El momento 1914

 

Nos gustó la siguiente nota de Alastair Crooke para el sitio web Strategic Culture Foundation. China, Rusia, el imperio, Europa, el 5G y otras yerbas. Tocan tiempos interesantes, chicos...

Título: The Double De-Coupling

Texto: The defining event of this post-Covid era (whomsoever wins in the U.S. elections), will likely be the U.S. de-coupling from China – Tech de-coupling of telecoms (from Huawei’s 5G); de-coupling from Chinese media and chat platforms; the purging of all China tech from the U.S. microchip ecosystem; the disconnecting of China from internet, from app stores, from undersea cables; and from access to U.S. cloud-based data storage systems – under Pompeo’s Clean Network programme.  This represents the first heavy artillery barrage to a prolonged, and mud-laden, trench-warfare ahead.

This is not Cold War, but a reversion to an earlier era that then ended with hot war – when policy-makers (and markets) famously failed to appreciate the rising danger that was accreting during the sleepy-summer hiatus that elapsed between the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, and the outbreak of the First World War, five weeks later.

Diplomats of course understood that two heavily-armed alliances were on potential a collision course, but there had been episodes of sabre-rattling for several years before, whose failure to come to a head had induced a sense that the status quo would extend indefinitely. Opinion then had been influenced by Norman Angell’s 1909 best-seller, The Great Illusion, arguing that war had become impossible, because global trade and capital flows were too closely interlinked.

What they did not understand at that earlier moment was that the circumstances of mid-1914 (the Sarajevo moment) seemed so propitious both for Germany to aspire to empire, and for Britain to believe that it could quash it utterly.  Just as circumstances are believed – by some in Washington – to be serendipitous today.

Trump et al seem convinced that the U.S. can use its financial and trade muscle – whilst America still predominates – to crush China’s rise, contain Russia, and arm-twist Europe into tech vassalage.  The Balkan war in the early 20th century locked Germany’s fickle ally Austria-Hungary into Germany’s greater fight against Russia.  And today, Pompeo hopes to lock (fickle) Europe into America’s containment of Russia. The Nordstream threats and the Navalny scam are just some of Pompeo’s ‘levers’.

Pompeo’s Clean Network assault is today’s ‘Sarajevo moment’.  Policy-makers, and markets, remain blasé (as in 1914, when markets awoke to the risks, only in August, on the outbreak of war).  By late January next year, the U.S. is very likely to be paralysed in an intractable, possibly violent, constitutional crisis – and in all-out tech war with China.  By then, Europe and America are likely to be in full recession, as Coronavirus fires up for the winter.

Tech de-coupling is not explicitly military, yet nor is it system-neutral: Who it is that sucks up our data, and then mines it via algorithms, to know what we think, what we feel, and do, precisely has the power to shape our society socially and politically.  The point here is that our data – were we to remain in the U.S. digital sphere – is about to be used and shaped, in a polarized, adversarial manner.  And with the drums of war beating, inevitably comes the call for public full commitment.

It is obvious that, with the Clean ‘Fortress America’ project, Pompeo is taking Antonio Gramsci’s thesis that the cultural sphere is the most productive arena of political struggle – and is inverting it.  Thus, instead of culture being the site of revolutionary action against an élite (per Gramsci), U.S. social net-platforms, cleansed of non-western rivals, become precisely the site where the system reasserts itself – neutering the possibility of political resistance via its most powerful weapons: big platform algorithmic and MSM demonisation of China (i.e. the ‘China Plague’) and Russia (‘assassination of its dissidents’).  These can be the means by which a largely war-adverse Europe can be turned against China and Russia, in the name of advancing its ‘universal’ liberal values.

There is however, another equally significant de-coupling edging its way ahead:  “Russia has been watching with growing disquiet that Germany is in another historical transition”, Ambassador Bhadrakumar writes, “that holds disturbing parallels with the transition from Bismarck in the pre-World War 1 European setting … To illustrate the change sweeping over the German ideology, in an interview with the weekly magazine Die Zeit in July, the German Defence Minister (who is also the acting chairwoman of the ruling CDU) stressed that it is “high time” to discuss “how Germany must position itself in the world in the future”.

She said, Bhadrakumar continues, that Germany is “expected to show leadership, not only as an economic power”, but also in “collective defence … it concerns a strategic view of the world, and ultimately it concerns the question of whether we want to actively shape the global order.”  “Plainly put, the German voice is no longer the voice of pacifism, the Ambassador concludes”.

Kramp-Karrenbauer said “the claim of the current Russian leadership” to advocate their interests “very aggressively” must be “confronted with a clear position: We are well-fortified, and in case of doubt, ready to defend ourselves. We see what Russia is doing and we will not let the Russian leadership get away with it”.

“Suffice to say”, Bhadrakumar summarises, “seventy-five years after the end of World War 2, German imperialism is stirring — and, [its élites] once again, targeting Russia … Berlin plays a leading role in the western offensive against Russia and leads the NATO battlegroup in Lithuania. Germany and the U.S. are also working closely together on NATO moves against Russia. Germany is the most important staging area for NATO units deployed at the Eastern European border with Russia. And the German media is awash with opinion demanding that the NATO commitment should now finally be fulfilled and military spending increased to 2 percent of GDP”.

The well-connected, Carnegie Moscow bureau chief, Dmitri Trenin, writes in a similar vein: “Berlin is ending the era launched by Gorbachev of a trusting and friendly relationship with Moscow. Russia, for its part, no longer expects anything from Germany, and therefore does not feel obliged to take into account its opinion or interests … One can only imagine how Putin reacted to Merkel’s announcement that Navalny had been poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent. A stab in the back is the mildest reaction that comes to mind”.

Trenin writes: “Thirty years ago, German reunification seemed to be not only a historic reconciliation, but also a guarantee of future friendly relations and close cooperation between two peoples and states. Now that, too, has become a thing of the past … Russia is also embarking on a new chapter. The situation is accordingly becoming both simpler and more risky: The Kremlin is unlikely to take any drastic action immediately, but will from now on view Germany as being controlled by the United States.  [And] as for the United States, Russia has long been engaged in a zero-sum hybrid war with it, in which there are fewer and fewer inhibitive factors left”.

Merkel’s generation of German politicians are staunchly ‘Atlanticist’, but only in the ‘liberal way’ – as she herself is.  That is, they are committed to upholding the ‘universal liberal value system’. This places her, of course, at loggerheads with Trump; yet paradoxically, that makes the German leadership that much more susceptible to U.S. manipulation on China and Russia (which are now fully bi-partisan issues in Washington) – since, as Samuel Huntington noted, “universalism is the [useful] ideology of the West for confronting other cultures”.  Shades of 1914, when Austria-Hungary was locked into the greater fight with Russia, in a similar fashion!
It is not hard to see the German élites’ bottom line: they are counting on a Biden win. Norbert Röttgen, chair of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, and a candidate for the leadership of the CDU, put it this way: “Should Joe Biden win, I would expect his government to return to a partnership based on rational thinking and cooperation” i.e. the Euro-élites are counting on the return to ‘business as usual’.  It won’t be though – the ‘old normal’ is well behind us.

European Council President, Charles Michel, spoke this week about how the EU can achieve ‘strategic autonomy’: The EU “wants to be stronger, more autonomous, and firmer”. The EU, Michel continued, is about to develop an “open model with greater awareness of our strength, with more realism, and perhaps less naivety. We have faith in the virtues of free and open economies, never in protectionism … But from now on, we will better enforce the level playing field, in a market open to those who respect its standards”.

Oh yes?  Well, this may be fine for minnow states to be treated as vassals seeking an opening with Empire’s good grace for its manufactures, but it won’t work for tech, the New Economy, U.S., or the China-Russia axis. (Never mind that hypocrisy that the ‘level playing field’ is not a form of EU protectionism).

