Русский
In the twentieth century, there were two attempts to establish the global hegemony by one country.
The largest colonial empire at the beginning of the century, Great Britain, as the main winner in the Great War, managed to achieve the defeat and destruction of its competitors—the German Second Reich, the Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires—and tried to consolidate its power.
The attempt failed, the internal crisis began three years later, and Britain signed the final financial capitulation in Bretton Woods in 1944, when the role of the world reserve currency shifted from the pound sterling to the dollar.
The second such attempt was made by the United States of America, when it achieved the defeat and dismantling of its largest geopolitical competitor, the USSR, in 1991.
As a result, the United States and its satellites gained external control over the entire post-Soviet territory and very large assets of the former enemy with almost no military action.
The destruction of the USSR was very timely. Soviet assets allowed the American establishment to extinguish their growing crisis, the negative systemic consequences of which were warned of by the then head of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, back in 1985. And under U.S. President Bill Clinton, for the first time in post-war history, America received a deficit-free budget for three years in a row.
The historically unprecedented American victory, including the almost complete disappearance of comparable competitors capable of providing any significant military, economic, or political resistance to the American hegemon, had exhausted itself. The systemic crisis, however, returned in 2008.
The reason for the short-lived nature of both attempts to build a unipolar world in the twentieth century, as well as all other similar plans, lies in the fundamental inefficiency of the globalized economy, built on dividing the world into two unequal parts—the metropolis and the periphery.
Such a system has irremediable internal contradictions, leading to a gradual decline in its economic efficiency below zero profitability as the periphery inevitably is depleted. At the moment the expansion of the periphery—due to the annexation of accessible territories—becomes impossible due to the geophysical limitations of our planet, the crisis of this system becomes global and fatal. Today, the “unipolar world” is collapsing.
Pax Americana vs. the Monroe Doctrine
An understanding of the reality that precludes the stability of the unipolar world order has been developing for some time, including in America. During the period when the USSR was being dismantled, the United States was the only force capable of deciding on the future path of development of the entire world and ensuring that this decision was implemented. For this reason, both possible options for such a choice were discussed mainly within the American establishment, sometimes taking into account the opinion of its allies; sometimes not.
The first option of the US geostrategy in relation to its main geopolitical competitor and partner, the Soviet Union, as well as the format of the future world order for a fairly long period, was supported by the administration of the then-president of the United States, George H. W. Bush.
This concept assumed the preservation of the USSR as a global counterweight to American hegemony in the ideological, political, military, and economic spheres, with a system of strategic agreements between the countries, including non-public ones. Unlike attempts to build a unipolar world order, the “Bipolar World,” jointly created with the participation of the United States and the USSR, could ensure its stability for a long time, for decades, and allow it to find and maintain the right balance of interests in almost any situation. The rich historical experience of the twentieth century gave every reason to believe so.
An alternative option was proposed by the team of the next US president, Bill Clinton. The idea was simpler and did not require the highest managerial qualifications of the state apparatus of the partner countries to maintain the stability of the “Bipolar World”: not to preserve the USSR, but to use the opportunities of the current situation at that time to immediately destroy the Soviet Union, take its assets under control, and dismantle everything that could ensure its restoration as a geopolitical entity. In practice, the option proposed by Bill Clinton’s team was implemented.
This is being further reinforced today, with the United States now preparing its zone of influence. This includes:
- The control of all resources available to America, with the priority being global energy resources;
- The maximum weakening of neighbors and competitors. Europe will lose its geopolitical status, while Russia should not restore it.
China As The Console Economy of the United States
China emerged as an industrial power only after World War II, when the PRC entered the Soviet zone of influence and began building its own modern industry with large-scale Soviet assistance.
Later, the USSR severed allied relations with the PRC, and in 1971 the country moved into the zone of influence of the United States. The key role in this process was played by the future President of the United States, George H. W. Bush, then Director of the CIA, and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who secured the first-ever visit by U.S. President Richard Nixon to China.
After the events of 1991, a new American strategy began to be implemented to ensure its influence in a world where there would be no Soviet Union. Among the measures to optimize its economic policy, including the national industrial potential, a strategic decision was made to transfer a number of technologies outside the United States, primarily to China, and, accordingly, to open up Western markets for future Chinese products. A prerequisite was the preservation of American sovereignty over the key components of this policy.
