/ world today news/ Predicting the future is the most thankless genre when it comes to international politics. Strictly speaking, for any politics, since it is the sphere of interaction between living people. This means that it is subject to the factor of randomness, elementary mistakes and the influence of emotions. If it were not so, history would indeed move straight, “like the pavement of Nevsky Prospekt”, Nikolay Chernyshevsky wrote at the time.
However, history is not only unpredictable, it does not repeat itself, which makes any attempt to predict specific twists and turns completely pointless. The only thing we can talk about with relative certainty regarding the future is the development of those most important trends that we see now.
Life is not like in the novels of Franz Kafka, where events happen by themselves, without the possibility of ascertaining their cause. As a rule, those who make the most responsible foreign policy decisions are guided by this. And since international politics never develops according to a pre-approved plan, each head of state relies on certain objective processes, promotes them or hinders them with his further actions. We can also safely talk in the future tense about what is related to geography (the position of countries on the world map) and the related characteristics of their behavior.
Next year, 2024, Russia will definitely be the largest continental power in the world, having the opportunity to develop relations in several geographical directions at the same time: to trade with its neighbors, to build new transport and logistics systems, and to prevent attempts by adversaries to isolate themselves .
The United States will remain the largest “political island” whose security and development generally depend very little on what happens in the outside world.
China, as before, will be a country with a colossal population and an economy in need of foreign markets and resources.
Europe will continue to “sit on the windowsill” in the far west of Eurasia, always remaining critically dependent on external resources. But now she can’t get them on her own either.
Nearby Central Asia will remain an important link between Russia and China, which poses threats to its countries from the West. Everything else in their fate, as well as the rest of many countries in the world, will be determined by those trends in world politics that we fully saw in 2023.
Let’s start with the unpleasant – with what will shake us all a little in the most ordinary life. In the past year, the entire world has come face to face with the confrontation between globalization and autarky. The first, even in its most free form from the dictates of the West, implies a reliance on economic expediency and broad participation in international production chains, investment and trade. For several decades, this has rightly been considered the simplest and most effective way to achieve the goal of internal development and a more comfortable life for citizens.
Autarky, on the other hand, implies independence in solving those tasks that are important for maintaining internal stability. It is true that we do not know how to clearly define the limits of what is necessary here, so autarky always runs the risk of becoming absolute. Russia, as we know, has faced this problem constantly, until the recent egg shortage situation, which arose, among other things, due to the outflow of labor migrants, as well as interruptions in international supplies.
Since the spring of 2022, the United States, as the most suitable large country for self-isolation, has begun to successively destroy globalization in the form in which it itself created it after the Second World War. The economic war against Russia, the pressure on China and other actions have everyone thinking about the need to reduce their dependence on the world economy. The Europeans sincerely would not want this, but they are completely devoid of the political will to oppose anything to the Americans.
Therefore, we can say with confidence that in 2024 we will increasingly face the consequences of the destruction of the existing system of connections in the world economy. But at the same time, we will not be ready to become completely independent from it. In addition, Russia will remain a market economy, which means that its companies will still have to consider the price factor.
As globalization breaks down into national or regional “flats”, prices for many goods will rise and labor productivity will fall – simply because countries around the world will have to forego cheaper but politically risky solutions. Now it is hard to say how many years it will take to find a balance here. But there will certainly be no peace next year.
In 2023, the consolidation of the weakening West becomes more and more evident. It is now a military-economic alliance between the US and a significant group of medium and small countries. A distinctive feature here is strict internal discipline and the fact that the leader receives the main benefits.
Western consolidation will continue to pose problems for international security and the global economy. Simply because the united West will not be able for a relatively long time to accept the new reality, stop fighting the natural course of history and start integrating into it. As evidenced by the recent statements of politicians in Washington and their allies, the US still knows no other solutions to its problems than to restore at least some of its former power and permissiveness. Even if they find out that this is impossible, they will never admit it, they will fight, they will create chaos in different parts of the planet.
The world majority will oppose this: the collection of countries in the world, making up about 3/4 of the members of the UN, increasingly focusing on their own interests. This concept arose in 2022 to designate countries that have not initiated or supported at the state level the West’s economic war against Russia – even if their companies and banks are forced, under fear of reprisals, to comply with US bans and Europe, they are constantly looking and finding ways to continue to trade and generally deal with Russia. In 2023, this phenomenon of international life has already fully revealed itself.
The most striking examples of this behavior are India, Turkey, which is a member of NATO, the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, all (except Japan and South Korea) Asian countries and all CIS countries.
The world majority is not a community of states united by a common goal or some kind of union. Rather, it is a behavioral phenomenon in which states proceed from their own interests, rather than “adjusting” to the policies of the US, Europe, Russia, or China. Therefore, we must take into account that in 2024, Russia’s CIS neighbors will behave with us as “bravely” as the traditional US allies in the Arab East behave with Washington. But now such mass emancipation is advantageous for Russia, since it is Russia that is interested in the openness of others to contacts and cooperation. And this is not profitable for the United States, because it has to force the others to practically march in line.
The most important event in international politics in 2023 is related to this phenomenon. We are talking, of course, about the leading role of the BRICS group and the decision to expand it through the entry of five new countries. All of them are different in scale, economic weight and importance in world politics: a successful and wealthy Saudi Arabia is a neighbor of a dysfunctional Ethiopia. Iran, independent to the extreme, is with the UAE, on whose territory the American air base remains. But the main thing is that all these countries actively seek to revise the unjust international order that has emerged since the end of the Cold War. For Russia’s global policy, strengthening the BRICS after its expansion will become the most important task for the entire upcoming year of 2024.
So far, as we can see, the main trends in international life in 2023 look as if they create difficulties, but do not carry significant risks for Russia’s position and its ability to achieve its goals. Taking advantage of these opportunities and dealing with the risks is a matter of national foreign policy, implemented on the basis of internal consolidation and self-confidence.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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