- Hubert Walas
The world in havoc.
For two years, Europe has been plunged into the biggest war in 80 years between the continent's two largest countries. On 7 October, Israel and the Gaza Strip went up in flames, and the whole Middle East is on the verge of exploding. In Africa, one government after another is falling, taken over by putschists backed by, among others, Russian proxies. In South America, Venezuela is preparing to invade its much smaller neighbour. And all this is overshadowed by the vision of a major war in the Pacific in defence of Taiwan, involving the two most powerful states of this century - the United States of America and the People's Republic of China. How, after, a dozen years, did we go from a relatively peaceful time, when the main problem was to find the straw hut where the leader of a certain terrorist group was hiding, to a situation of international chaos, with several peripheral wars and the real prospect of a world war? What is the state of the world in 2024 and why is it the way it is?
War - a permanent feature of the human landscape
War. An integral part of mankind. Little information has survived about the Sumerian civilisation, but we know from inscriptions that the city of Kish fought numerous wars with the centre of Uruk. It was no different later with the Egyptian civilisation, the Peloponnesian Wars of the Greeks, the expansion of the Roman Empire, as well as times much closer to us - such as the Second World War. Meanwhile, the last generation to remember the horrors of the 1940s is slowly dying. One can watch endless documentaries and visit the sites of battles or mass exterminations. But all this could have been done in the comfort of the international peace in which the vast majority of humanity has lived for the last 80 years. For this reason, for many, especially the younger generation, the last great war becomes as abstract a memory as the wars of the Spartans against the Athenians. This is no accident.
The international order that emerged after the Second World War was an unprecedented event. The dominant region, compared to the rest of the world, Europe, self-destructed within a few years. All the once mighty powers - Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands or even Britain - were shadows of their former selves. On their ruins rose the two powers that would dominate the world for decades to come. The scale of the military and industrial superiority of the United States of America and the Soviet Union over the rest of the world was overwhelming. In the case of the Americans, there was also the economy, which was to completely dominate the rest of the world's economies following the masterpiece of American planners and policymakers, the Bretton Woods system included. This dualism of the world was compounded by another event - the discovery of the atomic bomb.
Thus, almost overnight, we went from a situation in which, since the dawn of time, we had hundreds or even thousands of small centres which verified their own position through war, to a point where, through the process of elimination and technological development, two superpowers dominated the balance of power on planet Earth. All the smaller centres of power, instead of taking the path of direct confrontation, were forced to go to the two dominators of their respective spheres of influence - for these acted as a kind of supreme arbiter. Meanwhile, the arbitrators, not having a peacemaker among themselves, entered into a 'strategic clinch'.
They clinched because they could not resolve the clash by conventional means. Means of mass destruction - nuclear weapons, which both the Americans and the Soviets possessed within a few years after the war - forced both powers to exercise great restraint. Without nuclear weapons, there would most likely have been a post-WWII showdown in Europe. The USSR, with new territories, millions of soldiers to sacrifice, and American-built factories, would most likely have marched on a devastated Europe. The US, even more powerful economically and industrially, would have been forced to move again to Europe’s relief, not wanting Eurasia to become a communist supercontinent ruled from Moscow. Paradoxically, we were saved from this terrible vision by the most terrible man-made weapon.
So Moscow and Washington had to play very carefully, as a new variable in the strategic calculus emerged - massive, mutual destruction in the event of a full-scale war. The period which is now known as the Cold War was therefore one of great uncertainty and fear of nuclear annihilation - manifested, for example, in the Cuban Missile Crisis - but historically, it was one of the most peaceful periods in world history. Of course, we continued to witness wars - the Korean War or the Vietnam War come to mind - but they were usually conducted in a controlled and limited way, often by proxy, without the risk of spilling over to the whole world, and involving only a fraction of the human population.
For decades, conventional war disappeared from the daily lives of millions of people around the world. With the military at a standstill, rivalry began to take place on a level of systems of governance. After 45 years of confrontation, communism gave up the ghost in its clash with capitalist market economies - first in the form of liberation movements in the satellite states - Solidarity in Poland or the fall of the Berlin Wall - and then in the collapse of the entire Soviet Union. A world of two superpowers, a bipolar world, became a world of a single hegemon, a unipolar era of the United States.
Although the combined economy of Western Europe's countries was still comparable to that of the US, it was essentially a conglomeration of different medium-sized countries. The US, on the other hand, had the largest consolidated economy in the world, accounting for 30 per cent of world GDP in 2000, based on the world's money - the dollar, which Washington controls. It was the only superpower to have the hegemon's attribute of power - the almighty Blue Water Fleet, which is the executive body of the hegemon's will. It finally had a liberal system based on the principles of international law, tailor-made by the Americans.
