In the rich metaphor of global relations, there has been a promise that China "does not search to blow up" America. This happened at the Asia-Pacific economical Cooperation Summit (APEC) in California on 15 November 2023, erstwhile the 2 top adversaries Joe Biden and Xi Jinping assured their readiness to "turn the planet from the edge of the abyss".
Only these signals indicate that China is shaping the dynamics of competition between the top powers. By casting geo-economic and geopolitical challenges to the erstwhile US leadership, they change vectors of common addiction. After respective centuries, the centres of initiative and innovation decision from the west to the east. Russia's turning towards Asia besides contributes to this. For the last 3 centuries, it has been aimed at occidentalization, on which the West besides gained. Russia is now turning east, making it a associate in the “great game” of the Eurasian, frequently against the West.
Universal failure of Trust
In the US-Chinese-Russian triangle, the most crucial problem is the failure of the credibility of the parties in terms of controlling the hazard of common attack. Since the end of the Cold War, there has not been specified a situation that the perception of common interests and values is filled with specified advanced uncertainty. The cognitive capacity of political leaders has besides been eroded, both in relation to the recognition of sources of threats and preventive action taken individually and collectively at professional level. The scale of changes and the difficulty in identifying their effects exceed the ability of the average observer to realize reality.
This is all the more hard as cognition and investigation have been infected with ideological values, and the production of social fear and creating an enemy has become the most crucial means of political mobilisation of societies against each other. Thus the existential rationality of the "international society" formed after planet War II became questionable. In the face of the fresh challenges of civilization (the consolidation of the economy, the mass displacement of the population, climate change and the environment, the increasing scope of income, food crises, etc.), organization regulatory mechanisms have failed. There were no operators to control economical processes, and in many cases nationalist resentiments and egotistic rivalry wedges prevailed over community awareness. The Collective West was incapable to prevent the impending disaster.
In the diagnosis of the causes of the current global order's decomposition, it is essential to go back a fewer decades, erstwhile the western bloc succumbed to euphoria and triumphism after "the triumph in the Cold War". This was an unexpected time of comparative stability, and at least 1 generation lived in the blissful belief that no 1 questioned the position quo reached. America has declared itself a hegemon of the global system, believing – with the aid of various political, economic, military, ideological and propaganda treatments – in its triumph over the remainder of the planet (the "unipolar moment"). Objectively, she had no 1 so strong as to counter her hegemonic aspirations, values, and interests.
As a consequence of dynamic rivalry of powers, it turns out that this "age of happiness" is behind us. Constant processes of concentration and polarization of forces – which is an nonsubjective phenomenon – lead to the formation of fresh constellations of powers, capable of challenging the current order. It was built under the sign of globalisation, which in the collegiate jargon meant westernization, and thus subjecting various spheres of social life and economical rules dictated by the collective West.
Recent years have shown that neither capitalist order in the economy nor liberal democracy in politics is simply a panacea for human crises. On the contrary, we have ample evidence that the plundering planet and humanity under the banner of free competition and protectionism is nothing but another act of imperialization and neocolonization of the globe. The scale of addictions that are weak from the strong has never taken on the size of our eyes.
All these geo-economic and geopolitical phenomena require a revision of the global system. Its fast changes will find life in the coming decades, while most commentators focus only on what is seen most present – the emergence of distrust and emotional hostility. So where is the place to rationalise global governance so as not to lead to disaster? How can we free ourselves from the chains of imposed divisions and prejudices to see in the dynamics of time and space the chances of saving the globe and humanity from the negative effects of rival powers?
Pulling the rope
Inter-power competition is presently taking place on a tripartite level, with Russia being, as it were, between the American “mold” and Chinese “wicket”. possibly the result of the fight for Ukraine between the West and Russia will yet depend on whether, after this fight, it will strengthen China more or weaken the West. In any case, China is simply a long-term challenge for America and a origin of strategical threats, while Russia is treated in terms of "less risk" erstwhile it comes to undermining the position of hegemon.
In the general perception of China and Russia, if you look through the prism of the reaction in the West, it is these 2 countries that are “throwing” the top challenge to the United States and are a threat to universal governance. This is how the administration began to present the substance Barack Obama (2009-2017) followed by Donald Trump (2017-2021). In subsequent versions of the National safety strategy China and Russia began to call themselves revisionist powers.
At the same time, the US joined the ideological offensive, guided by nationalism and economical imperialism. Protectionism towards technological giants ruins the current rules of economical trade. The subsequent tranches of sanctions imposed on Russia show how the misconception of the interests of the parties leads to the creation of a community of risks justifying the escalation of measures, including the usage of force.
We are so faced with a unilateral and biased diagnosis of the global system, in which US major opponents do not have the right to claim their place in the global distribution of forces, and the challenged challenge of American hegemony is considered a crime. This is the consequence of the tragic breakup of American strategists with the concept of balance of power.
Since the earliest times, it has meant specified a distribution of power between states or alliances in which no of them prevails decisively over others and does not let any state or alliance to gain an excessive advantage over the others. erstwhile 1 of the powers acquires primacy and strives for hegemony, the global strategy is threatened with “winding”. Therefore, education in historical processes of various regulators was highly important, ranging from balancing and counterweight roles (balancers, arbitrators), through coalition variability, creation of neutral and buffer zones, division of influences, interests and responsibilities.
Balancing forces...
was so a clear trend in global relations and, until planet War I, guaranteed strategy stableness as a multilateral safety strategy. In the 20th century, all empire that challenged the remainder of the planet (Germany, Japan, USSR) met sooner or later with the appropriate reaction of others to prevent 1 power from ruling over others. planet wars have consumed countless casualties due to this.
