As the fighting in Ukraine intensifies, the principle of a summit between the Russian Vladimir Putin and the American Joe Biden seems acquired. But the United States will not go to war to protect Ukraine from Russian designs.
No one in the West wants to die for Kyiv, and not America more than Europe. It is a de facto extension of the Russian zone of influence, to the detriment of NATO and the West. And this is the confirmation of a major inflection: whatever they say, the United States is now giving way, and this on all continents. On the steps of Russia, therefore.
In Afghanistan, with the withdrawal of their troops last year. In the China Sea, with the almost daily incursions of Chinese aircraft over the island of Taiwan, in principle under the protection of the United States. The master of the world wavers. It is giving up its prerogatives, and this will have major consequences for the world economy.
American retreat
The United States is still the world’s leading power and the planet’s leading economy. True, but the trend is against them, with the rise of emerging countries, Russia and China, now allies, who no longer want the tutelage of Uncle Sam. America has dominated the world since the First World War, its power steadily increasing over the 20th century until its peak in 1990 with the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
She had herself snatched world leadership from the British Empire, which had dominated the world from the fall of Napoleon in 1815 until 1914. Which British had taken over from the French, which had taken over from the Dutch, who had replaced the Portuguese and the Spaniards, themselves replacing the Italians, in the 15th/16th century. All of these have been in turn masters of the world each for several decades.
Each dominant power has built an economic globalization at its service, it has set the rules and standardsit was the police, it guaranteed the security of exchanges, imposed the world currency – today the dollar.
China new world leader?
There are all the signs of a transition, with the American exhaustion and the Russian and Chinese aggressiveness that we are seeing at the moment. The most obvious candidate for the position of next ruler of the world is of course China.. And it should be noted that precisely, China is in the process of setting up its own globalization, with the famous modern silk roads.
That one day it may be, as the United States has been, the main economic engine of the planet. Mr. Li could replace Mr. Smith as the consumer of last resort, buying products from around the world. And yet, China also has handicaps. It is a closed country, which is not used to spreading out. It is also a country that will age very quickly, and the old nations are not warlike, for lack of cannon fodder.
So what is the most likely scenario? May be a fragmented world, with regional powers, each building its sphere of domination and exchange. After all, that’s exactly what Russia is up to. As for China, once it has recovered Taiwan and asserted its total control of the seas that surround it, it will no longer have any territorial claims.
We could then have an economic globalization that is also fragmented, with large regional groups. We have already seen signs of this since the health crisis, with the repatriation of the production of technological goods, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, medicines, or energy. Without a true master of the world, globalization will wither.
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