Great wars thus became a relic of the past, because the power that the Americans had built up around themselves placed them in the role of ultimate judge, of every international dispute. And if anyone disobeyed the supreme judge, they had to face American military might. These wars were hardly won by the Americans - more on that in a moment - but they were certainly lost for the actors who caused them whether it was Hussein, Milosevic or Gaddafi. War again - did happen, but only on the periphery of the system - not necessarily triggered by a creaking global balance of power - this one was forged in iron by the Americans - but by the recklessness of the autocrats. There were exceptions - as the Russian Federation, the heir to the Soviet nuclear bombs (the Americans did not interfere in the Kremlin's slaughter in Chechnya). But its power collapsed so quickly that the Americans began to fear uncontrollable disintegration more than Russian potential.
American superiority and the stability of the international system were ironclad so that memories of the Second World War seemed like a game of barbarians. No one could have imagined that similar horrors would be possible in the 21st century. Even moments before 24 February 2022, the term "trench warfare" sounded like an unfunny joke. In reality - despite the fact that Washington's unipolar moment has long irritated many international actors, especially those with revisionist tendencies - this construction of the international system in itself guarantees maximum stability and prevents major wars. And this is not about the Americans. This law is independent of the dominant power. It would be no different if the communists and not the capitalists won the world competition - even then it would be relatively peaceful. But the values by which we would be governed would be different.
Thus the 'end of history' motif emerged. There was to be no wars, all disputes would be settled via international bodies, and if someone didn't like it, they would get a visit from the US Navy.
Today, the world looks very different. Why is that?
Hegemon and contender
There are many reasons why America's unipolar moment has begun to fade, but the most important is China's unprecedented growth. The unleashing of China's demographic potential by Deng Xiaoping in the 1970s was a turning point in world history, although, of course, almost nobody realised it at the time. The Cold War between the USA and the USSR was in full swing, and the Americans, keen to weaken the Communist bloc, relaxed relations with Beijing. Richard Nixon flew to China to meet Zhou Enlai, and one of the authors of the warm-up was the recently deceased Henry Kissinger.
China began to grow. Within two generations, it went from being an impoverished, backward country, crippled by Mao's policies, to becoming the world's second-largest superpower, with GDP growth of 10% a year for many decades. Beijing has lifted hundreds of millions of its own citizens out of extreme poverty while acquiring the attributes of a contender for world leadership.
To name but a few: a continuing huge demographic advantage over the hegemon, incredible growth of the indigenous industry and advanced technologies including AI, growing military power, and a diplomatic and economic presence in many parts of the world that overshadows the American one.
The emergence of a rival with this profile, scale, resources and ambition has undermined the order created and based on the Americans with each passing year, and even more so after 2001, the year China was admitted to the World Trade Organisation. Even though the Chinese, in accordance with their 24-character doctrine, which includes the phrase "hide your capabilities", did indeed hide them, it was not difficult to see that Beijing had no interest in maintaining an international order in which the Americans always had the last word. After all, the Chinese, who look back on their history in centuries and even millennia, see themselves as the "Zhong Guo" - the Middle Kingdom, the central state - and so they believed that it is natural that sooner or later China will be the centre of the world. Once again.
The emergence of a powerful China has changed the strategic calculus in many centres of power around the world. Suddenly, on a world scale that had been weighed down on one side by American potential, there was a Chinese weight on the other, and it was getting the scales lower year by year, tilting the balance of the scales.
Not only did China become a direct rival to the US, but it became a power centre that began to reinforce any initiative to undermine US hegemonic dominance in many parts of the world. Any autocrat, small or large, was suddenly given a ticket to cash in whatever resources he possessed, after which they could go on an arms shopping spree in the Kremlin. Since the Chinese have no interest in democracy or human rights, it was a win-win situation for both sides. China was undermining the existing order not only by directly or indirectly supporting anti-American centres, but simply by being an alternative economic and industrial pole to the Americans or Europe. Beijing provided a lever that any decision-maker, politician or businessman could play, often a much more competitive lever.
