Lord Hague said the world was entering a dangerous but exciting era (Image: PLSA)
The world is in a risky and dangerous place but potentially packed with opportunity, Lord William Hague has claimed.
Hague told the part of that expected opportunity included a greater trend cooperation among nations with new networks formed between countries that would once have seemed unlikely.
He said: “Some countries will be working together that you wouldn’t really have seen either 10 years ago.”
Hague’s comments come as rumours grow that Chinese premier is seeking closer ties with the EU in the wake of ‘s pivot away from the bloc.
is believed to be plotting closer ties with with the amid a widening rift between the United States and Europe, experts have said. Beijing was seeking to improve relations with Brussels before US President clashed with ‘s leader in Washington.
Chinese diplomats have sought to take advantage of fears the US will abandon its European allies in favour of resetting relations with ‘s and bringing the war in to a swift end. Andrew Small, a Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Germany, said China is at an initial “fact-finding phase” to see what might be possible. He told Radio Free Europe: “Whatever China puts forward will be met with scepticism, but Beijing thinks they will see some opportunities if they can navigate this first phase, especially if tariffs hit.”
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Lord Hague, a former Foreign Secretary and Conservative party leader, last month became chancellor of Oxford University.
He is also an author of several historical novels.
He told PLSA delegates: “With my historian hat on, if I was writing a history book in 100 years time about these times, then chapter one would be the post-war world 1945 to 1990.”
“That was the Cold War, a dangerous time, but a stable time in many ways.
He said: “Chapter two would be 1990 to about 2015 which was a very lucky quarter of a century to be around.
“We still had 9/11, we still had the political crisis. It wasn’t completely trouble free, but we thought liberal democracies would continue.”
“But now we can see, from about 2015 onwards, , Trump, , pushing back China, that we entered a new chapter, chapter three.
“Where chapter one was dangerous and chapter two was exciting, we are now in chapter three of our history, and it is exciting and dangerous at the same time, and that is a very different period of history that we are now going to be living through.”