The U.S. is pulling the commanding heights of tech and its standards and taking them ‘back home’.  China will continue to be expelled from the western digital sphere – as far as the U.S. is able.  Wolfgang Munchau reports that the German coalition now has approved a de facto Huawei ban. It’s goal is to kill Huawei through full-force application of German bureaucracy. And Russia is de-coupling from Europe to work more closely with China, (thanks to Merkel and her cohorts).

But what then?  Europe has no substitute to Huawei. 5G networks effectively represent the nervous system connecting the political, strategic, military, informative, economic, financial, industrial and infrastructural dimensions at a personal, local, national, international and transnational level.  5G networks, together with the exponential progresses in computing power and advances in AI, are the transformative agency of the New Economy.  The point here is latency: the ability to integrate differing streams of data all together, and with virtually no delay.  It is key not just to everyday ways of life, but to defence systems too.

Machine Learning is a specific subset of AI that trains machines. It trains AI to learn and adapt, and without the latency of human-driven decisions, efficiency can be at the forefront. Machine Vision: From autonomous cars and drones to robots and so much more of today’s cutting-edge technologies, they all share a dependence on machine vision. That means these machines must be able to “see” to perform their tasks in the physical world.

And all these need 5G to reduce latency. The U.S. hasn’t got it.  And China leads. It leads on Big Data and on AI. Yes, the U.S. leads on semiconductors or ‘chips’, but for how long? China simply won’t allow itself to be expelled from the global semiconductor market.  IT experts from Russia, ASEAN and Huawei are explaining, as Pepe Escobar reports, what could be described as a limitation of quantum physics is preventing a steady move from 5 nm (billionth of a metre) to 3 nm chips. This means that the next breakthroughs may come from other semiconductor materials and techniques. So China, in this aspect, is practically at the same level of research as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. China’s breakthroughs have involved a crucial switch from silicon to carbon. Chinese research is totally invested in this switch, and is nearly ready to transpose its lab work into industrial production.

To whom then is China turning for tech co-operation?  It is not Germany.  As Asia Times’ David Goldman notes, “the cumulative impact of a series of sanctions on Russia has pushed Russia toward a strategic alliance with China, including close cooperation with China on 5G telecommunications and semiconductor R&D. Russia’s economy may be the size of Italy’s, but its brain is bigger than its body: It graduates more engineers per annum than the United States, and they are very well trained”.

And so – back to our ‘Sarajevo moment’.  Pompeo has pulled the trigger on the Arch Duke. Dynamics have been set in motion. Yet we remain stuck in the interregnum waiting on the U.S. – whilst Euro-leaders count that Biden must win, and ‘normality’ be restored.

In the early twentieth century, Britain’s attempt to rip-apart global supply lines – to preserve its own; and to deny Germany its external links, effectively channeled resurgent German ambitions eastwards, across the plain of Europe, and ultimately, to a drive on Russia. It ended with war and economic depression.

Today, the U.S. demands that Europe sever from Russia and China, yet America has entered into internal crisis – and even at the best of times, cannot substitute for the Asian axis in most tech spheres.  It would be hubris for Europe to imagine it can build a New Economy in rivalry to the Big Two, and absent their tech and diplomatic strategic co-operation.  For Europe to try to sit out the present ‘phony war’ like the Grand Panjandrum, waiting for tech suitors to come to it, is no strategy, but rather a receipt for Depression.

It is not a great prospect … for European peoples struggling, not with the chimaera of Euro-empire, but with trying to manage their lives in difficult Corona times.  One cannot help but notice that European politics at the national level is all domestic (school openings, virus restrictions and shrinking economies), whilst far-away Brussels fantasises about building a stronger, more autonomous, European ‘empire’.

Futuro posible

La nota salió hoy en La Nación; es de Hugo Alconada Mon y el entrevistado es el intelectual francés (nacido en Argelia) Jacques Attali (foto). Nos gustó y la compartimos:


Título: Coronavirus. Jacques Attali:"La humanidad aún no comprendió la profundidad de la crisis que se avecina y el costo de la resurrección"

Texto: Jacques Attali habla rápido y es contundente."Están muertos", dice en varios tramos de la entrevista. Alude a varios sectores de la economía global tal y como los conocimos antes de la pandemia, del turismo a la aeronáutica, entre otros, como así también es lapidario al trazar el panorama económico de los próximos años. ¿Forma de "V" o de logo de Nike para graficar cómo serían la caída y la eventual recuperación? No, corrige, será como "una silla". Abajo, dice, luego estancamiento y, después, más abajo.

Egresado entre los primeros de su promoción en las cuatro escuelas más importantes de Francia, fuente de consulta de todos los presidentes de su país desde los tiempos de François Mitterrand, miembro del Consejo de Estado de su país y mentor de Emmanuel Macron , Attali evita los rodeos. Carga incluso contra muchos de esos mismos políticos que lo llaman cuando las papas queman. Les reprocha que callan la verdad, ilusionados con que "algo" encarrilará la situación mundial. Pero, para él, deberíamos implementar una "economía de guerra". Sí, tal y como ocurrió durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Attali también habla de empresas "zombis" y de la oportunidad que desperdició el G-20 cuando se reunió en la Argentina . Pero no todo es lúgubre en el panorama que traza. Hay un amplio sector al que define como "economía de la vida" , que augura que florecerá durante los próximos años. A esos, dice a LA NACION desde París, "les irá muy bien".


-Dados su currículum y su experiencia, me tienta comenzar preguntándole si el impacto de esta pandemia confirmó sus ideas previas o de algún modo las modificó.

-[Sonríe]. En algunos puntos reafirmó mis ideas y en otros las modificó. Lo que más me sorprendió es que fuera posible que más de 2500 millones de personas pasaran a trabajar a distancia, de la noche a la mañana. Sabía que el teletrabajo ocurriría, pero no estaba preparado para entender que sería tan rápido y bajo presión. Eso demuestra que la humanidad, bajo presión, puede cambiar muy rápido. También me sorprendió el hecho de que la humanidad comprendiera, bastante rápido, que estábamos ante un evento global, no algo local, y que cerrar las fronteras no ayudaría. Comprendimos que un problema en un lugar es un problema en todos lados. Pero en cuanto a la ceguera de los líderes, su tendencia a procrastinar, a demorarse en tomar decisiones y actuar, todo eso no me sorprendió.


-Por lo que leí suyo de las últimas semanas, es muy crítico del individualismo exacerbado y, en términos de países, de la tendencia al aislacionismo que observó desde que irrumpió la pandemia. ¿Eso es lo que más le preocupa por estos días?

-No. El hecho de que la humanidad aún no comprendió la profundidad de la crisis que se avecina y que será muy, muy profunda en términos de recesión, de desempleo, de miseria, del costo que insumirá la resurrección. Creo que aún no se comprendió realmente lo que ocurre. Quiero decir, todos los países de Occidente y muchos otros de diversas partes del mundo inyectaron tanto dinero en el mercado a través de sus bancos centrales que están "escondiendo" la realidad de la crisis. Eso permitirá "disfrazar" la crisis, en una primera etapa, posponer sus consecuencias y llevar a las personas a pensar que será de fácil solución, con la mera impresión de dinero, pero eso no es verdad.


-Habiendo sido el primer presidente del Banco Europeo para la Reconstrucción y Desarrollo, usted sabe bien que si un funcionario expresa sus preocupaciones ante una crisis, puede asustar a los inversores y consumidores y agudizar esa misma crisis que busca remediar. Ambos conocemos muchos funcionarios que callan sus temores creyendo que deben alimentar las expectativas positivas.

