In the last 3 decades since the end of the “cold war”, there has been a deficit in theoretical reasoning in discipline about global relations. Above all, there was no thought of a fresh imagination of global governance that would aid reverse the accumulation of negative trends and crisis phenomena in the world.
Old concepts were used, derived from a realistic tradition and cold-war practice, which did not match the challenges of the transformation of the global system. The situation was aggravated by neoliberal globalists and constructivist neophytes who believed that a power pursuing a policy of liberal hegemonism through direct interference in the political life of another states would limit conflictogenicity in global relations. The other happened.
First of all, there were inactive old schemes that treat the global strategy either in primitive categories of geopolitical conflict and rivalry, or through the prism of unlimited globalisation, forcing co-operation and cosmopolitanisation (under American conditions). The consequences of the disintegration of the global economical and political order, formed after planet War II, of the illusory “victory victory” of the West in the “cold war”, yet the failure of civilizational leadership by the richest capitalist states, have been compounded not only by the hard to master the Covid-19 pandemic, but besides by the crisis of elites – as political as intellectual. As a result, there are many errors in policy management in global relations and, above all, in the diagnosis of sources of threats. The improvement models of modern capitalism and the ability to reconstruct global balance have become necessary.
Due to pride and the constant request to command Western supremacy over others, we gotta deal on a scale unprecedented in past with the failure of self-preservation instinct, which is expressed not only in the planet's operating pear, but besides in the demolition of the life-giving natural environment and intensification of the arms race, threatening the full annihilation of humanity. The increasing militantism of the strongest states and groups, camouflaged by ideological slogans of "historical mission", leads to a increasing threat of global war.
What is most worrying present is that the ideology of "democratic internationalism", based on the belief that Western values are universal and deserve to be spread even by force, determines all decision-making processes. Despite the crucial hazard of disaster, the decision-makers of the large powers are willing to endanger to usage force or scope it, which shows a change of priorities – maintaining the hegemony of the US and the West has become more crucial than surviving the planet in its integral form.
The global environment has never been easy to understand, due to its polyarchical and polycentric character. It is simply a sphere of social life with a advanced degree of uncertainty and unpredictability, volatility and ambiguity. The vast diversity of participants and the difficulty in recognizing cultural codes frequently lead to the creation of faulty images and the false reading of their intentions. In addition, the most hard to learn about the essence of phenomena and processes is limited access to nonsubjective information, cognitive interference and consciously misleading their and aliens. In this area, mass media play a peculiarly negative role, serving against large capital, obeying peculiar services and oligarchy arrangements. due to lies, manipulations, deceptions and illusions, the feeling of fear and unpredictability is increasing.
Unstable America
Just look at the situation in the United States, erstwhile public opinion was misled for a long time, defending the correct image of the President-in-Office, as an efficient and informed individual of the decisions taken. After Biden's debate with Trump on June 28, 2024, it abruptly appeared that a man in a state of severe dementia was at the head of the empire. How much uncertainty and hazard there has been and is associated with decisions or impacts on specified policies! Interestingly, no 1 in America has always been tempted to have a sound and open analysis of what not so much is the wellness of the still-in-the-top leader, but his actual control of strategical issues, who truly coordinates the politics of the power, liable for the stableness of the full global system.
Similarly, there is no promise of choice. Donald Trump or Kamali Harris to the office of president of the United States in the fall election of 2024. classical realists, from Hansa Morgenthau from the beginning, they had hopes—as Niccolo Machiavelli erstwhile had—in the wisdom of statesmen and diplomats. In history, leaders have always been tried after they were able to face the top problems of humanity, whether their decisions met challenges and threats before they could foretell their outcome. Neither after Trump, to whom it has long been said to be unpredictable, nor after Harris, whom it is said in America to be absolutely ignorant in global affairs, can 1 anticipate them to meet the task as leader of the top power.
Any activity of countries – and 1 of cooperative importance, and 1 of a competitive nature – is inherently risky. The decision-makers make choices from the possible options to solve the problems before they can gather all the cognition they want and gain confidence. The actions are based on a probability account. They would be unreasonable if they went backwards from taking risks. But they are only reasonable to the degree to which they are concerned. possibly the planet has now been put in specified a position of uncertainty and hazard that anything can truly happen, including the civilian war in the United States. specified a turn of events may be a surprise to the “black swan”. This name gave consequences to random and unpredictable events Nassim N. Taleb in a book best-sellered (“Black Swan. How unpredictable events govern our lives”, Poznań 2020). No 1 knows the circumstantial consequences of specified events. However, it is known that they can be catastrophic, in many ways unusual, shocking and mass.
