Demographic Dangers & Declining Birth Rates, Part Seven B: Aging & the Projection of Power.
The rise & decline in the relative power of nations can lead to war, but it can also be averted with the careful application of strategic power & diplomacy by rivals. As birth rates & populations fall across the developed world, will leaders strike while they still can, or will they recede in the face of deterrents?
30 min readJul 5, 2023
“…in matters of state, he who has the power often has the right and he who is weak can only with difficulty keep from doing wrong in the opinion of the majority of the world.”
Cardinal Richelieu.
The quote above was one favoured by Sir Percy Cradock, the man who for many, was the architect of the British handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese, even if the final architecture of the deal delivered by Patten was not entirely of his liking. In Cradock’s voluminous hand-written note books he recorded beneath the quote above one from Pope Urban VIII, who said with biting satire, “If there is a God, then Richelieu has much to answer for. If not, then he was a great man! (1)”
