Antonio Navalón
History is cyclical. Sometimes, it repeats itself as drama and sometimes as comedy, but what is inevitable is its repetition. It is difficult to hide the time and not discover that this summer of 2024 resembles, above all, the summer that 85 years ago shook all the existing bases of the organization from borders to power, from ideologies to fortunes, and from military hegemony to the most important thing, which is the capacity to generate hope and fear.
That summer of 1939 was the culmination of a century that began cursed after having had the First World War in its first quarter; the composition of the new world geostrategic chessboard began to take shape. In 1918, after the end of World War I, the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires were wiped out. 1945, the controversial, growing, and dangerous ideological, economic, and military rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States emerged. The summer of 1939 showed that the ashes or embers of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires were destined to burn, giving birth to two new situations that signified and embodied the main element of global confrontation.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decision to put an end to the British Empire and make the United States the main power on the planet, sustained by the hegemony of the dollar, essentially caused a significant imbalance in the development of the Second World War. Above all, the demise of the British Empire revealed its forcefulness and inability to confront the U.S. Empire from any point of view.
The alliance to destroy Adolf Hitler and thus win World War II allowed the Soviet Union to build up enough strength to maintain a bipolar confrontation for more than 40 years, setting the path for what would later become not only ideological struggles but also areas of influence and the construction of the modern empires that emerged after World War II and the Cold War.
In this summer of 2024, many factors allow us to remember how and when empires disappear and how they are formed. Today, the world is not bipolar; it is, at least, triangular and very soon destined to become quadripolar. From the point of view of its history, its origin, and what allowed the United States to be the longest hegemony and the most profound democracy of the modern era, today, its internal crisis clashes head-on with the fact of facing for the first time opponents such as those it had not encountered in the past. China is not only an ideological opponent of the United States, but it is a country that has demonstrated its ability to rebuild its power not only based on the exercise, sacrifice, and correct investment of the money earned as the leading supplier of everything to the Western world, but above all, it has been able to consolidate its vocation as an empire. China’s calculated and intelligent investment strategies in technological development and in providing answers to an increasingly complicated world have positioned the country led by Xi Jinping as a country that can truly compete on the global stage.
Upon coming to power in 1978, Deng Xiaoping found a country with 956 million people who could be molded to his liking to achieve the communist nation’s goals. Today, China – due to its dual characteristic of being an ideologically communist country but, in practice, more capitalist than most countries – has a tremendous and vital competitive advantage over the United States, which is its ability to maintain internal control of its population.
The Chinese have a political and military system that allows them to maintain internal unity that the United States of America does not have. But, in addition, although no one knows Chinese thinking and social sentiment very well from the inside, it should not be forgotten that in dictatorships, neither sociologists nor surveys are necessary since for sociological needs to exist, there must be the ability to express the tendencies of those parts of society. This factor does not apply in China. On the contrary, the crisis, separation, rupture, polarization, and frontal confrontation of the United States with itself and with its history makes it a society that, in principle and apparently, not only has the strength of freedom – which it has always had – but at this moment, due to the great competition that has emerged in recent years, faces the inability to position itself absolutely and forcefully as the economic and technological leader of the world.
What role will the United States and China play after the November election? That is a big question, above all, because, just as in the United States, the election campaign and the situation magnify its internal crisis’s seriousness. In the Chinese case – which undoubtedly has elements of disagreement and internal problems – we do not have the necessary information to specify when a rupture will occur or the possibility of it happening in the face of a regime built to have no fissures. On paper – and despite all that they have conquered, bought, and colonized in resources and raw materials – China’s great internal weakness remains the same: they can buy the energy solution and strategic materials, but they do not possess them within their territory. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that this very year, China lost its status as the most populous country on Earth and that the nation that is on the waiting list to become the other world power we are living in, India, has won that title and, more importantly, has consolidated a model that – without relying on the uniform and unique country structure – has expressions through different states of hegemony and economic conquests that only five years ago seemed unthinkable.
More than 200 years ago, Napoleon predicted: “Let China sleep because when she wakes up, the whole world will tremble.” Centuries later, Alain Peyrefitte recalled it with his book “When China wakes up…” and recently, in 2009, Martin Jacques did it again with his book “When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order.” Probably all the prophecies about the great awakening of the Chinese dragon have not yet been fulfilled precisely, but what is unavoidable and undeniable is that China has awakened and has positioned itself as one of the world’s major powers.
The question that arises is: when Modi’s India wakes up… what will happen? The only thing we know in principle is that it is complicated for there to be a Beijing-New Delhi axis. If some countries have territorial problems and a history of permanent confrontation, it is Modi’s India and Xi Jinping’s China. Economically, they are not only two of the five most important economies on the planet, but together they represent more than 35% of the world’s population. Moreover, they are two countries with nuclear weapons, which have invested stratospheric amounts of money in strengthening their armies and with a fighting capacity and societies that could easily be dragged into certain battles, especially religious ones.
India has an insurmountable enemy in Pakistan. But, above all, it has one in the circulation and coexistence with the Muslim world. It is very difficult to think that sooner rather than later, this conflict will not erupt with more virulence than it has today.
In conclusion, this summer of 2024 gives Europe a very worrying image. The European continent has built itself on the subsidy of the West. The religious crisis and the growing conflict surrounding the migration issue leave open the possibility of a confrontation that already has extremely worrying cases, such as in France, where a significant part of migrants have already taken over and imposed their beliefs and way of life. There is nothing better than the Olympic Games and a universal exposition to be really worried about the possibility of a bloody summer on French territory.
As for the rest of Europe, look at what it means to have missiles going back and forth from Ukraine to Russia or vice versa every day and the fact that it would only take one detour of a rocket hitting Hungary or Poland to multiply and escalate the conflict significantly. We are living and witnessing the final hours of what were the great legacies and the grand structures left by the Second World War, just as we are living the impracticality and lack of capacity of the United Nations as we know it.
Today, the world does not have a confrontation between capitalism and communism; it has a confrontation in which more than 30% of the population – those who are not part of the so-called Western world – are living their most crucial moment of glory, clearly clashing with the meaning of tariff limits and the capacity of technological struggle with the West. Both elements are enhanced and enriched by the problem of religious wars. Therefore, if in 1939 one could read the anguish and concern about the growing tension that ended up unleashing the Second World War, in 2024 – without being alarmist, pessimistic, or falling into conspiracy theories – it can be said that this is one of the most decisive years in terms of the continuity of the human condition.
In the last 30 years, China has become the largest holder of U.S. public debt. Looking at the current scenario, crises in America can be financially and economically convenient for them, although they can also harm them, and they are doing so.
Crises, which are inherent elements of development, have also reached China. The first crisis that has significantly affected China is the demographic crisis; in this regard, the consequences of only allowing one child per family have already been seen when the era of shared development exploded. And now, if anything, the big question is whether it is possible to sustain an industrial system with financial instruments that work at the service of the country’s investments – as is the case in China – without affecting or dragging down various sectors as is happening with the real estate crisis, which is already having its repercussions on the Chinese economy.
It was easier to manage poverty’s ambition than its exploitation. This has intertwined the technological and economic struggles and financial stability of the two dominant empires, China and the United States.
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