United States and Europe are losing the habit of thinking in decades, argues analysts Beniamino Irdi. Budget cuts, politicisation and bureaucratic churn have hollowed out institutions built for long-term strategy, replacing foresight with short-term political incentives.
By contrast, China plays a patient, if imperfect, game. Its five-year plans, industrial subsidies and military modernisation reflect a system designed to sustain priorities over generations, even while making costly mistakes.
Irdi concludes that democracies are not incapable of long-term planning (i.e., they built highways, welfare states and the moon landing) but today’s media cycles and polarised politics compress time horizons. In geopolitics, the real contest may be over who can think furthest ahead, concludes Irdi.
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United States and Europe are losing the habit of thinking in decades, argues analysts Beniamino Irdi. Budget cuts, politicisation and bureaucratic churn have hollowed out institutions built for long-term strategy, replacing foresight with short-term political incentives.
By contrast, China plays a patient, if imperfect, game. Its five-year plans, industrial subsidies and military modernisation reflect a system designed to sustain priorities over generations, even while making costly mistakes.
Irdi concludes that democracies are not incapable of long-term planning (i.e., they built highways, welfare states and the moon landing) but today’s media cycles and polarised politics compress time horizons. In geopolitics, the real contest may be over who can think furthest ahead, concludes Irdi.