Comparing it to the Suez Canal Crisis seems weird to me. I kinda get what they're going for but it's hardly a similar situation since that was more about the pecking order of the western powers which was already mostly decided by the end of WW2 since the US physically came out of the war unscathed.
I don't expect most Western nations to follow China anywhere or look to them for any kind of leadership other than as the people that make the stuff that we need. To me that is a fundamentally different relationship than the UK submitting to the US as being the de facto head of NATO and the western powers. The system of government in China is too incompatible with Western ideology to build any lasting leadership.
Between Brexit and the US taking a step backwards on the world stage, it's more a vacuum is being created than one nation is asserting supremacy over another nation. The elephant in the room that will also continue to make this different than the UK/US relationship during the Suez Canal crisis is that the US still has one of the top 2 economies in the world and the largest military capable of global power projection. Somebody like a combined EU with an actual military force that could be projected globally would have both the economy and the military might to supplant the US in a vacuum situation.
I don't expect most Western nations to follow China anywhere or look to them for any kind of leadership other than as the people that make the stuff that we need. To me that is a fundamentally different relationship than the UK submitting to the US as being the de facto head of NATO and the western powers. The system of government in China is too incompatible with Western ideology to build any lasting leadership.
Between Brexit and the US taking a step backwards on the world stage, it's more a vacuum is being created than one nation is asserting supremacy over another nation. The elephant in the room that will also continue to make this different than the UK/US relationship during the Suez Canal crisis is that the US still has one of the top 2 economies in the world and the largest military capable of global power projection. Somebody like a combined EU with an actual military force that could be projected globally would have both the economy and the military might to supplant the US in a vacuum situation.