relationship of what Tony Blair conveniently defined as the West.
This is because it is evident that even the next door neighbor to the UK, Ireland, or post Hitler Germany, or the bedrock of Europe's Classical Civilization, Greece, to mention just a few countries in what Tony Blair calls the West, are not included in the five-eye-countries.
So, why is Tony Blair hiding behind the West? After all, what can the multilateral intelligence agreement of the five eye countries be for the rest of the countries in the West and, for that matter, to the rest of the world than a five eyed monster that has a grip on it even as the likes of Tony Blair talk about a geopolitical relationship of the 21st century between the U.S. and China in particular and the West and China in general?
Be civil, Tony Blair.