-[Asiente]. Eso es cierto y es exactamente lo que hizo el FMI [por el Fondo Monetario Internacional] desde que se lo creó y lo que está haciendo ahora: esconder el hecho de que la crisis es más grande y profunda de lo que parece. Usted está en lo correcto al decir que deberíamos evitar caer en la profecía autocumplida, es decir, en reforzar la crisis por anunciar la crisis. Pero incluso a puertas cerradas, en los palacios presidenciales, los funcionarios aún no han comprendido la gravedad de lo que afrontamos. Lo mismo que la industria automotriz, por ejemplo, aún no lo entendió, pero una enorme parte de ella está muerta. El sector aeronáutico tampoco lo comprendió, pero está muerto. Y muchas empresas son zombis y son financiadas como si fueran a sobrevivir. Hay empresas que incluso están organizando cursos y seminarios, y todavía encuentran forma de financiarse, ¡pero ya están muertas!


-Deténgase allí. ¿Acaso los máximos referentes empresariales del mundo no "saben" lo que se avecina, siendo que los mejores economistas del mundo coinciden en que afrontaremos una recesión larga, con una recuperación muy paulatina, lejos de una forma de "V" y más con la forma del logo de Nike? Vamos.

-Bueno [sonríe]. Déjeme decirle que quizá no sea como la pipa de Nike, sino más bien con la forma de una silla [hace la forma con sus dedos]. Es decir, que la economía mundial caerá, luego se planchará durante un tiempo y luego volverá a caer.


-Oh, no...

-Oh, sí [risas]. Dependerá de cada sector, por supuesto. En algunos sectores, la evolución tendrá la forma de una silla, mientras que a otros les irá muy bien. A los sectores que llamo "la economía de la vida" -salud, educación, alimentación, mundo digital- les irá muy bien. Pero otros sectores serán más difíciles de gerenciar o ya están muertos. Por eso resulta difícil trazar una evaluación general y a escala global, además de que dependerá de cómo actúen los gobiernos y cuáles sean las políticas macroeconómicas que instrumenten. El problema es que muchos políticos buscan cómo llegar hasta la próxima elección y confían en que después de las urnas se encontrará una solución. Pero eso es falso. Lo mismo pasa con la gente: prefiere creer que las fuerzas de la naturaleza o un mesías o Dios o cualquier otro tipo de salvador aportará una solución. No es así.


-Cero optimismo lo suyo.

-Quisiera creer que con todo lo que estamos viviendo aprendimos la importancia de anticipar lo malo que puede ocurrirnos para evitarlo. Pero no es así. ¿Logramos evitar esta pandemia? ¡No! ¿Creamos las condiciones para evitar que nos golpee una segunda ola de la pandemia? ¡No! ¿Estamos listos para otra pandemia? ¡No! ¿Estamos preparándonos para la posible siguiente catástrofe que es el cambio climático? ¡No! ¡Aun si sabemos lo que se nos avecina, no hacemos demasiado hasta que lo peor nos ocurre! Los políticos, al igual que todos nosotros en nuestra vida privada, prefieren pensar que no hay problema para el que no haya una solución. Muchas veces es cierto. Pero, desafortunadamente, en muchas ocasiones no es así.


-El panorama que traza explica por qué convocó a los líderes del mundo a actuar con una mentalidad de "economía de guerra", es decir, asumir un rol activo desde el Estado para coordinar las respuestas a la crisis, incluso imponiéndole al sector privado directrices de producción. ¿Qué respuestas cosechó?

-¡Cero! [Risas, luego se pone muy serio]. Cero. Desde el final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, hablar de una economía de guerra no está de moda. En Estados Unidos y en el Reino Unido , los dos países que demostraron ser los más eficientes cuando debieron adoptar ese abordaje, luego destruyeron al Estado con políticos muy liberales, muy promercado, y tienen una visión ideológica muy contraria al concepto de "economía de guerra", además de que ahora no tienen las herramientas estatales para instrumentarla ni saben cómo impartir órdenes a las empresas. En otros países, como Alemania o Japón o China , pueden hacerlo, pero en Alemania se mostraron muy reticentes porque trae recuerdos de su pasado nazi que prefieren evitar, lo mismo que en Japón. Y en China, podrían haberlo aplicado, pero no ayuda el hecho de que sea una dictadura, porque China desconfía de otros países y sus ciudadanos se temen entre ellos.


-O sea que su planteo resulta inviable.

-[Arquea las cejas]. Para instrumentar una economía de guerra necesita compartir una visión, compartir la decisión de sacrificar algo, pero si vive bajo una dictadura, miente, trampea, teme. desconfía. Y déjeme decirle algo más: por un momento pensé que Estados Unidos podía instrumentar algo parecido a una economía de guerra, hasta que leí sobre sus portaaviones llenos de marinos contagiados. Entonces comprendí que incluso los estadounidenses no estaban preparados para afrontar una pandemia.


-Antes de seguir avanzando, pongamos algo en claro: ¿qué números maneja para la economía mundial de los próximos años?

-[Sonríe]. Mi estimación es que la economía oscilará entre -8 y -12% a nivel global, con algunos países cayendo aún más. Y no creo que volvamos al casillero uno en términos de PBI hasta 2022 o 2023, aunque también debe sumar a la ecuación el tiempo perdido y que siempre es más fácil caer que subir. También dependerá de cómo maniobre cada país, claro. Y no será lo mismo para aquellos países centrados en los sectores que florecerán, como el digital, que aquellos que se enfoquen en tratar de mantener vivos sectores que morirán en vez de ayudar al surgimiento de nuevos sectores.


-Déjeme desafiarlo, ¿hay alguna razón para la esperanza?

-¡Sí! ¡Muchas! Está apareciendo muchísima tecnología nueva alrededor del mundo y está floreciendo esa "economía de la vida" que le mencioné antes, enfocada en los sectores de la economía más importantes para el futuro: salud, educación, higiene, alimentación, agricultura, cultura digital, entre otras. Y, además, soy optimista al pensar que cada vez más gente comprenderá que debemos enfocarnos en estos ejes, reclamará por más salud o educación y entenderá que se fabrican demasiado plástico, demasiados químicos, demasiado petróleo, demasiados automóviles. Creo que mucha gente comprende al fin que la "economía de vida" no solo es buena para su salud, sino para evitar el cambio climático. ¿Son ya mayoría estas personas? No. Pero van en aumento.


-¿Podríamos decir, acaso, que estamos en medio de un inmenso experimento de "creación destructiva", en términos schumpeterianos?

-Sí. Afortunadamente, muchos países intentaron evitar o paliar este proceso de "creación destructiva" colocando barreras para proteger a sus ciudadanos más desfavorecidos, lo cual es bueno, aunque también es cierto que colocar ese tipo de barreras puede ralentizar el proceso de innovación. Tomemos un ejemplo bien prosaico: la industria aeronáutica. Creo que está muerta. Lo que ahora se necesita es una enorme capacidad industrial centrada en proveer equipamientos electrónicos para la medicina, innovación tecnológica en el área sanitaria, biomimética y tanto más. En ese contexto, si nos concentramos en mantener viva la industria aeronáutica con subsidios, habrá un montón de ingenieros aeronáuticos que no tendrán nada para hacer en vez de pedirles que se aboquen a producir equipamientos médicos, lo que sí resultaría en un verdadero ejemplo de creación destructiva en los términos de Schumpeter. Pero para eso se requiere una "economía de guerra" que los empuje a hacerlo. Y no veo a ningún gobierno dispuesto a hacerlo.


-¿Hay alguna pregunta que no le planteé y le gustaría abordar?

