Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The contemporary world has become a highly dangerous place. The bipolar Cold War world of communism and capitalism, inaugurated after World War II in 1945, ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. Despite the permanent threat of nuclear war, the two major powers, the United States and the USSR, had both the political authority and the political strength to be the guarantors of world peace. That fact did not prevent local wars, such as in Vietnam or over the Korean peninsula, but it was enough to ensure that their impacts were minor and within their immediate sphere of influence.
In retrospect, it was a historical moment of a certain balance of forces in the world that had, as an effect, a remarkable world political stability. Even the Cuban missile crisis was resolved between the two powers within a framework of rationality. The only one willing to blow the world to pieces was Fidel Castro, but, fortunately, he was a mere pawn in the hands of Khrushchev, the Soviet leader of the time. Nor did the wars of national liberation, waged mainly in Africa, or the Latin American guerrillas significantly alter the world balance. The powers basically respected their respective “backyards” as a formula for peace.
The 45 years of the Cold War after World War II did not prepare the world for the collapse of that “agreed peace”. When the collapse of the Soviet Union occurred, it was welcomed and applauded as a Western victory over the inferior system of the East. The West expressed a short-sighted and shallow vision, basking in its “victory” with no idea of how to prepare for what was to come. Fukuyama convinced Western leaders that the worst was over, and now came phenomena of lesser weight, danger, and amount. From 1990 to 2010, a mere 20 years, this Western reverie of superiority lasted. While they celebrated being at the top of the world, thinking that the new unipolar order would last forever, new forms of rebellion and questioning of the world order were fermenting below.
The signs of a new multipolar order were felt at the turn of the century. The Chinese giant was undoubtedly the sign that the economic centers were shifting surreptitiously and relatively naturally and silently. China transformed into a market economy, leaving behind socialist precepts but retaining the characteristics of a centralist, one-party political regime. Vietnam and Cambodia, once avowedly socialist economies, took the same pragmatic turn. So much so that today, there are only two communist economies: North Korea and Cuba. Outside these countries, the world is a market.
Western investment in China has been spectacular. Major Western companies have production, distribution, and financial operations in China. Vietnam is also an attractive center because, as investors say, they are open market economies that offer political and labor stability, as they are authoritarian regimes. There are no strikes in China as there are in the United States: for example, the auto strike, the health care strike, and the entertainment workers’ strike.
Russia was transformed into an autocratic, bureaucratic, and centralist capitalism. But it is capitalism, after all. That is what was argued, accepting the return to an authoritarian but “capitalist” regime. The dispute between capitalism and socialism was resolved in favor of the former. However, the dispute is now focused on conquering markets and, therefore, new territories. Putin’s appetite for territorial conquest is the central characteristic of his regime. Ukraine was obviously a cake that escaped Russia at the time of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Now is when he seeks its territorial recovery, under whatever narrative. Putin accuses Ukraine of being a regime guided by principles of Nazism, even ignoring that the Ukrainian President is Jewish personally. It seems to be a detail before the central argument to justify going to war to conquer Ukrainian lands.
In the Middle East, religious warfare is at least eleven centuries old. Three religions emerge from the same original source and dispute, among themselves, the title of the authentic, the true, the bearer of the Truth. Each religion (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) devised a different God, the right one, the True One. And for these Gods, they kill each other. It is an impossible situation to solve, but what it has created is, after China, Russia, and the West, a new focus of war powers capable of great destruction: Israel and Iran. They operate in their own logic, although now with atomic bombs.
North Korea also possesses nuclear weapons and indicates its readiness to use them, somewhat in the style of Fidel Castro. “Either we all live, or we all die,” the North Koreans seem to say. That country lives between a starving population and an unparalleled atomic opulence, at least in Asia. Neither Japan, South Korea, nor Australia have such a level of armament and inequality. A new Asian power is emerging: India, with the world’s largest population and tremendous economic and technological power. India is another player whose actions do not respond to a “superior” guideline.
In this new dangerous world, armed, well-financed, and armed non-state actors, ready to do anything to achieve their objectives, abound. In Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, there are organized and financed groups operating with economic, political, and/or religious projects. Jihadists in the Middle East, Taliban in Central Asia, religious and military conflicts between India and Pakistan, Sahel jihadists in Africa, tribes in Central and Southern Africa, drug traffickers in Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador), self-defense groups, Marxist guerrillas as a remnant of the Cold War.
Religious and ideological fanaticism is concatenated with drug trafficking profit all over the world to create a new class of “anti-state world warriors” who are not necessarily controlled, although often related, to the objectives of some Nation States, such as Iran, Russia, the United States, China, Israel, France, Syria, Turkey. These anti-state actors can put national governments in check, as has been seen with drug trafficking and guerrilla warfare in Colombia and Mexico. These two countries are immersed in deep crises as they struggle between resisting the pressures of drug trafficking or ceding the functionality of the State to these interests.
The era of superpower control over the rebellious fringes of countries that did not submit to the order established by them is over. Today, the characteristic of the world is its fragmentation into a thousand different axes of centrifugal and centripetal forces seeking to advance their agendas through force and coercion. There is no central track controlling world events. That is over. Drug trafficking has had a particularly relevant impact on the fragmentation process because it has facilitated the empowerment of relatively small and isolated groups by offering them access to financing, logistics, impunity, and weaponry that they would otherwise never have obtained. Thus, an anti-State group like Hamas would never have dared to confront the State of Israel were it not for the funding it receives from State and extra-state sources. But there are hundreds of examples of similar groups all over the world.
The fragmentation and balkanization of the centers of power and their limited legitimacy, as seen recently with questions about the ineffectiveness of the United Nations, illustrates the urgency of creating new governance pacts in the world. A step towards that end could represent a rapprochement between China and the United States. It is time for responsible countries to take the helm of the world because, otherwise, they are rushing towards a catastrophic precipice of violence and disorder.
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