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Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Geopolitical tensions

 

Current American foreign policy settings are arguably at the root of our most serious and urgent geopolitical problems. Under the influence of advisors committed to extreme forms of neoconservatism, aspects of policy have become disconnected from reality, even delusional.

In fact, the Cold War period was sane by comparison. Sure, it was a dangerous time but U.S. policies were hard-headed and sometimes intelligent. And, crucially, they were not completely out of kilter with underlying economic realities.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and its allies have pursued policies based on what I see as very problematic assumptions (regarding American exceptionalism, for example). These policies often involved regime change and the attempt to establish Western-style democracies in places lacking the cultural prerequisites for such systems to establish themselves.

Unfortunately, past failures are not being fully acknowledged and there are few indications that any serious reassessment of current policy settings is in train. Nor is there sufficient recognition of the irrevocable nature of various changes that have occurred on the geo-economic front.

As I have previously noted, the relative size of the U.S. economy with respect to the rest of the world has declined significantly over the last sixty years. Throw in other factors – like sovereign debt levels and financial and monetary issues – and it becomes clear that the prospects for a continuation of U.S. global hegemony are slim to non-existant.

Fading powers are always particularly dangerous. They see their military dominance as being eroded or as being under threat (ultimately for economic reasons). Time is not on their side, so they are motivated to provoke wars, to fight sooner rather than later in an attempt to turn the tide.

Is this not exactly what we are seeing now in Eastern Europe and the East China Sea? There are irresponsible actors on all sides, I don’t deny it. But America and its closest allies now pose the greatest danger in my opinion.

As individuals our primary duty in respect of these matters is, as I see it, simply not to fall for or contribute to unnecessarily divisive ideas. Ideally we will also assess and either embrace or try to change our own governments’ policies.

I am not interested in demonizing or assigning blame but rather in identifying – and, where possible, promoting – Western policies which will manage in a responsible way the fault lines of a world which is armed to the teeth with increasingly sophisticated weapons.

Military conflicts are occurring and will continue to occur. Foreign policy settings may encourage or discourage such conflicts. But, whatever the situation, whatever specific goals are being pursued, the overriding goal for policy-makers should always be to minimize the chances of conflict between major powers.

And outsiders attempting to engineer regime change in Russia or China in pursuit of a geopolitical strategy based on notions of American exceptionalism is clearly not the way to go.

6 comments:

  1. The human's natural ego tends to want to be seen as more than others, and reluctant to be rivaled. Fear of waning dominance will trigger these geopolitical tensions.

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    1. Certainly this is part of it. And things are not looking good at the moment. Let's hope rationality and common sense will prevail.

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    2. Do you think multipolar world is better than unipolar?

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    3. I don't think one is intrinsically better than the other. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the threat of a devastating world war suddenly disappeared -- which was a *good* thing. But that period was handled very badly (in my opinion) by the dominant power. I think much of the positive talk about a new, multipolar world is over-optimistic but (you never know) things could work out reasonably well.

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    4. I personally also think like that. However, I think, this world needs a balance. Unipolar, as you said: "handled very badly", I think has the tendency toward authoritarianism (no options). Multipolar has the tendency towards democracy (in the sense of having options).

      Btw, I haven't seen any updates at "The Moxie Files" blog (listed at your blog list), after being inactive for a long time.

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    5. On multipolarity: it will be interesting to see the final BRICS summit communique.

      Regarding The Moxie Files, I assumed that the author ("GT Christie" whose real name I think was Gerald Christensen (?)) died in 2014. He was not that old but I think he had heart problems. An interesting and worthy man.

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