-[Carraspea, calla unos segundos]. Fui hace dos años a la Argentina para la cumbre del G-20 y creo que deberíamos abordar por qué todo lo que estamos afrontando ahora no se discutió en aquel momento. Pudo haberse discutido. Todo estaba dado para eso y si el G-20 hubiera tomado alguna decisión allá, en Buenos Aires, o al menos alertado que no estábamos preparados para afrontar una pandemia y planteado que debíamos aprestarnos mejor, quizá nos hubiéramos encontrado en una mejor situación cuando sí nos golpeó la pandemia. Esa debería una lección para el G-20, para prepararse seriamente en el futuro.


-Veo difícil que eso ocurra. No lo creo.

-[Sonríe]. Yo tampoco.

El estado de las cosas

Nos gustó, por lo breve y lúcida, una nota de Artyom Lukin publicada hoy en Russia Today. Lukin es profesor de Relaciones Internacionales en la Universidad Federal del Este, en Vladivostok, Rusia. Acá va:


Título: Split societies, global chaos and World War Three: We could be in for the most tumultuous era in modern history

Texto: As we cross into the second half of 2020, there is little hope left that our misfortunes will end when this annus horribilis goes out. We may be entering one of the most cataclysmic and fateful periods in the history of humankind.

There is the growing realization that humanity is in for an extremely rough ride that could last at least a decade.

This sense of uncertainty has been building up for years. It probably began with the global financial crisis of 2008-09. Yet, until 2020, there was hope that the world would somehow return to the right track and regain stability. Covid-19 ended this hope, devastating the global economy and exacerbating the pre-existing tensions between the incumbent hegemon (the United States) and a new super-power contender (China).

The state of angst has descended upon many. In most countries, including Russia, the plague continues to circulate, killing people with terrifying randomness. Even if we win the battle against the latest coronavirus, the mega-trends in global politics that point to more trouble and disorder are not going to dissipate and will likely only intensify. When trying to rationally break down my personal angst, as a political scientist, I perceive at least four such mega-trends.


Split societies 

I remember a chat with a Russian colleague in Vladivostok a few years ago. She lamented that she felt as if she was living in a country which contains several parallel societies rather than a single one, with members of those ‘societies’ speaking completely different languages and espousing divergent values. Of course, there have always been divisions within nations.  But, as a rule, one set of values and beliefs was dominant, with dissenting groups more or less marginalized. Today the societal consensus increasingly seems an exception rather than the rule.   Across much of the world one can see quasi civil wars raging, with societies often split into halves.  The main divide runs between the camp of social conservatism and nativism and the supporters of progressive-liberal values. The latest manifestation of this antagonism came in Poland, where the incumbent right-wing conservative won elections over his liberal opponent with a wafer-thin margin.


The revolt of the masses

On May 25, 2020, a black American George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis by a white police officer. His death triggered mass protests that quickly spread across the United States. On July 9, in the Russian Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, the regional governor, Sergey Furgal, was arrested on charges of having organized the assassination of business rivals back in 2004 and 2005. Furgal was immediately flown to Moscow and placed in a jail there. His arrest sparked unprecedented massive rallies in Khabarovsk, a sleepy provincial place on the border with China, that have now continued for two weeks. The tens of thousands of people who’ve joined the rallies in support of Furgal believe the actual reason behind his arrest was his landslide win over the Kremlin-backed incumbent in gubernatorial elections in 2018, and his subsequent refusals to bow to diktats from Moscow.

Granted, the protests in Khabarovsk over the fate of a popular local leader are nowhere near the scale of the American race protests. And, unlike in the United States, the marches and rallies in the Russian Far East are, so far, entirely peaceful. They do have one common thread:  people in America, Russia, and other countries who defy the covid risks and take to the streets are demanding dignity. Most of them are protesting against what they see as structural injustice and the arrogance of power. Their protest is ultimately about the alienation between the ruling class and the ordinary people, the institutions of power and the governed. This protest is part of the global wave of popular uprisings that has been swelling over the past decade, starting with the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements. Trump’s victory in 2016, as well as Brexit, can also be seen as part of the global revolt against incumbent elites.


The end of hegemony and a rudderless world

Simultaneously with upheavals in the domestic politics of many countries, the international system, too, is undergoing tectonic shifts. Pax Americana, a.k.a. the ‘international liberal order,’ is unraveling. Just a few years ago, it appeared the decline of US global hegemony could still be reversible. Today not many people outside the Beltway believe it can be salvaged. Even if Joe Biden replaces the wrecking ball Trump in the White House, the days of American pre-eminence seem numbered. There is a classic “revolutionary situation” in the present-day international system. To paraphrase Vladimir Lenin, Washington is “unable to rule and govern in the old way” while much of the rest of the world does “not want to live in the old way.”

The Pax Americana might have been flawed and unfair to many, but there is no denying it did provide a significant degree of international stability. With the end of US hegemony, who will maintain international law and order? There is no answer thus far. Existing collective institutions, such as G20 or the UN P5, are not even remotely capable of performing effective global governance. And, despite Washington’s suspicions, there is no credible evidence as yet that the emerging superpower China is keen to police the world. One thing is clear, though. The vacuum of governance will lead to more chaos in global politics.        

Premonitions of war

In 2014, I wrote an essay about the possibility of World War III around 2030, arising out of a clash between the U.S. and China. Six years later I would make two corrections to that article. First, a Sino-American war now looks not just possible, but almost inevitable. Second, the situation preceding the US-China clash will not resemble the world of the early twentieth century, pre-WWI, with its rapidly growing prosperity due to what is now considered the first era of globalization. Rather, the atmosphere of the 2020s will be more akin to that of the 1930s, with the global economy in the doldrums and the rise of authoritarian and neo-totalitarian regimes. The most important question, though, is whether the US-China war will be a relatively limited one. If not, could it lead to a global conflagration, drawing in other players such as Russia, India, Japan and Europe?

The history of mankind has never lacked in conflicts over values and power, both within societies and among them. Yet the present moment is rather unique because of the convergence at one point in time of several profound and explosive societal contradictions, with the threat of pandemics and climate change as the background. China is perhaps the only major island of relative stability in the global tempest, which, incidentally, amplifies the fears that Beijing would try to reach for the scepter of global power.

In due time, the current contradictions and conflicts will run their course and be resolved. A new equilibrium will set in. Until it does, however, we will be living in very interesting times. Perhaps, not angst but, rather, excitement should be the main mood of our era.

Un gráfico

Según las proyecciones del Banco Mundial y el FMI, hacia 2024 habrá cambiado sustancialmente el ranking TopTen de los países con mayor PBI. La nota que sigue es de Zero Hedge. El gráfico es del sitio web Statista.


Título: Continental Shift: The World's Biggest Economies Over Time

Texto: According to data from the World Bank and IMF, Asian countries are expected to make up most of the top 5 countries in the world by size of GDP in 2024, thus, as Statista's Katharina Buchholz points out, relegating European economic powerhouses to lower ranks. China's economic growth has been steep since the 1990s, while India and Indonesia have even more recently entered the top 10 of the biggest economies in the world and are expected to reach ranks 3 and 5 by 2024. Japan, an established economy, is expected to cling on to rank 4 in 2024, while Russia will rise to rank 6.

Asia’s burgeoning middle class is one of the reasons for the continental shift in GDP. While China has been the posterchild of market growth in the 21st century so far, the country is expected to tackle an ageing population further down the line, which will put a damper on consumption. Indonesia, together with the Philippines and Malaysia, are expected to grow their labor forces significantly in the years to come, contributing to a rise in average disposable incomes, according to the World Economic Forum.

Asian multinationals, like China’s Huawei and India’s Tata, have already emerged in this century and more are expected to appear on the global scene. But rapid growth in Asia also comes with its own set of problems, like a quickly growing divide between rural and urban incomes, environmental degradation and new challenges for governance and institutions, according to the FAO.