In just over two decades, China has become a “global factory,” surpassing the United States in terms of industrial production, providing most of the exports of almost any goods, including heavy industry and military equipment, accumulating huge financial resources, and becoming one of the world’s most influential countries.
Currently, there is a transition from the first phase of cooperation with China in the format of systemic assistance and development assistance to a new stage—systemic constraints. China initially did not have the potential to become a world leader, and as such, it is unacceptable for customers of the current program to transform China into the center of global industrial production.
The factors constraining China were taken into account and laid down at the very beginning of its modernization. The main and systemic one is China’s inability to present to all mankind a model of the world order that is attractive to anyone except China itself.
The second, no less important, is that the West and, above all, the United States, as holders of a package of modern technologies and masters of world trade, the financial system, and global military potential, retain the opportunity to prevent China from becoming a global hegemon and creating a real zone of its influence on the planet. China itself plays a significant role in this, demonstrating its inability to cooperate equally with anyone. This does not prevent global trade and competition, but the “zone of influence,” consisting only of dependent satellites, is less effective and stable.
Third, despite the enormous resources allocated to building Chinese military power, China has not demonstrated the will to use decisive force to protect its external interests.
In general, modern China, with all its technological, economic, financial, and military capabilities, is not becoming a world leader and remains America’s “console economy” and has no real prospects to change this situation on its own.
Immediate Prospects During This Transition
The strategic choice made by the United States in relation to the USSR determines the current position of the United States and its prospects.
Theoretically, even today it is possible in principle to return to the concept of a “bipolar world” and create a geopolitical counterweight to one’s own hegemony. The point of such actions is to prolong this very hegemony. Without the systemic balance that the Soviet Union provided throughout its post-war history, any “unipolar hegemon” will collapse on its own, even without external enemies, for internal reasons. This process is already underway.
The modern United States has already effectively abandoned world hegemony. The red cap of “Make America Great Again” (MAGA), that is, the idea of US leadership, has been replaced by the “Monroe Doctrine” of the previous century, which is dominance not in the whole world but only in the Western Hemisphere.
What is needed to transition to a recoverable strategy of “isolationism”? Control over all resources that can be reached, primarily energy, and weaken all possible competitors, especially the nearest ones. This is what is happening now, as we are seeing in Venezuela, Iran—and Europe.
In the post-Soviet era, the only geopolitical force capable of resisting and even defeating the United States was its closest ally, Great Britain. Today, the UK has lost both its navy and its army; it has no economy or money, but this does not prevent an almost equal game against an older partner. This is possible due to the superiority of British social technologies of external control and the formation of public consciousness, as well as its preserved connections around the world, being the British Commonwealth as well as America itself. This makes it possible to talk about the modern “British geostrategy.”
Western Europe and its general structure, the European Union, have not been able to maintain their geopolitical subjectivity and are currently observing how the British agents of influence on the continent are successfully taking this function away from the United States. This means that:
- The United States will become the largest regional center as the American zone of influence under the “new Monroe Doctrine.”
- The United States will increasingly find itself aligned with and sometimes in competition against the British Commonwealth.
- A European territorial cluster is developing under the EU—being a junior partner or a zone of external influence.
- Eurasia and Africa will become competitive export resources as well as potential energy resources.
Summary: Capital Investments in the Medium Term:
In the baseline scenario, the global overall trend is downward. Dismantling the existing system of international relations and globalized military-political and economic structures, as well as a significant simplification of government institutions, does not contribute to the development of innovation and the expansion of production. The post-Soviet era is coming to an end, meaning now is a moment of decision-making. The basic option is to abandon globalization and break up into regional zones of influence. The impacts will mean:
- Information and network technologies will become high-risk.
- Priority will remain with the tools for monitoring infrastructure and the resource base, from energy to all other commodities, including minerals, agriculture, food, water, and all critical resources derived from them or reliant upon them.
- Economies that degrade more slowly and save more will emerge as winners. A glance at Russia’s debt-to-GDP ratio (20%) is illustrative.
This article was written specifically for Russia’s Pivot To Asia by Evgeny Yurievich Varshavsky, an expert in international and constitutional law and state adviser of the 3rd class of the Russian Federation.
