Sleepwalking into the global future

The real new world order

In my introduction to this series: Sleepwalking into the future I identified three main areas where the understanding of the impending changes is alarmingly inadequate.
Global power realignment, the failure of liberal democracies and the X^th industrial-technological revolution.

But there is so much more and they are all happening at the same time. We could talk about demography, resources (both locally and globally), we could talk about ideologies, about political divisions, about the sorry state of the discourse, the media, the sciences and education; all without an apparent ability for self-reflection and the capacity to change. All without a plan ‘B’.  

People, organizations and institutions are all following their own self-interest and running their course as long as they can without the ability to stop or to change course. There is nothing surprising about that. What IS surprising is to see how few people are ready to acknowledge it. As if we were programmed to ignore it. We are moving ahead with the communist assumption: the idea is great we just have keep believing in it and work harder to make it our reality.

Just consider this debate between John Bolton and Vivek Ramaswamy:

held at the “Center for leadership and ethics of the Virginia Military Institute”.
Strangely, the concept of ethics never entered the discussion. Whether the US has the moral authority to subvert other countries, to depose or even assassinate politicians, and to exploit them in various ways. Both debaters seemed to agree that there is such a thing as ‘American Interest’ which can override moral considerations. The problem with the war in Ukraine is NOT that it is the result of US provocation, not that it is clearly a proxy war that is financed, supplied with NATO weaponry, but simply the fact that we are losing it.

The Assumption

The Western hegemonic assumption was best expressed by Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History,

“…the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

In 1992, when the book was published, the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia was unimaginable.

The assumption was seductive: the Western world with its Global institutions controlling the whole world. Western ideas, Western political arrangements, Western science and technology, Western culture, philosophy and the arts were so vastly superior in their achievements to anything else the rest of the world had to offer, that Western countries, militaries and economies were destined to be the natural leaders of the world.
With the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the bipolar world, the United States became the apex predator running the world with a pack of its vassals. It was just the continuation of its “manifest destiny”.

The reality

There is no question that the US benefitted greatly from being the undisputed hegemonic power of the world. Especially due to the reserve currency status of the US dollar.

That status led to excess, arrogance, corruption and a global disillusionment in the rest of the controlled, abused and exploited world.
International organizations like the IMF, WB, WTO got captured by private and political interest, or, like the UN and the ICJ, got sidelined into irrelevance.  

New, supranational institutions like the European Union and the World Economic Forum emerged to take the centralization of political and economic power to a higher level of concentration.

But: while NATO is still growing, it is also getting weaker. The US and EU are losing their economic dominance over the world. The efforts to globalize Western power have stalled.

A new world order is indeed emerging, offering an alternative to Western dominance. The former (and still de facto) colonies of the French Sahel finally kicked out their former masters and created the Alliance of Sahel States.
The 23 years old Shanghai Cooperation Organization already has 10 members, but could easily double in size. There are many similar organizations in the world trying to bypass the Western ones, but the brightest (and most solid, if I may say) is the BRICS, now BRICS+ having 10 members already with another 32 in waiting.
These ten members represent 40% of the global population. The combined GDP of the G7 is still 50% larger than that of the 10 BRICS+ countries, but their lead is eroding very quickly.
The BRICS+ will have its next meeting in Kazan starting on the 22^nd of October 2024 where they will be focusing on working out the process of accepting and integrating new members. The BRICS+ already has its Development Bank and they are working on a new international payment system and an international trade currency.

Europe (and especially Germany) is deindustrializing. The US outsourced a big chunk of its industrial production to China. The economies of the Western world are running on fumes.
The West entered a stage, when they are more dependent on the rest of the world than vice versa.
These are the classic symptoms of imperial collapse.

The changes are momentous and they are already happening; yet, in the Western world, hardly anybody talks about it. We are still running on “The end of history” assumption.

We are living with the assumption that Western liberal democracies will go on as they did so far with no significant changes. The inflation may go up and down, but it will still run on fiat money; The dollar will still rule and the US will have no problem hanging onto its status as the global hegemon; It will keep policing the world, making and breaking small countries at will.
The EU and NATO will keep expanding and the West will keep controlling all the international institutions. Nobody is willing to contemplate the options and nobody has a plan ‘B’.  

The shift and the questions

When it comes to weapons production, the Russians can outproduce the Americans. When it comes to ship-building, the Chinese can outproduce the Americans. Europe is not even in the league.
The Russians have hypersonic missiles. The Americans cannot stop them and do not have equivalent missiles of their own.
The Chinese are still behind the Americans in scientific research, but it is only a matter of time before they catch up.

The Ukraine war is a catalyst. It was the first instance when somebody successfully stood up to American aggression. It started a ripple.
What will the US do, when it turns into a tsunami?
What will de-industrialized Europe do?
The US has military bases in 80 countries.
What will they do when just half of them will be asked to leave?
How will the US deal with the humiliation? According to some military experts, there are only two types of ships: submarines and targets?
What will happen when the US gets humiliated on the seas?
Will they reach for the nuclear button?
This is a truly important question. The US deep-state has quite a few nutcases who would. I can perfectly imagine John Bolton (one of the debaters linked above) doing it.

Being a hegemon is intrinsically confrontational. The essence of the BRICS and its institutions is the kind of cooperation that is without a hegemon. That is why China is against using its currencies as reserve. They understand how corruptive that would prove to be.
The new currency will most likely be a precious metal and commodities-based basket currency.

How will the US adjust to NOT being the top dog any more?
When they realize that they will be just one of the many?
When they can no longer blackmail and coerce the rest of the world?

But we don’t need to worry about the US, it will be fine. We should worry about Europe. They are not prepared at all for what’s coming. The EU will either fall apart, or it will have to go through some fundamental changes. In either case, it would be a major economic set-back.

The biggest losers of the geopolitical changes will be the global predators, large investment firms that are now making their money through the exploitation of the developing world with the help of the international institution like the IMF and the World Bank.

The institution I cannot possibly see surviving is the World Economic Forum. After the departure of Klaus Schwab at the end of this year, it will start declining and eventually sink into irrelevance. Its existence is predicated on being a facilitator between global corporations and politics. Once the global South escapes the clutches of the global predators enabled by the Western controlled international institutions, the WEF will have no reason to exist.

What we need the most is to start preparing for it.

It will not be as scary as it sounds. Definitely not as much as my next two subjects will be.

Still, we shouldn’t be sleepwalking into the changes.

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References

BRICS Kazan 2024: 34 Nations Eye Membership as Group Consolidates