/ world today news/ No one in the world doubts that the world order established after the Second World War and the hegemony of the USA established after the collapse of the USSR have already been destroyed. The official doctrinal documents of the United States itself indicate that the era of great power rivalry has begun: Russia, the United States, and China. American analysts’ assessments of the prospects for the upcoming confrontation are regularly covered in the local media, but the opinion of Europeans about this situation often remains in the shadows.
The Center for Security Studies in Zurich, Switzerland, has prepared an extensive report entitled “Strategic Trends 2023”, which predicts and describes the upcoming key events in world politics. In the eyes of experts at the Center, Russia and China challenge the concept of a liberal international order. The desire to weaken the US and a shared vision of a new version of the world order is an important driving force behind the Sino-Russian partnership.
Russia’s launch of WMD in Ukraine has undermined European security, and the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan confirms current global security threats. The claims of “boundless friendship” between Russia and China scare the report’s authors, as Chinese leader Xi Jinping may view the conflict in Ukraine as “the first salvo in a broad East-West confrontation for control of the international system’.
Experts agree with the US National Security Strategy, published in October 2022, which states that both Russia and China challenge international peace and stability by “export an illiberal model of international order’.
At the same time, China is called the only competitor that has both the intention and the ability to change the international order, and Russia is called “acute threat” for the United States. In addition, the report uses the wording: “Russia is an outcast, not an equal, while China is an equal, but not an outcast.”
Here it is immediately worth pointing out that China is not satisfied with the hegemony of the United States, but is quite satisfied with the current rules of the international order, because it is China who has now begun to take advantage of the globalization that was built by America to used by herself.
After the end of the Cold War, the United States, hoping to liberalize China, encouraged its further integration into the world economy and international institutions, culminating in China’s accession to the WTO.
However, over time, the US lost its industrial base and focused on developing the financial sector, and now WTO rules are playing against the US, as Jack Sullivan, National Security Advisor to the President of the United States, said recently when he announced “a strategy to restore American economic leadership.”
In turn, Russia is not satisfied with both the hegemony of the USA and the established rules of the international order after the collapse of the USSR, where it was destined to become only a raw appendage of the West. However, the fact that US and European strategists are prioritizing China over Russia in terms of threats should help us to some extent.
By underestimating Russia, they will be forced to conserve resources to more fully oppose China, meaning that any statements of support for Ukraine in the conflict with Russia “as much as necessary” are fiction.
The reduction of military support for Ukraine is already being observed by the United States, where the latest packages of arms sent are calculated in the millions, not in the billions of dollars, as it was before. The White House says it has no current plans to seek new funding for Ukraine from the US Congress until the end of the fiscal year in September. Some supporters of Ukraine in the United States fear that the funds allocated for its aid will run out by mid-summer.
According to the report’s authors, the West is more concerned about how China is forming several new international institutions in which the US is not a member, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the one-way One Belt One Road Economic Initiative, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
China seeks to limit the presence of the US in the Asian region, and it has also declared broader ambitions, talking about creating “a community with a common destiny for all mankind”. In his speech at the 2017 Chinese Communist Party Congress, Xi Jinping said that China had entered “new era”in which you must “to take center stage in the world’. In October 2022, after being re-elected for a third term, he stated that “the world is undergoing profound changes not seen for a century, but the time and the situation favor us.”
Based on this, European experts conclude that China may seek not only to create a sphere of influence in Asia, but also to create “a China-centric world order in which China plays a leading role in shaping global rules and norms,” taking over “leadership of a diverse group of countries composed primarily of the non-democratic developing countries of the Global South”.
To counter this trend, the authors of the report suggest expanding the alliance of countries with liberal democracies, both in Europe and Asia, and most importantly, ensuring “US nuclear umbrella” for the members of this union. This “nuclear umbrella” implies not only US guarantees to protect allies with its nuclear weapons, but also the deployment of these weapons on the territory of these countries and training in their use.