Habla Sahra Wagenknecht

La chica nos gusta, qué le vamos a hacer. Tiene ese aire delicado y femenino que llama inmediatamente la atención, si bien lo que más impacta es su inteligencia, ese aire de entender lo que pasa sin pretensiones de genia. 

Leemos en Wikipedia: "Sahra Wagenknecht-Niemeyer (nació el 16 de julio de 1969 en Jena) es una política alemana, licenciada en literatura, doctora en ciencias económicas y publicista. Fue miembro del consejo de los directores en Die Linke [La Izquierda] y fue miembro del Parlamento Europeo desde julio de 2004 hasta julio de 2009. Desde 2009 es miembro del Bundestag de Alemania y portavoz de economía de su grupo parlamentario. En su partido es la portavoz de la Plataforma comunista. Desde 2010 es vicepresidente del partido alemán Die Linke."

Acá va el link a un comentario sobre la defensa, y los verdaderos intereses, de Alemania y Europa en general. De paso, nos da la oportunidad de escuchar la belleza sonora de la lengua alemana, tan alejada del estereotipo "Heil Hitler" de las pelis del Imperio:

http://thesaker.is/usa-most-aggressive-military-power-in-the-world-those-who-have-friends-like-that-dont-need-enemies-sahra-wagenknecht/

Malas noticias para Greta

La vida te da sorpresas. Ayer se nos atragantó la tostada mientras leíamos el siguiente título de Zero Hedge:

Forbes Censors Award-Winning Environmentalist's Apology Over Three-Decade 'Climate Scare' - So Here It Is

Parece que el bueno de Michael, uno de los (ex) chicos-diez del ambientalismo terrorista de las últimas décadas, patea el tablero y saca un volumen denunciando las idioteces de la banda. Encima, escribe un artículo para la prestigiosa revista Forbes y ésta se lo censura!

Forbes has decided to unpublish an article by award-winning climate activist Michael Shellenberger, in which he apologizes "for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years."

Schellenberger, a progressive, was named one of TIME's "Heroes of the Environment," while his book Break Through was heralded by WIRED as potentially "the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring."

His book Apocalypse Never was widely praised as an 'eye-opening, fact-based approach' to climate science and 'engaging and well-researched.'

Now that he's apologized for three-decades of climate alarmism, Forbes has now blocked Shellenberger's article without explanation.

No es que no pensemos en la realidad del cambio climático, la polución o los efectos negativos de los agroquímicos. No. Lo que no nos tragamos es a esa banda de irresponsables que vienen metiéndole miedo a media humanidad, ayer con la supuesta "superpoblación", hoy con el cambio climático y mañana con cualquier curro que seguramente sirva no a los ambientalistas sino a algún negocio que se esté armando con las mejores excusas ambientalistas de ocasión. En fin, mientras esperamos noticias urgentes de la bienamada Greta Thunberg, leemos la nota de Shellenberg reproducida ayer en Zero Hedge. Los subrayados son nuestros:


Título: On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare

Texto: On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. 

Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem. 

I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30. 

But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.

Here are some facts few people know:

- Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction” 

- The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”

- Climate change is not making natural disasters worse

- Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003

- The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska

- The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California

- Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s 

- Adapting to life below sea level made the Netherlands rich not poor

- We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter

- Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change

- Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels

- Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture

I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism. 

In reality, the above facts come from the best-available scientific studies, including those conducted by or accepted by the IPCC, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and other leading scientific bodies. 

Some people will, when they read this imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-nvironmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s cooperatives. In my early 20s I lived in the
semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia. I became an environmentalist at 16 when I threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network. At 27 I helped save the last unprotected ancient redwoods in California. In my 30s I advocated renewables and successfully helped persuade the Obama administration to invest $90 billion into them. Over the last few years I helped save enough nuclear plants from being replaced by fossil fuels to prevent a sharp increase in emissions. 

But until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilization, and called it a “crisis.” 

But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.

I even stood by as people in the White House and many in the news media tried to destroy the reputation and career of an outstanding scientist, good man, and friend of mine, Roger Pielke, Jr., a lifelong progressive Democrat and environmentalist who testified in favor of carbon regulations. Why did they do that? Because his research proves natural disasters aren’t getting worse. 

But then, last year, things spiraled out of control. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.” 

The world’s most influential green journalist, Bill McKibben, called climate change the “greatest challenge humans have ever faced” and said it would “wipe out civilizations.” 

Mainstream journalists reported, repeatedly, that the Amazon was “the lungs of the world,” and that deforestation was like a nuclear bomb going off.

As a result, half of the people surveyed around the world last year said they thought climate change would make humanity extinct. And in January, one out of five British children told pollsters they were having nightmares about climate change.

Whether or not you have children you must see how wrong this is. I admit I may be sensitive because I have a teenage daughter. After we talked about the science she was reassured. But her friends are deeply misinformed and thus, understandably, frightened. 

I thus decided I had to speak out. I knew that writing a few articles wouldn’t be enough. I needed a book to properly lay out all of the evidence. 

 And so my formal apology for our fear-mongering comes in the form of my new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. 

It is based on two decades of research and three decades of environmental activism. At 400 pages, with 100 of them endnotes, Apocalypse Never covers climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, species extinction, industrialization, meat, nuclear energy, and renewables.


Some highlights from the book:

- Factories and modern farming are the keys to human liberation and environmental progress 

- The most important thing for saving the environment is producing more food, particularly meat, on less land 

- The most important thing for reducing air pollution and carbon emissions is moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural gas to uranium 

- 100% renewables would require increasing the land used for energy from today’s 0.5% to 50% 

- We should want cities, farms, and power plants to have higher, not lower, power densities

- Vegetarianism reduces one’s emissions by less than 4%

- Greenpeace didn’t save the whales, switching from whale oil to petroleum and palm oil did

- “Free-range” beef would require 20 times more land and produce 300% more emissions

- Greenpeace dogmatism worsened forest fragmentation of the Amazon

- The colonialist approach to gorilla conservation in the Congo produced a backlash that may have resulted in the killing of 250 elephants

Why were we all so misled?

In the final three chapters of Apocalypse Never I expose the financial, political, and ideological motivations. Environmental groups have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests. Groups motivated by anti-humanist beliefs forced the World Bank to stop trying to end poverty and instead make poverty “sustainable.” And status anxiety, depression, and hostility to modern civilization are behind much of the alarmism.

Once you realize just how badly misinformed we have been, often by people with plainly unsavory or unhealthy motivations, it is hard not to feel duped. 

Will Apocalypse Never make any difference? There are certainly reasons to doubt it. 

The news media have been making apocalyptic pronouncements about climate change since the late 1980s, and do not seem disposed to stop. 

The ideology behind environmental alarmsim — Malthusianism — has been repeatedly debunked for 200 years and yet is more powerful than ever.

But there are also reasons to believe that environmental alarmism will, if not come to an end, have diminishing cultural power. 

The coronavirus pandemic is an actual crisis that puts the climate “crisis” into perspective. Even if you think we have overreacted, Covid-19 has killed nearly 500,000 people and shattered economies around the globe.

Scientific institutions including WHO and IPCC have undermined their credibility through the repeated politicization of science. Their future existence and relevance depends on new leadership and serious reform.

Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalists at legacy publications. 

Nations are reverting openly to self-interest and away from Malthusianism and neoliberalism, which is good for nuclear and bad for renewables.

The evidence is overwhelming that our high-energy civilization is better for people and nature than the low-energy civilization that climate alarmists would return us to. 

The invitations from IPCC and Congress are signs of a growing openness to new thinking about climate change and the environment. 