For these reasons, decision-making in the countries has been complicated. The relation between causes and effects has become poorly recognized. The search for regularity or regularity, as well as building predictions and forecasts, is doomed to failure. This is due to the subjectivism of evaluations of the starting states, axiology and ideology, and various cognitive aberrations (perceptive and attributive errors), but besides the consequences of accidents and random events.
The future of global governance, subject to decomposition, is determined primarily by the hazard of an outbreak of global conflict, mostly conditioned by an unbridled arms race, especially atomic proliferation and failure of control over its use. The disastrous consequences of specified a clash – despite the decline of the threshold of strategical abstinence against the usage of weapons of mass demolition – would be so large that the decision-makers of all parties with atomic weapons are inactive trying to keep their militant urges in check. Therefore, many analysts keep the thesis that atomic war remains only a scare, especially on the Russian side, and massive attacks utilizing this weapon are little likely than during the “cold war” period of the major crises, specified as the 1962 Caribbean.
First of all, it is the United States that feels most threatened by China's increasing power. They themselves helped to awaken the “sleeping dragon.” Since a strategical challenge is besides a “Russian bear”, the adoption of the alleged strategical series (Wess Mitchell), consisting of conceptual separation during armed confrontation – first with Russia and then with China. In the United States, there is simply a diagnosis of the global balance of forces. It turns out that possible opponents and current rivals have a power greater than the erstwhile 3rd Reich and Japan combined, against which the power of the Allied during planet War II stood.
The course of the war in Ukraine shows, after 2 years of supporting Kiev, that the script of engagement to make the proxy clearly miss the expectations of American decision-makers. China is playing an increasingly crucial function in stopping the US in Ukraine and so taking the initiative in regulating global safety issues. If the U.S. does not accept specified a turn of events, it can happen – according to the logic of the alleged Tukidides trap – to an armed American-Chinese confrontation with Russia on the side of the mediate State. However, the question arises as to whether, in the absence of a clear concept in the United States itself, due to the leadership crisis, the US administrations are ready to take specified extremist action?
Stopping China...
is the subject of a cross-party consensus in the US. The battlefield is the technological sovereignty of each side and shortening the distance of military power due to the increase in the wealth of the Chinese side. The "Red Line" of the American-Chinese confrontation marks the breaking of the US primacy in the field of military – in the seas and in the air. For these reasons, we are witnessing a strong American-Chinese confrontation, which does not necessarily mean an increased hazard of global conflict. The prospective inclusion of the PRC in the first "nuclear league" on the planet scale will mean a global geostrategic revolution which will radically change the calculation of the hazard of the first atomic attack. If the "cold war" mechanics of common guaranteed demolition (mutually assured destruction) in the US-Russia-China triangle is restored, the hazard of specified a conflict will clearly decline, as the credibility of punishing each of the possible aggressors by the another 2 will increase. another atomic “powers” in this clash will not be of much importance.
In assessing the hazard of global conflict, it is besides worth taking into account the imprecise but highly crucial origin for social mobilisation. This is the determination of the rulers and social motivations to participate in the war "until victory". Well, Russia and China have unbroken mobilization reserves for “the native wars, “the wars of the saints”, in the name of defending existential interests. In a divided and divided American society, specified mobilization is difficult, especially since in the U.S. strategical doctrine we find no answer, as a power defending its hegemony would deal with the control and subordination of hundreds of millions of people and immeasurable territories.
Economic interdependence between the US and China, which was not between America and the USSR during the "cold war" period, is besides involved. Breaking ties of cooperation would lead to a collapse in the modern global strategy not only of the fighting parties, but besides of the full world. The sum of the production of these 2 giants, the US and China, represents more than 40 percent of the planet's production. It is so hard to imagine the magnitude of the losses if these 2 major economies were in a state of large war.
Hopes must be linked above all to the Chinese strategical culture, which is based on a "long life" and extraordinary patience in its investigation for its purposes. The Chinese are well aware that they can "dethrone" America without reaching for a global war. If they are not attacked themselves, they will strive to "win without a fight", according to Sun Tzu's doctrine, shaped in a long historical process. From a Chinese perspective, the rivalry of powers does not gotta take on the character of a large military short circuit. In the current confrontation phase, greater uncertainty and hazard are accompanied by an American offensive than a Chinese offensive. It is the United States that, with all its advantages, is subject to verification in a confrontation with Russia and the State of the Middle, and there are many indications that they do not manage the effectiveness of risky expeditions.