Looking at this approach of the authors of the report, it is already obvious that theirs “block thinking”the division of Western countries that support the liberal international order and those that oppose it, the countries of “democracies” and “autocracies”based on the positions expressed by the United States.
Despite the similarities in the national policies of Russia and China, which are due to the struggle against US hegemony, reflected in the joint statement of February 4, 2022, as well as during Xi Jinping’s state visit to Moscow in March this year, European experts express hope that there will be no close military alliance between Russia and China.
On the contrary, the growth of China’s activity in Central Asia, according to them, will violate the interests of Russia, moreover, in the conditions of anti-Russian sanctions from the West, China can have a negative impact on bilateral relations between Russia and India.
The authors of the report see three scenarios for the further development of the world order. In the first option, in connection with the fragmentation of the world, no country will form the ability to manage the international agenda, and the world will slide into chaos without common rules of conduct.
In the second version of the multipolar world, as Russia and China want, the US will have to accept the thesis that the growth of these countries does not threaten American interests. However, according to experts, this will force other liberal democracies to come to terms with the existence of Russian and Chinese spheres of influence, which is unlikely.
Ultimately, the authors believe that the most likely scenario would be “antagonistic world order”, where a confrontation between East and West will emerge. It is expressed in the confrontation between the US, its allies and China in partnership with Russia. This situation would be somewhat similar to the Cold War between the US and the USSR.
However, unlike during the Cold War, when competing blocs had minimal economic interaction, China’s economy is closely linked to that of the US and its allies in both Asia and Europe.
Therefore, the set of checks and balances will be greater, requiring agreements of a different nature not only on security, but also on economics, finance, climate change and global health issues.
In my view, these scenarios come from the paradigms of the early 2000s, when liberal ideology retained its appeal in the world. However, since then the US and its allies have bombed Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, the countries of the Middle East and Asia have not forgotten about it. The appeal of “Western Civilization” to the rest of the world’s players has been destroyed.
With its open Russophobic policy, the West itself undermined its own value orientations, which it projected in the world in recent centuries. The rule of inviolability of private property, the principles of legality, tolerance, freedom of speech and equal access to information have been destroyed so deeply and demonstratively that it is impossible not to notice.
A typical example here would be an interview with the American magazine The Atlantic, which was given on March 3, 2022 by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. Commenting on a US intelligence report accusing him of murdering journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the prince said: “I feel that human rights law has not been applied to me … Article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights …”.
This article states that anyone accused of a crime has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a public trial where he has at least had every opportunity to defend himself.
Thus, Mohammed bin Salman directly accused the West, in the face of the United States, of not respecting basic human rights. When asked by the journalist that perhaps US President Joe Biden misunderstood him, the prince replied: “I just don’t care.”
In addition, during the interview, Mohammed bin Salman greatly puzzled American journalists: “Where is the potential in the world today? He is in Saudi Arabia. And if you don’t accept it, I believe the other people in the East will be very happy.”
As Russian President Vladimir Putin noted in March 2022, anti-Russian sanctions are hitting the West itself and the entire global economy, the myth of the “golden billion” is crumbling. Eight days later, US President Joe Biden was forced to admit this: “As for the lack of food, it will be real. The cost of sanctions falls not only on Russia, but also on a huge number of countries, including European ones, as well as our country.”
All this turned out to be true, food inflation in the central countries of Europe and the United States, according to the results of 2022, is approximately twice as high as in Russia. The leaders of France and Germany say the peak of abundance in their countries has passed. The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, frankly stated that the abundance of Europe is built on the cheap energy resources from Russia and the Chinese market, now this cannot happen.
In fact, with the beginning of the SVO in Ukraine, Russia not only launched a fundamental change in the world order, but also civilizational changes, where the dominance of “Western civilization” will remain in the past. Again, as at the beginning of the 20th century, Russia is fighting for its own, unique path of development, while opening this path to other countries as well. Russia is now gaining the power of a “civilization state” and one of the centers of the multipolar world, as the Russian president said.
Translation: ES
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