Another one has been to the response to my book from climate scientists, conservationists, and environmental scholars. "Apocalypse Never is an extremely important book,” writes Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb. “This may be the most important book on the environment ever written,” says one of the fathers of modern climate science Tom Wigley. “We environmentalists condemn those with antithetical views of being ignorant of science and susceptible to confirmation bias,” wrote the former head of The Nature Conservancy, Steve McCormick. “But too often we are guilty of the same.  Shellenberger offers ‘tough love:’ a challenge to entrenched orthodoxies and rigid, self-defeating mindsets.  Apocalypse Never serves up occasionally stinging, but always well-crafted, evidence-based points of view that will help develop the ‘mental muscle’ we need to envision and design not only a hopeful, but an attainable, future.”

That is all I hoped for in writing it. If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll agree that it’s perhaps not as strange as it seems that a lifelong environmentalist, progressive, and climate activist felt the need to speak out against the alarmism. 

I further hope that you’ll accept my apology.

Fin del momento unipolar

Nos llamó la atención una nota de Alexander Cooley y Daniel H. Nexon para la revista Foreign Affairs, que sale en el número de Julio/Agosto de este año. No tanto por lo que dice (los lectores de Astroboy ya lo sabían) sino por el sitio donde fue publicado (nada menos que Foreign Affairs, publicación emblemática del Council on Foreign Relations); o sea, el riñón del establishment intelectual del Imperio. Al final del artículo se indica la filiación de los autores: "ALEXANDER COOLEY is Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College and Director of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. DANIEL H. NEXON is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government and at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University." No se la pierdan.


Título: How Hegemony Ends

Subtítulo: The Unraveling of American Power

Texto: Multiple signs point to a crisis in global order. The uncoordinated international response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting economic downturns, the resurgence of nationalist politics, and the hardening of state borders all seem to herald the emergence of a less cooperative and more fragile international system. According to many observers, these developments underscore the dangers of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America first” policies and his retreat from global leadership. 

Even before the pandemic, Trump routinely criticized the value of alliances and institutions such as NATO, supported the breakup of the European Union, withdrew from a host of international agreements and organizations, and pandered to autocrats such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He has questioned the merits of placing liberal values such as democracy and human rights at the heart of foreign policy. Trump’s clear preference for zero-sum, transactional politics further supports the notion that the United States is abandoning its commitment to promoting a liberal international order. 

Some analysts believe that the United States can still turn this around, by restoring the strategies by which it, from the end of World War II to the aftermath of the Cold War, built and sustained a successful international order. If a post-Trump United States could reclaim the responsibilities of global power, then this era—including the pandemic that will define it—could stand as a temporary aberration rather than a step on the way to permanent disarray. 

After all, predictions of American decline and a shift in international order are far from new—and they have been consistently wrong. In the middle of the 1980s, many analysts believed that U.S. leadership was on the way out. The Bretton Woods system had collapsed in the 1970s; the United States faced increasing competition from European and East Asian economies, notably West Germany and Japan; and the Soviet Union looked like an enduring feature of world politics. By the end of 1991, however, the Soviet Union had formally dissolved, Japan was entering its “lost decade” of economic stagnation, and the expensive task of integration consumed a reunified Germany. The United States experienced a decade of booming technological innovation and unexpectedly high economic growth. The result was what many hailed as a “unipolar moment” of American hegemony. 

But this time really is different. The very forces that made U.S. hegemony so durable before are today driving its dissolution. Three developments enabled the post–Cold War U.S.-led order. First, with the defeat of communism, the United States faced no major global ideological project that could rival its own. Second, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its accompanying infrastructure of institutions and partnerships, weaker states lacked significant alternatives to the United States and its Western allies when it came to securing military, economic, and political support. And third, transnational activists and movements were spreading liberal values and norms that bolstered the liberal order.

Today, those same dynamics have turned against the United States: a vicious cycle that erodes U.S. power has replaced the virtuous cycles that once reinforced it. With the rise of great powers such as China and Russia, autocratic and illiberal projects rival the U.S.-led liberal international system. Developing countries—and even many developed ones—can seek alternative patrons rather than remain dependent on Western largess and support. And illiberal, often right-wing transnational networks are pressing against the norms and pieties of the liberal international order that once seemed so implacable. In short, U.S. global leadership is not simply in retreat; it is unraveling. And the decline is not cyclical but permanent. 


THE VANISHING UNIPOLAR MOMENT

It may seem strange to talk of permanent decline when the United States spends more on its military than its next seven rivals combined and maintains an unparalleled network of overseas military bases. Military power played an important role in creating and maintaining U.S. preeminence in the 1990s and early years of this century; no other country could extend credible security guarantees across the entire international system. But U.S. military dominance was less a function of defense budgets—in real terms, U.S. military spending decreased during the 1990s and only ballooned after the September 11 attacks—than of several other factors: the disappearance of the Soviet Union as a competitor, the growing technological advantage enjoyed by the U.S. military, and the willingness of most of the world’s second-tier powers to rely on the United States rather than build up their own military forces. If the emergence of the United States as a unipolar power was mostly contingent on the dissolution of the Soviet Union, then the continuation of that unipolarity through the subsequent decade stemmed from the fact that Asian and European allies were content to subscribe to U.S. hegemony.

Talk of the unipolar moment obscures crucial features of world politics that formed the basis of U.S. dominance. The breakup of the Soviet Union finally closed the door on the only project of global ordering that could rival capitalism. Marxism-Leninism (and its offshoots) mostly disappeared as a source of ideological competition. Its associated transnational infrastructure—its institutions, practices, and networks, including the Warsaw Pact, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, and the Soviet Union itself—all imploded. Without Soviet support, most Moscow-affiliated countries, insurgent groups, and political movements decided it was better to either throw in the towel or get on the U.S. bandwagon. By the middle of the 1990s, there existed only one dominant framework for international norms and rules: the liberal international system of alliances and institutions anchored in Washington.

The United States and its allies—referred to in breezy shorthand as “the West”—together enjoyed a de facto patronage monopoly during the period of unipolarity. With some limited exceptions, they offered the only significant source of security, economic goods, and political support and legitimacy. Developing countries could no longer exert leverage over Washington by threatening to turn to Moscow or point to the risk of a communist takeover to shield themselves from having to make domestic reforms. The sweep of Western power and influence was so untrammeled that many policymakers came to believe in the permanent triumph of liberalism. Most governments saw no viable alternative. 

With no other source of support, countries were more likely to adhere to the conditions of the Western aid they received. Autocrats faced severe international criticism and heavy demands from Western-controlled international organizations. Yes, democratic powers continued to protect certain autocratic states (such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia) from such demands for strategic and economic reasons. And leading democracies, including the United States, themselves violated international norms concerning human, civil, and political rights, most dramatically in the form of torture and extraordinary renditions during the so-called war on terror. But even these hypocritical exceptions reinforced the hegemony of the liberal order, because they sparked widespread condemnation that reaffirmed liberal principles and because U.S. officials continued to voice commitment to liberal norms.

Meanwhile, an expanding number of transnational networks—often dubbed “international civil society”—propped up the emerging architecture of the post–Cold War international order. These groups and individuals served as the foot soldiers of U.S. hegemony by spreading broadly liberal norms and practices. The collapse of centrally planned economies in the postcommunist world invited waves of Western consultants and contractors to help usher in market reforms—sometimes with disastrous consequences, as in Russia and Ukraine, where Western-backed shock therapy impoverished tens of millions while creating a class of wealthy oligarchs who turned former state assets into personal empires. International financial institutions, government regulators, central bankers, and economists worked to build an elite consensus in favor of free trade and the movement of capital across borders.

Civil society groups also sought to steer postcommunist and developing countries toward Western models of liberal democracy. Teams of Western experts advised governments on the design of new constitutions, legal reforms, and multiparty systems. International observers, most of them from Western democracies, monitored elections in far-flung countries. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) advocating the expansion of human rights, gender equality, and environmental protections forged alliances with sympathetic states and media outlets. The work of transnational activists, scholarly communities, and social movements helped build an overarching liberal project of economic and political integration. Throughout the 1990s, these forces helped produce an illusion of an unassailable liberal order resting on durable U.S. global hegemony. That illusion is now in tatters. 


