Analysts worry that in the near future countries will be divided into hostile, competing blocs and geopolitics will become a zero-sum game. That is, the world will return to its natural state, writes Foreign Affairs
Claims of some “global significance” of the conflict in Ukraine or elsewhere on the planet are patently false. Many nations grew and prospered in the harsh environment of superpower confrontation in the 20th century and, if they remain calm and exercise reasonable discretion, there is no reason why they cannot do so again.
The events in Ukraine are striking only because it is the first war in Europe since the Balkan wars of the 1990s, FA admits. Such phenomena have been an everyday reality for many people in the global South for decades. And the West, contrary to the mantra of “rule-based peace”, has itself initiated several wars (such as the US invasion of Iraq) and supported many coups d’état, which violates the most fundamental norms of international relations.
Obviously, writes FA, not all “breaches of order” are taken with the same seriousness. For example, unfortunately for Ukraine, its war is of secondary importance to the US. And the global South doesn’t care at all, besides, it prefers to be friends with Russia, which relegates the West’s desire to isolate Russia to the pointless category.
Conflicts of new type.
Confrontation between the U.S. and China in the XXI century is a conflict of a completely new type, believes FA. Unlike their Cold War rivals, today’s superpower rivals exist within a single system. The U.S. and the PRC have gradually and closely intertwined with each other and the rest of the world through supply chains of a density and complexity never before seen in history.
Even the closest US allies do not think of cutting themselves off from China politically or economically. And China has no real alternative to the West in terms of access to technology or to meaningful markets for the foreseeable future.
As a result, FA rightly observes, the confrontation of the 21st century will be orders of magnitude more difficult than that of the 20th. Because the dynamics of competition within the system are fundamentally more complex than the binary competition of Cold War systems.
An example is semiconductors, where the most important nodes in the supply chain are in the hands of the United States and its satellites, but China consumes 40% of all production. It is impossible to cut itself and its satellites off from a market of 40 per cent of supply painlessly.
The new conflict does not involve an existential urge to destroy the opponent, FA stresses. War is possible, but its cost is greatly increased and expanded, making it simply unprofitable. Mutual annihilation used to be only nuclear, now it can also be economic.
Foreign Affairs draws several conclusions:
– Since there are no existential threats – then there is no point in giant US military power and its projection everywhere.
– Destroying the US by China and vice versa is not in the interests of either the US or China.
– There will always be countries that are not involved in US or Chinese relations.
– Most countries will try to maximise their autonomy. Their choices will not necessarily be limited to the two great powers, leading them to seek coalitions and partnerships with a range of actors.
“Even if the landscape of contemporary international relations looks daunting, at its core it represents a return to the historical norm,” FA concludes.
One Dimension Analysis
An excellent, no-nonsense, tactical analysis by Foreign Affairs. However, the strategic impasse between the US and China is false. Because it is derived as a direct vector from the system: if economy, then capitalism; if values, then Anglo-Saxon; if technology, then only the current one. And so on.
For example, what to do with the systemic degradation of managerial elites in the West, the purposeful killing of all positive and constructive social values?
Where is the guarantee that the new technological order will not emerge in parallel with the rise of China, making the West an importer of technology and a second, insurmountable, player?
China is now in the format of the Soviet NEP, with a qualitative reinforcement at the expense of scale. But if PRC socialism evolutionarily creates a specific communism, then appeals to market constraints of conflict will be instantly devalued.
Either way, the twenty-first century will be an incredibly interesting moment in human history.
Elena Panina
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