The Cold War period marked a stalemate situation erstwhile 2 military-political blocks faced each other, blackmailing each another with the threat of atomic destruction. possibly this "armoured peace" was the most safe era in modern global relations as regards respect for global safety and established rules for each party.
The situation changed radically when, after the dissolution of the USSR, the United States remained a "winner power" in a cold war confrontation. Thanks to the economical prosperity and technological revolution, without rivals capable of building counterweight, they became the center of attracting and subjugating weaker partners.
The strategy of balancing forces spontaneously replaced the strategy of bandwagoning. The word itself has a pedigree of the 19th century and refers to the American electoral campaigns erstwhile further carriages were attached to the candidate's railway detour, "putting on a good horse", with hope for his victory. In global relations, the phenomenon is known as long ago as balancing forces, but it was not until the 1980s that American political realist Stephen M. Walt recalled it, in the context of the reviving trend of concentration of forces. It is expressed in the consequence of weak countries to existing threats by joining a stronger power. For the latter, it means an chance for spatial expansion, expansion of the sphere of influence and attribution of global responsibility.
Fear of the present hegemon, which for east European states was the USSR (in the aftermath of Russia) resulted in a turn towards the West (US and NATO). This was, of course, not without the participation of Western force centres, which, in their rivalry with Russia, set the maximum usage of its weakening. In this process of deregulation the stabilizers of common balancing of forces have disappeared. Neutrality has lost its old meaning, buffering has become a curse, and rivalry for influence has taken on the character of open interventions. The Western participation in the partition of Yugoslavia in the 1990s was an exception, and now the pro-Atlantic policy of Finland, which departed from the function of a "broker" of peace and moderator, assuming the pose of the front state, was a circumstantial curiosium.
He's right. Lech Mażewski, that "a non-blocking belt of states from Finland and Sweden, further Baltic republics and Belarus, until Moldova and Ukraine ceased to be – to a large detriment to us. Russia would then be far east of our borders, and no war would be necessary. All you had to do was follow the simple principle: primam non nodere.
New threats
Understanding these changes of the global strategy allows us to look at the dynamics of power competition from a different perspective. It is no longer the conventional relation between the strong and the weak, but the exclusive technological sovereignty of the strongest. The problem boils down to the increasing risks not only of the next, not entirely predictable technological revolution, but above all the failure of political institutions (both within and internationally) to control fresh challenges and threats.
The tremendous unpredictability of the ongoing technological revolution is expressed even in the improvement of artificial intelligence. erstwhile it reaches a critical point in its development, there will be a natural temptation to usage technological innovation, especially in the field of arms, in combat. This could be the victim of a full civilization. Therefore, it is so crucial now to break this established cycle of cataclysms in history.
The hope for a solution to the problems facing humanity is to return to the negotiating table, as has happened late in California, but besides on the occasion of the Qatari mediation between Israel and Palestinian Hamas. The Collective West must decision distant from ideological crusades and realize that it is not everywhere in the planet that the task of the neoliberal economy will succeed, erstwhile capital is subject to political power. China is this phenomenon, likewise followed by Russia and many countries. Souths that hold political sovereignty, and a state with all its sovereign attributes put first. This challenge is hard not only for Western leaders but besides for economists who wonder how to combine the power of marketplace mechanisms with the power of regulation in the coming decades.
It seems that with the hard situation in which the top powers have been placed towards each other, the only option is to ask political realists to reconstruct the rationality of decision-making mechanisms and enter into dialog at the highest levels. Hope is China's pragmatic attitude, which with Xi's mouth calms that "the planet Earth can accommodate our 2 countries, and the success of 1 of them is an chance for another." Abstracting that China is talking about bigemony here, this message shows a willingness to effort to make a common position. Its absence will origin everyone to act according to their discernment, thereby expanding the likelihood of chaos, misinterpretations and misunderstandings.
It is simply a pity that average and tiny countries are lacking in inspiring global dialogue, which can not only appear from different cultural traditions, but besides show alternate ways of development. Their contribution could be not so much to uncritically support the unilateral solutions of the Hegemonian Power, conducting a full squad of states, but to redefine certain constraints and common rules, reducing the hazard of crisis situations.
The ongoing wars (fortunately, there has never been a direct conclusion of the 3 strongest powers mentioned here) show that all technological offensive capabilities are yet equal to the defensive measures which, together with human effort – as in Ukraine – balance them. But not all country can face specified challenges! Ukraine is fortunate (and unfortunate) that it benefits on an unprecedented scale from external support. However, there are more and more signs in heaven and earth that this determination to aid her is clearly weakening.
Ukrainian case...
It besides shows that due to complex geopolitical conditions not all country is able to effectively shelter itself “under the wing” of the fresh patron. There are many indications that this senseless war will be inconclusive until the quarterback states return to the negotiating table and agree common rules of the game, respecting the indivisibility of safety in the first place.
How should Poland react? First of all, the re-established diplomacy of the fresh government should enter the agenda of all possible consultative bodies and debates around restoring standards in inter-power communication so as not to stay on the margins of the most crucial decisions.
Polish decision-makers must balance their actions and omissions to date and reconstruct the foundations for fresh beginning both in the Euroatlantic and east vector relations, including Russia and China. First of all, they must find at what point Poland is in the context of changes in the global power system. Persistent with the doctrine of absolute loyalism towards the US, unreflective perceive to EU directives and atavistic hostility towards Russia leads Polish politics and economy astray. It is worth remembering that in global relations, well-calculated interests have much more lasting value than declared feelings, even though they should have the value of “everlasting relationship or reliable covenant”.
Prof. Stanisław Bielen
Think Poland, No. 49-50 (3-10.12.2023)