THE GREAT-POWER COMEBACK

Today, other great powers offer rival conceptions of global order, often autocratic ones that appeal to many leaders of weaker states. The West no longer presides over a monopoly of patronage. New regional organizations and illiberal transnational networks contest U.S. influence. Long-term shifts in the global economy, particularly the rise of China, account for many of these developments. These changes have transformed the geopolitical landscape. 

In April 1997, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Russian President Boris Yeltsin pledged “to promote the multipolarization of the world and the establishment of a new international order.” For years, many Western scholars and policymakers downplayed or dismissed such challenges as wishful rhetoric. Beijing remained committed to the rules and norms of the U.S.-led order, they argued, pointing out that China continued to benefit from the current system. Even as Russia grew increasingly assertive in its condemnation of the United States in the first decade of this century and called for a more multipolar world, observers didn’t think that Moscow could muster support from any significant allies. Analysts in the West specifically doubted that Beijing and Moscow could overcome decades of mistrust and rivalry to cooperate against U.S. efforts to maintain and shape the international order.

Such skepticism made sense at the height of U.S. global hegemony in the 1990s and even remained plausible through much of the following decade. But the 1997 declaration now looks like a blueprint for how Beijing and Moscow have tried to reorder international politics in the last 20 years. China and Russia now directly contest liberal aspects of the international order from within that order’s institutions and forums; at the same time, they are building an alternative order through new institutions and venues in which they wield greater influence and can de-emphasize human rights and civil liberties.

At the United Nations, for example, the two countries routinely consult on votes and initiatives. As permanent members of the UN Security Council, they have coordinated their opposition to criticize Western interventions and calls for regime change; they have vetoed Western-sponsored proposals on Syria and efforts to impose sanctions on Venezuela and Yemen. In the UN General Assembly, between 2006 and 2018, China and Russia voted the same way 86 percent of the time, more frequently than during the 78 percent voting accord the two shared between 1991 and 2005. By contrast, since 2005, China and the United States have agreed only 21 percent of the time. Beijing and Moscow have also led UN initiatives to promote new norms, most notably in the arena of cyberspace, that privilege national sovereignty over individual rights, limit the doctrine of the responsibility to protect, and curtail the power of Western-sponsored human rights resolutions.

China and Russia have also been at the forefront of creating new international institutions and regional forums that exclude the United States and the West more broadly. Perhaps the most well known of these is the BRICS grouping, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Since 2006, the group has presented itself as a dynamic setting for the discussion of matters of international order and global leadership, including building alternatives to Western-controlled institutions in the areas of Internet governance, international payment systems, and development assistance. In 2016, the BRICS countries created the New Development Bank, which is dedicated to financing infrastructure projects in the developing world. 

China and Russia have each also pushed a plethora of new regional security organizations—including the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and the Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism—and economic institutions, including the Chinese-run Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Russian-backed Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)—a security organization that promotes cooperation among security services and oversees biennial military exercises—was founded in 2001 at the initiative of both Beijing and Moscow. It added India and Pakistan as full members in 2017. The net result is the emergence of parallel structures of global governance that are dominated by authoritarian states and that compete with older, more liberal structures. 

Critics often dismiss the BRICS, the EAEU, and the SCO as “talk shops” in which member states do little to actually resolve problems or otherwise engage in meaningful cooperation. But most other international institutions are no different. Even when they prove unable to solve collective problems, regional organizations allow their members to affirm common values and boost the stature of the powers that convene these forums. They generate denser diplomatic ties among their members, which, in turn, make it easier for those members to build military and political coalitions. In short, these organizations constitute a critical part of the infrastructure of international order, an infrastructure that was dominated by Western democracies after the end of the Cold War. Indeed, this new array of non-Western organizations has brought transnational governance mechanisms into regions such as Central Asia, which were previously disconnected from many institutions of global governance. Since 2001, most Central Asian states have joined the SCO, the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, the EAEU, the AIIB, and the Chinese infrastructure investment project known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

China and Russia are also now pushing into areas traditionally dominated by the United States and its allies; for example, China convenes the 17+1 group with states in central and eastern Europe and the China-CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Forum in Latin America. These groupings provide states in these regions with new arenas for partnership and support while also challenging the cohesion of traditional Western blocs; just days before the 16+1 group expanded to include the EU member Greece in April 2020, the European Commission moved to designate China a “systemic rival” amid concerns that BRI deals in Europe were undercutting EU regulations and standards. 

Beijing and Moscow appear to be successfully managing their alliance of convenience, defying predictions that they would be unable to tolerate each other’s international projects. This has even been the case in areas in which their divergent interests could lead to significant tensions. Russia vocally supports China’s BRI, despite its inroads into Central Asia, which Moscow still considers its backyard. In fact, since 2017, the Kremlin’s rhetoric has shifted from talking about a clearly demarcated Russian “sphere of influence” in Eurasia to embracing a “Greater Eurasia” in which Chinese-led investment and integration dovetails with Russian efforts to shut out Western influence. Moscow followed a similar pattern when Beijing first proposed the formation of the AIIB in 2015. The Russian Ministry of Finance initially refused to back the bank, but the Kremlin changed course after seeing which way the wind was blowing; Russia formally joined the bank at the end of the year.

China has also proved willing to accommodate Russian concerns and sensitivities. China joined the other BRICS countries in abstaining from condemning Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, even though doing so clearly contravened China’s long-standing opposition to separatism and violations of territorial integrity. Moreover, the Trump administration’s trade war with China has given Beijing additional incentives to support Russian efforts to develop alternatives to the Western-controlled SWIFT international payment system and dollar-denominated trade so as to undermine the global reach of U.S. sanctions regimes. 


THE END OF THE PATRONAGE MONOPOLY

China and Russia are not the only states seeking to make world politics more favorable to nondemocratic regimes and less amenable to U.S. hegemony. As early as 2007, lending by “rogue donors” such as then oil-rich Venezuela raised the possibility that such no-strings-attached assistance might undermine Western aid initiatives designed to encourage governments to embrace liberal reforms.

Since then, Chinese state-affiliated lenders, such as the China Development Bank, have opened substantial lines of credit across Africa and the developing world. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, China became an important source of loans and emergency funding for countries that could not access, or were excluded from, Western financial institutions. During the financial crisis, China extended over $75 billion in loans for energy deals to countries in Latin America—Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela—and to Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan in Eurasia.

China is not the only alternative patron. After the Arab Spring, Gulf states such as Qatar lent money to Egypt, allowing Cairo to avoid turning to the International Monetary Fund during a turbulent time. But China has been by far the most ambitious country in this regard. An AidData study found that total Chinese foreign aid assistance between 2000 and 2014 reached $354 billion, nearing the U.S. total of $395 billion. China has since surpassed annual U.S. aid disbursals. Moreover, Chinese aid undermines Western efforts to spread liberal norms. Several studies suggest that although Chinese funds have fueled development in many countries, they also have stoked blatant corruption and habits of regime patronage. In countries emerging from war, such as Nepal, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and South Sudan, Chinese development and reconstruction aid flowed to victorious governments, insulating them from international pressure to accommodate their domestic foes and adopt more liberal models of peacemaking and reconciliation.

The end of the West’s monopoly on patronage has seen the concurrent rise of fiery populist nationalists even in countries that were firmly embedded in the United States’ economic and security orbit. The likes of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte have painted themselves as guardians of domestic sovereignty against liberal subversion. They dismiss Western concerns about democratic backsliding in their countries and emphasize the growing importance of their economic and security relationships with China and Russia. In the case of the Philippines, Duterte recently terminated a two-decade-old military treaty with the United States after Washington canceled the visa of the former national chief of police, who is accused of human rights violations in the Philippines’ bloody and controversial war on drugs.