Chinese growth undermined American omnipotence more and more every year, but that was not the only reason for its weakening. Since the fall of the Soviets, Washington had been convinced of the infinite nature of its own resources and of the need to extend control even to peripheral areas, such as Afghanistan or Iraq. This had led to several massive strategic blunders. The US got involved in pointless wars, which not only cost the lives of several thousand Americans and some four trillion, to be clear - four thousand billion dollars, but also left an even bigger mess on which the two main opponents of the US, not counting China, i.e. Russia and Iran, began to rebuild their powers. In other words, they contributed to the accelerated collapse of the Pax Americana order. Today we can see that the Americans also lost these wars narratively. Now, the Global South is narratively set against the victim of Russian aggression - Ukraine - because the latter is supported by the Americans, who, according to this narrative, carried out the invasions themselves, so their proxy - Kyiv - does not deserve support.
This whole process has been exacerbated by another phenomenon - global growth in wealth, technological progress and mass access to the means of power projection. After the Second World War, only a handful of states, and only two on the scale required, had the technology and armed means to project force effectively. But after 70 years of relative peace and growing prosperity, many smaller centres now have their own effective armed forces - including advanced air, naval, and ground forces and even ballistic missiles. And remember - they can use this potential within their own geography, which is a positive multiplier for them. The Americans, who want to project their own power, must first deal with geography, which is, incidentally, their greatest challenge in a potential war with China.
So the rise of China, wrong choices of the hegemon and technological developments - this is how we can sum up the causes of the collapse of the unipolar order, and like within a lens, we can bring these motives together and dress them up in one actor - the Russian Federation. Backed by China and establishing close economic cooperation with Western Europe - with Washington's approval - Russia spent the two decades of the 21st century thoroughly modernising its military. Its testing ground was the Middle East, or rather its ruins after several US interventions, which over time became a preferred theatre of operations for the Kremlin. Moreover, the failure of the US and the West in general to punish Russia for its indiscriminate invasion of the Donbas and annexation of Crimea was interpreted as weakness and led the Russians to try to push American influence out of Central Europe altogether. Remember, it was the December 2021 ultimatum that preceded the war with Ukraine.
The end of Pax Americana?
NATO, or let’s be real - the Americans, rejected the ultimatum, but at the same time, they rejected the policy of military deterrence against the Kremlin. In other words, they wrote off Ukraine as a loser. Of course, before the war, they supplied the Ukrainians with a large number of anti-tank weapons, but behind the scenes, in Pentagon, they were convinced of the country's imminent collapse. Despite knowing at least six months in advance that the Russians would attack, the White House gave the Ukrainians at most a week to survive, as White House security adviser Jake Sullivan admitted. Ukraine was expected to last a week at most, as Zbigniew Parafianowicz points out in his book Poland at War, quoting Polish diplomats who spoke to Sullivan at the time. That is why the US was preparing to evacuate 40,000 people from Ukraine. Not just American citizens, of whom there were less than 20,000 in Ukraine at the time. Washington wanted to evacuate the entire Ukrainian establishment, all the 'elites' of the state. The famous "I need ammunition, not a ride" applied not only to Zelensky, but to all Ukrainian elites. The Ukrainians, in the vision of the Americans, would fight a guerrilla war after a week.
What does this prove? That the system of Pax Americana, which the Ukrainians, resisting, decided to join, turned out to be stronger than it seemed to the main beneficiary and guarantor of this system - the United States. The Ukrainians started succeeding, provided with Western weapons and the weakness of the Russian Federation, which showed its structural fragility when faced with a serious opponent.
The Americans could have popped the champagne. It soon became clear that Russia would not conquer Ukraine. Moscow, a key partner of the Chinese in challenging the American order, was bleeding on the Ukrainian steppes. China could not support it outright, for that would be diplomatic suicide. At the same time, Europe was on the verge of finally deciding on a military build-up, leaving the Americans free to divert resources to the Pacific to confront China in full force. Joe Biden, seeing the Russians invading Ukraine, could sadly say 'Pax Americana is dead', and little more than a month later, seeing the Kremlin's troops retreating and the West on the offensive, could say 'Long live Pax Americana!’
But one thing is certain in geopolitics - that nothing is certain. The next year and a half saw a series of Ukrainian successes. As the Ukrainians liberated thousands of square kilometres of their country, Putin's Russia grew weaker by the day, while the Americans returned to their role as the all-powerful superpower. And so, although they supported Kyiv materially, they "managed" the war in such a way that Russia was bleeding out, but not to let it kick the bucket - i.e. collapse completely. Military aid was constantly being squeezed, and so by the time of the summer counter-offensive, the Ukrainians had not seen many of the key elements of the battlefield, including modern combat aircraft or ballistic missiles with a range of more than 150km, and they also received a very limited number of modern tanks.
