Can USA maintain the world order which it created 100 years ago?

 It has been 100 years since the inception of a world order in which USA was the primary architect. In his book ‘The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931’ Adam Tooze goes through the events and how the present world order came into existence. 1916 can be termed as the year which gave USA the buttons to set the power graphs across the world, creating political movements and acquired keys to regime changes. Following the stunning victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election, many predict that the new world order is on its way and probably USA might not be the primary architect.

American Left Liberals are yet to digest the fact that power equations are getting changed in their nation which is beyond their control and their discourse on social and political issues is strongly being challenged. 2016 is a phenomenal year for any American intellectual who is willing to assess the changes happening in American society and around the world. "Westworld" and "The Man in the High Castle" are written by Michael Crichton and Philip K. Dick who are known to be the best American sci-fi writers and their work has been adopted into TV series.

"Westworld" and ‘The Man in the High Castle’ are now part of casual, intellectual and profane discussions as they resonate with some sense of intangible situation which Americans find themselves in and using the themes in these TV serials as allegories of what might be the situation of USA post 2016.


"The Man in the High Castle" (now Season 2) is a TV series based on alternative history written by Philip K. Dick in which USA has lost the World War 2 and has been occupied by Germans and Japanese who have established an authoritarian rule. Many cinephiles are trying to draw equivalences between this fictional TV series with the future presidency of Donald Trump post 2016.

Many comedians who also seem to be political pundits nowadays are predicting Donald Trump to be a narcissistic president who will impose fascism on American people and likely to disturb the global order which can will turn out to be catastrophic. Is it possible that the same accusations of fascism, authoritarianism and appetite for meddling into other nation’s affairs can be attributed to Hillary Clinton?

Going by the political history of Hillary Clinton it seems that Americans were right to be worried about Hillary Clinton, as Christopher Hitchens once said, "It still divides us as between those of us who think that a job must be found for Hillary Clinton, that the country would be somehow disgraced if she wasn’t in an important position, and those of us who could do without her."

American left liberals seemed to be more interested in the gender of the candidate than the actual issues of the 2016 presidential election and now they seem to be invoking the themes like authoritarian, fascism and lack of freedom of speech which are the dominant themes of "The Man in the High Castle", tables can be easily turned around by evoking the same themes and arguments but conservatives and classical liberals have dissociated from Donald Trump. "Automation" is one of the buzzwords in 2016 which is likely to create some disturbances in many areas for better or worse.

"Westworld" is a sci-fi western thriller based on Michael Crichton’s work where an amusement park is opened for normal people who can spend time and go crazy with robots, which look and act like real people, have the same feelings and emotions like normal people and most importantly the element of consciousness which is one of the conflicting point. Robots (Hosts) are killed on mass scale and brought back to life on daily basis as they have to serve for the entertainment of normal people.

"Westworld" is so deep in its philosophical approach that it asks every individual to have an intellectual assessment on how the robots should be treated by humans which are almost identical to humans except that their inner parts are made with metal -- a clear challenge is posed to the epistemological arguments and can expose the dichotomy in the way we perceive issues.

We have expanded the umbrella of "rights" to LGBTQ, animals, plants etc.. Left Liberals claim to be the torchbearers for "rights" and going by their rhetoric they wouldn’t mind expanding any kind of right to anything. "Westworld" is so brilliant in its texture and execution that to discuss about the rights of robots doesn’t look like a farfetched idea and an intellectual self atyachaar is necessary by the both Left and Right as this situation isn’t as simple as it seems to be.

It’s obvious that Left would like to grant "rights" to robots and the recent progressive politics of the left have been in that direction. Inclination to grant some rights to artificial life might be tempting to some groups but can they have the same moral high ground and righteous authority when demanding rights to artificial lives?

Conservatives and Orthodox people who oppose abortion and consider the idea of life to be sacred, turn away from giving right of life to artificial human beings?

Left Liberals and progressives have been obstinate over the issue of abortion, a pertinent question arises - are the lives of babies in the wombs of real women inferior when compared with lives of robots? Does anyone have the right to decide that a robot has more rights in the world than a fetus in a real human being?

Moral and ethical juxtapositions arise when discussing about "Westworld" and "The Man in the High Castle" which definitely raised many complex questions related to old and conventional issues in 2016. It’s the continuous churning of the above ideas and discussions which shaped the West.

100 years ago, a world order was conceived - sometimes it got challenged and faced difficulties but sustained and maintained its influence. Can USA maintain the world order which it created 100 years ago, with resurgent Russia, rise of China, snubbing Israel, lack of proper vision in middle east, can it maintain its influence across the world, be an economic giant, leader in science and technology? And where does India stand in the emerging new world order?