Of course, some of these specific challenges to U.S. leadership will wax and wane since they stem from shifting political circumstances and the dispositions of individual leaders. But the expansion of “exit options”—of alternative patrons, institutions, and political models—now seems a permanent feature of international politics. Governments have much more room to maneuver. Even when states do not actively switch patrons, the possibility that they could provides them with greater leverage. As a result, China and Russia have the latitude to contest U.S. hegemony and construct alternative orders. 


CENTRIFUGAL FORCES

Another important shift marks a break from the post–Cold War unipolar moment. The transnational civil society networks that stitched together the liberal international order no longer enjoy the power and influence they once had. Illiberal competitors now challenge them in many areas, including gender rights, multiculturalism, and the principles of liberal democratic governance. Some of these centrifugal forces have originated in the United States and western European countries themselves. For instance, the U.S. lobbying group the National Rifle Association worked transnationally to successfully defeat a proposed antigun referendum in Brazil in 2005, where it built an alliance with domestic right-wing political movements; over a decade later, the Brazilian political firebrand Jair Bolsonaro tapped into this same network to help propel himself to the presidency. The World Congress of Families, initially founded by U.S.-based Christian organizations in 1997, is now a transnational network, supported by Eurasian oligarchs, that convenes prominent social conservatives from dozens of countries to build global opposition to LGBTQ and reproductive rights. 

Autocratic regimes have found ways to limit—or even eliminate—the influence of liberal transnational advocacy networks and reform-minded NGOs. The so-called color revolutions in the post-Soviet world in the first decade of this century and the 2010–11 Arab Spring in the Middle East played a key role in this process. They alarmed authoritarian and illiberal governments, which increasingly saw the protection of human rights and the promotion of democracy as threats to their survival. In response, such regimes curtailed the influence of NGOs with foreign connections. They imposed tight restrictions on receiving foreign funds, proscribed various political activities, and labeled certain activists “foreign agents.” 

Some governments now sponsor their own NGOs both to suppress liberalizing pressures at home and to contest the liberal order abroad. For example, in response to Western support of young activists during the color revolutions, the Kremlin founded the youth group Nashi to mobilize young people in support of the state. The Red Cross Society of China, China’s oldest government-organized NGO, has delivered medical supplies to European countries in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a carefully orchestrated public relations campaign. These regimes also use digital platforms and social media to disrupt antigovernment mobilization and advocacy. Russia has likewise deployed such tools abroad in its information operations and electoral meddling in democratic states.

Two developments helped accelerate the illiberal turn in the West: the Great Recession of 2008 and the refugee crisis in Europe in 2015. Over the last decade, illiberal networks—generally but not exclusively on the right—have challenged the establishment consensus within the West. Some groups and figures question the merits of continued membership in major institutions of the liberal order, such as the European Union and NATO. Many right-wing movements in the West receive both financial and moral support from Moscow, which backs “dark money” operations that promote narrow oligarchic interests in the United States and far-right political parties in Europe with the hope of weakening democratic governments and cultivating future allies. In Italy, the anti-immigrant party Lega is currently the most popular party despite revelations of its attempt to win illegal financial support from Moscow. In France, the National Rally, which also has a history of Russian backing, remains a powerful force in domestic politics.

These developments echo the ways in which “counter-order” movements have helped precipitate the decline of hegemonic powers in the past. Transnational networks played crucial roles in both upholding and challenging prior international orders. For example, Protestant networks helped erode Spanish power in early modern Europe, most notably by supporting the Dutch Revolt in the sixteenth century. Liberal and republican movements, especially in the context of the revolutions across Europe in 1848, played a part in undermining the Concert of Europe, which tried to manage international order on the continent in the first half of the nineteenth century. The rise of fascist and communist transnational networks helped produce the global power struggle of World War II. Counter-order movements achieved political power in countries such as Germany, Italy, and Japan, leading those nations to break from or try to assail existing structures of international order. But even less successful counter-order movements can still undermine the cohesion of hegemonic powers and their allies.

Not every illiberal or right-wing movement that opposes the U.S.-led order seeks to challenge U.S. leadership or turns to Russia as an exemplar of strong cultural conservatism. Nonetheless, such movements are helping polarize politics in advanced industrial democracies and weaken support for the order’s institutions. One of them has even captured the White House: Trumpism, which is best understood as a counter-order movement with a transnational reach that targets the alliances and partnerships central to U.S. hegemony.


CONSERVING THE U.S. SYSTEM

Great-power contestation, the end of the West’s monopoly on patronage, and the emergence of movements that oppose the liberal international system have all altered the global order over which Washington has presided since the end of the Cold War. In many respects, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be further accelerating the erosion of U.S. hegemony. China has increased its influence in the World Health Organization and other global institutions in the wake of the Trump administration’s attempts to defund and scapegoat the public health body. Beijing and Moscow are portraying themselves as providers of emergency goods and medical supplies, including to European countries such as Italy, Serbia, and Spain, and even to the United States. Illiberal governments worldwide are using the pandemic as cover for restricting media freedom and cracking down on political opposition and civil society. Although the United States still enjoys military supremacy, that dimension of U.S. dominance is especially ill suited to deal with this global crisis and its ripple effects.

Even if the core of the U.S. hegemonic system—which consists mostly of long-standing Asian and European allies and rests on norms and institutions developed during the Cold War—remains robust, and even if, as many champions of the liberal order suggest will happen, the United States and the European Union can leverage their combined economic and military might to their advantage, the fact is that Washington will have to get used to an increasingly contested and complex international order. There is no easy fix for this. No amount of military spending can reverse the processes driving the unraveling of U.S. hegemony. Even if Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, knocks out Trump in the presidential election later this year, or if the Republican Party repudiates Trumpism, the disintegration will continue. 

The key questions now concern how far the unraveling will spread. Will core allies decouple from the U.S. hegemonic system? How long, and to what extent, can the United States maintain financial and monetary dominance? The most favorable outcome will require a clear repudiation of Trumpism in the United States and a commitment to rebuild liberal democratic institutions in the core. At both the domestic and the international level, such efforts will necessitate alliances among center-right, center-left, and progressive political parties and networks.

What U.S. policymakers can do is plan for the world after global hegemony. If they help preserve the core of the American system, U.S. officials can ensure that the United States leads the strongest military and economic coalition in a world of multiple centers of power, rather than finding itself on the losing side of most contests over the shape of the new international order. To this end, the United States should reinvigorate the beleaguered and understaffed State Department, rebuilding and more effectively using its diplomatic resources. Smart statecraft will allow a great power to navigate a world defined by competing interests and shifting alliances. 

The United States lacks both the will and the resources to consistently outbid China and other emerging powers for the allegiance of governments. It will be impossible to secure the commitment of some countries to U.S. visions of international order. Many of those governments have come to view the U.S.-led order as a threat to their autonomy, if not their survival. And some governments that still welcome a U.S.-led liberal order now contend with populist and other illiberal movements that oppose it.

Even at the peak of the unipolar moment, Washington did not always get its way. Now, for the U.S. political and economic model to retain considerable appeal, the United States has to first get its own house in order. China will face its own obstacles in producing an alternative system; Beijing may irk partners and clients with its pressure tactics and its opaque and often corrupt deals. A reinvigorated U.S. foreign policy apparatus should be able to exercise significant influence on international order even in the absence of global hegemony. But to succeed, Washington must recognize that the world no longer resembles the historically anomalous period of the 1990s and the first decade of this century. The unipolar moment has passed, and it isn’t coming back.