As a result, the Ukrainian command, not wanting to send its own army to its doom, took a very cautious approach to the Zaporizhia offensive, which collapsed when it ran into well-prepared Russian positions. The Western agenda of support for Ukraine also collapsed, especially in the United States. With internal problems multiplying and other international issues competing with Ukraine for attention, the question of continued support for Kyiv is in doubt.
If Ukraine does not receive this support, it is very likely that Ukrainian statehood will also be called into question or, at best, the conflict will be frozen. Such a scenario will lead to a repeat of the December 2021 ultimatum in a few years' time, only this time the Russian military will be on the border not with Ukraine but with a NATO state - most likely Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as this is geographically the easiest point of NATO cohesion to break.
As we said in our recent material, which we refer: "In three years' time, the Kremlin may have amassed resources beneath NATO's borders that will raise existential questions for the Alliance. That's when US Marines will have to show up in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia with the real prospect of losing their lives. And if they don't, the concept of NATO will most likely be a thing of the past.”
And so we found ourselves at the turn of 2023 and 2024. The unipolar moment we knew at the beginning of the century is behind us, but can we already call it a fully multipolar world? The Russians are putting their entire state on the line, which can collapse if it loses the war, to prove that the Pax Americana has come to an end and that Washington's omnipotence has its physical limits.
A key moment for the fate of the world
Realism tells us one thing - what the world order will be in the coming years, and decades will be determined by decisions taken in two places in the world - Washington and Beijing. What it will look like, can also be reduced to two fundamental questions, one for each power.
- The question of the American policymakers is: "Do we continue our strategy of maintaining the global liberal order based on international law that we created after the Second World War and that has served us by leading our country to absolute world domination, and that we have lost as a result of bad decisions - unnecessary wars and the processes of history - the rise of China and the massive development of technology?
- The question of the Chinese policymakers is: "Do we attempt a forcible annexation of Taiwan that is highly likely to lead to a world war, the outcome of which is difficult to predict? And if so, when, having achieved what objectives?"
The question of the Chinese is quite straightforward, so let us concentrate on the question of the Americans. All the more so because Russia's war with Ukraine is the arena for answering these questions - primarily for the Americans, but also partly for the Chinese.
Washington has essentially three options. Option 1 - it can continue to support Ukraine and even increase this support. This is an unequivocal "YES" to the question posed above. Option number 2 - it can stop or sharply reduce its support for Ukraine and concentrate fully on China - here, the answer is also "YES" but in the eyes of the proponents of such a policy in Washington, but as we will discuss in a moment - this is wishful thinking. Finally, we have a hard "NO" - i.e. American isolationism, withdrawing from its role as the world's policeman and pursuing its own interests only where necessary - this is option number 3.
To illustrate why Ukraine is the de facto moment of choice for the Americans, let me quote my Twitter polemic with Elbridge Colby. Colby was a Deputy Secretary of Defence for Strategy during the Donald Trump administration and is now co-founder of the Marathon Initiative think tank. Colby is a proponent of the option number two. He insists on focusing Washington's attention and resources entirely on by far the most important direction - East Asia. China, as we have said, is the most serious challenge to the Americans in their entire 200-year history. Moreover, the entire East Asian region, which is already the economic centre of the world, is growing. If the US wants to remain the hegemon, it will have to be there with all its might. Meanwhile, resources are limited and the Americans cannot be everywhere as they were 20 years ago. Therefore, even wars such as Ukraine must be classified as peripheral and distract the US from the threats that are most important from the point of view of American interests. It is Europe that should take care of its security, thus freeing up American resources. I think this is a fair representation of the argument of Option 2 and Elbridge Colby, who, it should be noted, is personally rooting for the Ukrainian struggle.
It is a legitimate argument, but as we pointed out above - wishful thinking. Have your cake and eat it too.
