Speaking to Radio Sputnik, Dr Fabio Petito, senior lecturer of international relations at the University of Sussex, has presented his own view on the Bloomberg outlook and "trending" world topics.
Sputnik Radio: Which one do you think is predominating: the right or the left?
Fabio Petito: I think ultimately the right is predominating. On the one hand, the right seems to be more capable of responding to the search of identity and meaning that many parts of the population are searching. On the other hand, the left is really responding to this growing massive economic inequality, which seems to affect in very important way the current capitalist system.
But you know in Europe it seems to me that the right seems to be more capable of mobilizing. There’s a third possibility because there is a critique on mainstream political parties. It’s interesting to see the French case because the senior critic of the mainstream traditional political parties was the platform what then became the French president Macron, who, undoubtedly, is quite centrist ideologically, but still was able to translate this need for something new as basis of his platform.
Sputnik Radio: Very interesting that often times this trend of wealth inequality, income inequality and uneven wealth distribution is a fairly large trend around the world. And it’s very interesting to know that historically when we get to a certain level of income inequality, wealth distribution that is very skewed, you have the 1% or the 2% with everything and the other masses with nothing, very often we see wars. Of course, the war Bloomberg was talking about the most was the possibility of war that would be started by North Korea. What do you think? I mean do you think it’s possible that North Korea could launch a nuclear attack? What do you think really of the prospect of war as a response to the income distribution that we’re seeing around the world today?
Fabio Petito: Wars can be waged, can be the result of many different kinds of factors. The inequality is one, I would tend to say, it seems to be not the most likely in this particular historical conjuncture. I don’t worry about the possibility of that in more conflicts, but the main source of that would be two in my view. One, and, to some extent, possibly you can relate this to the economic factor is the growing presence of states, which actually are not viable and they collapse, there are interstate fights happening along different sectarian. So, you have this hole of instability in the system, which can also pave way for regional powers, which might intervene in possibly even great powers.
The second factor is the new great power politics which is related to the emerging of new powers, which want to assert their rule and significance in the international system, which clearly might clash at some point around specific fault lines. Therefore, you can read the clash between Russia and the West and Europe as partly but in a similar way you could read other tensions that might happen in Asia. The North Korea case is indeed very worrying. I mean here I would simply try to be a little bit more optimistic than pessimistic scenario by saying that North Korea is in many ways a very strategic brinkmanship kind of player in the nuclear field for many years.
And my impression is that they tend to push it very hard and try to guarantee the survival of the regime. I tend to think and I hope that they will not be completely crazy to open up the possibility of a total destruction. So, North Korea is very worrying because of the regional tensions that can activate a nuclear war scenario that is really a nightmare, that I think would be irrational in many ways.
The views and opinions expressed by Dr Fabio Petito are those of the analys and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