The insane logic of escalation...
The wars in Ukraine show that the U.S. does not meet its strategical objectives of “saint” Russia, and a strategy aimed at “the defeat of the Kremlin and the triumph of Ukraine” leads nowhere. Provoking Russia to war was the consequence of miscalculation and ignoring the hazard that the US would not be able to fight at a distance and on a large scale. In turn, supporting this war by US allies proved to be a dangerous risk. It is clear that the biggest price will be paid by the states zealously active in supporting Kiev, specified as Poland, which do not have any powerful "insurance policy" not only in the event of the reversal of America's alliances (another reset with Russia), but above all the disasters of Ukraine, its disintegration and the humanitarian crisis on a large scale.
Reflection on the decline of strategical thought in Poland deserves separate attention. There is an impression from erstwhile observations that we are dealing with “crazy in power”. The rulers of the Vistula do not only neglect to realize China's commitment to a large Eurasian strategy involving Russia and even Belarus, but besides that the Ukrainians themselves search the support of the mediate State to save anything in the final phase of the devastating war. Poland, with its “war policy”, regardless of the changing rule, will enter past as a naive and snarling instigator of war, acting primarily for its own harm, both due to its ethical aberration towards Ukraine and due to irrational hazard calculations.
The "provincial" view of the war in Ukraine treats it as a "starter" of the global conflict. Meanwhile, in the lens of many countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, it is the origin of a peripheral conflict, somewhere on the outskirts of "great Russia". In Poland, politicians and media imposed the perception of war in Ukraine on the possible of a global “shock of civilization”, a Manichean and metaphysical clash of Good and Evil, a timeless confrontation of 2 hostile worlds. Meanwhile, opinions vary in the European Union and opinions are divided. It is not only Hungarians who show the way to a common sense and realistic view of the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation. It is besides a large part of the elite of the states of “Old Europe” that sees the senselessness of further bleeding Ukraine, in which America and Russia will leave the “wild fields” for many years.
States which, due to the agentiality of the ruling elites, have lost their ability to diagnose the essence of conflicts independently are victims of Ukrainian “makiawelism”. Ukraine is presently seeking any way to survive, it does not number with moral and heroic slogans of triumph "at any cost". The most crucial thing is the right endurance (reason d’?tre), even at the price of “ rotten compromises” and getting along with the aggressor.
The “lost” states undoubtedly include Poland and the Baltic republics, including Finland, pacified by the American peculiar Services, which, by listening to the Atlantic Hegemon, made the essence of their dedication and commitment. fewer people in modern Europe want to turn the continent into a war zone. All the more reason why non-European countries do not care about the hazard of escalation of a conflict that could origin a global disaster. It would so be appropriate to call on the ruling elites in the countries inciting the continuation of the war in Ukraine at all costs, including in Poland, to limit their absurd rhetoric and to hold even a small of the reputation of intelligent beings.
Given the complex nonsubjective and subjective conditions of the global environment, despite the strained situation in many regions, it can be concluded that, in the foreseeable perspective, the large war between the US and China and Russia is unlikely. Fortunately, each organization sees the hazard of uncontrolled escalation of open conflicts in Ukraine or the mediate East, and this nevertheless gives hope that the instability “on the outskirts” will not decision to the “centre” of geopolitical rivalry. It is almost certain that local wars, limited and conducted by proxy, will stay an endemic phenomenon in the global strategy for many years. However, this will not mean global disasters. For each of the parties is aware that in a global fight there would be no clear solution or conclusion.
The top challenges are facing the geopolitics of the United States. erstwhile they face interior crises that hazard catastrophic collapse, they must answer the question whether, in the name of ideological missionaryism, work for the full global order is worth bearing on their shoulders. possibly we should return to the erstwhile "shared responsibility" model of the inter-power? This is undoubtedly 1 of the first tasks of the fresh president of America.
It would mean a slow descent from the hegemon position, accompanied by a deconcentration of the American power for China, without which the US economy will not be able to develop. The halting of China and Russia already present prompts America to treat its allies more "transactional" and the expanding arms race on each side shows the creation of a fresh global balance, guaranteeing "cold and armed peace" for the next decades.
Prof. Stanisław Bielen
Think Poland, No. 33-34 (11-18.08.20124)