In the event of a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, i.e. a freeze in the conflict, Russia will rebuild its war potential and issue a new ultimatum to NATO within 3-6 years. Its physical manifestation will most likely be the deployment of its own troops in the direction of Pskov to threaten the Baltic states. What is not likely is that 'Europe' will be able to stand collectively against the Russians. Firstly, there is no format in which it would do so; NATO's guarantor is the United States. The European members of NATO that are, to put it bluntly, 'afraid of Russia' and have some military potential, i.e. Finland, Sweden, Poland or Romania, will be reluctant to defend the Baltics because they would sense a major war coming and their priority will be to protect their own populations. Without the US power, the people of these countries will be against intervention, especially in such a geographically unfavourable position as Baltics are to defend themselves. By contrast, the major European members of NATO, Germany and France, continue to operate from the secure position of strategic depth, and even if they would be ready to die in the Baltics - let’s be real: an abstract scenario - their ground defence capabilities will be insufficient to deter the Russians, who have been at war for years and are eager for a rematch. The eyes of all the allies will be on America, which will already be firmly entrenched in East Asia. Desperate Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian policymakers will be begging for the Americans to come. In other words, this sequence of cause and effect shows quite crudely that if the Americans abandon Ukraine, there is a high probability that NATO will cease to exist within a few years, and with it the Baltic states. The reputation of the Americans and the trust of the allies - also in Asia, which is the basis of the Pax Americana, will completely collapse. The whole thing can be compared to the prelude that the annexation of Czechoslovakia by Germany was to the Second World War. The Allies will "sacrifice the Baltics for the sake of peace". But the great war will be just around the corner. The war's aim will be the final dethronement of the United States. To sum up the repercussions - we have the end of NATO, the end of the Baltics, the end of Europe's historic ties with the US, Russia stronger than ever - fully supporting China ahead of the coming Great World War for dominance.
Let us now imagine the scenario of option number 1 - also from the point of view of American interests, for this is what guides the decision-makers in Washington. The US decides to continue supporting Ukraine. The Ukrainians continue to tie up Russia's military capacity-building, thus reducing the threat that Moscow poses to NATO. They are buying the Europeans time. And if the Americans no longer fear an outright Ukrainian victory, which could mean the collapse of Kremlin power, there is an additional bonus from the US point of view.
In the event of a full-scale war with the US, China would most likely find itself under a naval blockade by the US Navy. And certainly the Americans would blockade the Strait of Hormuz. The Chinese would come under severe fuel pressure. In the case of a strong Russia - the second option - they would meet this pressure by receiving a steady supply of hydrocarbons from Russian Siberia, bypassing the naval blockade. Without this supply, which the newly defeated Kremlin government could be forced to do, the Americans would have a chance to starve Beijing quickly and win the war through a crude oil land and sea cut-off. There is a theoretical breakthrough in option number two. Russia could be turned around in its current Putin-esque form - that is, the Kissinger manoeuvre could be repeated, but this time against China. However, the Americans would have to trust that the Russians would actually abandon the Chinese in their favour - again, wishful thinking. So we can describe option number 1 as indirectly weakening the Chinese by reducing the potential of their main ally in the event of war, via the Ukrainian hands. There is another very important aspect to such a policy. Throwing Russia off the roof before the US targets China is a more cost-effective investment by a factor of 100 or even 1000. Bringing the Russians to their knees through the Ukrainians cost the Americans tens of billions of dollars. A war with China, which for sure will be long provided by Russian oil, will cost trillions of dollars.
There is also option number 3, American isolationism. In it there is no world war, but it is also a complete abdication of the role the US played for the last 80 years. It is possible that it would prove beneficial for the Americans, especially in the short term. But it certainly means abandoning all the institutions of international governance that made America the most powerful empire in history, including the omnipotence of the US dollar. In such a scenario, a gradual rapprochement between Europe and East Asia, the two most powerful regions, of the most powerful supercontinent, is also likely. Hence the phenomenon of Eurasian consolidation, which has always been the nightmare of the American planners. The two centres, which do not fear each other because of their geographical distance, would most likely deepen their economic cooperation without the Americans blocking it. This would continue to take place mainly by sea, guarded by the blue-water European fleet and the blue-water Chinese fleet.
Some might say that the American struggle for supremacy is pointless. China's demographic potential and geography - which favours the Chinese militarily and economically (being in the centre of world trade) - mean that sooner or later China must assume the status of the greatest hegemon. But China's system of interfering in fundamental matters - such as artificial family formation or the one-child policy - may have caused the Chinese to put the nail in their own coffin: the most dire forecasts for Beijing suggest that by 2100 there may be fewer Chinese than Americans. This may therefore be the last moment for the Chinese to take advantage of this proximity of potentials - another motive that, unfortunately, makes war in the Pacific more likely.
At the dawn of 2024, we are therefore at a moment of crucial choices for the fate of the world. These choices will determine the fate of billions of people for decades to come. War has returned to the everyday life of the world for good, and it is not going away any time soon. We are seeing the new world order being forged. The old hegemon believes it is strong enough to maintain the current order. The new pretender, backed by a garland of states wishing the new order, thinks it is not. If nothing unexpected happens and both sides stick to this calculation, the only test will be war. For the New Year, I wish all of you and myself that such a global verification does not take place.
