“the Last global crisis – the financial collapse of 2008 – was the trigger trigger process, in which the West has lost confidence, and the political and economic power in the world began to shift towards China. Coronavirus crisis 2020 can cause a much greater shift in this direction,” – wrote in the pages of the British Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman.
One of the most important features of this new world will be the weakening of the US – and relative to the previous themselves, and relatively new centers of power. “In the next quarter century, the United States will no longer have such an effect, as yesterday. America, dominated international politics for the past 70 years, will have to reckon with new powers, and primarily China,” we read in the pages of the French newspaper Le Monde.
the Reasons for this are multidimensional. But the pandemic is contributing to the decline of the US role primarily at the level of PR, i.e. at the level of political psychology. Today, it is impossible to perceive the United States as the undisputed world leader. Their reputation suffered a severe blow. If first USA lost only war outside its territory, now in the eyes of the world they are losing the war against the epidemic within their own country. And this is fatal for the image of the “Almighty” America. The leading country in the world should not allow her to have almost half a million cases, and the number of deaths over two or three months has exceeded the death toll over the seven years of the Vietnam war. Themselves the United States in the face of the political elite continues to perceive a “world leader”. But in fact they are no longer able to fully play this role.
Back in the beautiful USA for a new geopolitical world of the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union under the Gorbachev administration went quickly to the disaster, and the American President George Bush senior proclaimed the establishment of a “new world order”.
“the Center of world power is now one absolute superpower – the United States, supported by Western allies,” enthusiastically wrote in 1990, singer of American hegemony well-known columnist Charles Krauthammer. “The world has become unipolar!” he cried. And America “has the power and the will to lead a unipolar world, without any hesitation setting the rules of world order and demonstrating a willingness to impose them on everyone else”.
the Fact that the American policy covered the beautiful phrases about the new era of the global triumph of democracy, Krauthammer formulated openly and directly: to hell with the UN, its Charter and international law! In a unipolar world the United States will do to set the rules and impose those rules to everyone else.
At the same Krauthammer understood that a unipolar world is not eternal, growing new grainsthese players, and a multipolar world will inevitably come. But it will be later – much later! “We are not yet in that world, and it will be in another few decades, he predicted. – Now is the unipolar moment.”
Here Krauthammer was right: a brief period of “unipolar world” has indeed begun. In 1990-e years Russia was in a state of national disaster and major geopolitical retreat, and China had only just gathered strength and was too weak to be able to challenge the United States. But Krauthammer and the other is the ideology of American global hegemony – Zbigniew Brzezinski, and many others in the United States made a serious mistake in assessing the duration of this time. It seemed that it will last for decades. But he lasted 15 years. A “unipolar world” with the US as the only pole was just a brief moment in history.
One of the main reasons why it happened, was to reassess the United States ‘ own strength and capabilities. Speaking everyday language, the political elite of the United States simply “tore the roof”. “Hegemony is as old as the world, wrote Zbigniew Brzezinski in his famous book “the global chessboard”. – However, the current global supremacy is highlighted by the speed of its inception, the global nature of its reach and methods of its implementation”. This “new hegemony” has turned the American elite’s head. And it made their task of radical reorganization of the world on American patterns.
Victorious, the war in Yugoslavia, where a weakened Russia Boris Yeltsin had nothing to oppose, has only multiplied the feeling of omnipotence of the US and led by NATO. After Yugoslavia, it was clear that another war is not far off. It just happened. It was initiated by the United States in the fall of 2001 in Afghanistan – under the pretext of combating al-Qaeda (a terrorist organization banned in Russia – approx. “RG”), stationed in the territory of this country. But this was only the beginning. According to us General Wesley Clark, in September 2001, the Bush administration developed plans to capture the seven countries in 5 years. It was about Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finally, Iran.
With all the outer madness of these plans in the Bush administration, they were treated seriously. The neocons and interventionists in Washington was out for blood: they demanded the capture and restructuring in the greater Middle East and argued that the United States can do it. “Only global superpower”, which had no counterbalance on the world stage, truly broke loose. This was greatly facilitated by the intellectual limitations of President George W. Bush and the aggressive taketivism his Vice-President dick Cheney, an ardent supporter of this policy.
In the end, so gloriously begun in the early 1990s the “unipolar moment” was buried in Iraq. Conditional date for the funeral can be called on 1 may 2003, when George W. Bush, dressed in military uniform, arrived on the aircraft carrier “Abraham Lincoln” and declared victory in the war against Saddam Hussein. The US President acted under a huge banner “Mission accomplished” (Mission Accomplished), not yet knowing that a military victory will result in the largest political defeat of the United States after defeat in Vietnam. It was then that started the decline of the “unipolar moment” and the “new hegemony” of the United States.
later it was discovered the inability of the U.S. to force Russian President Vladimir Putin fit into the world in the U.S. and to restrain the increase, not only economic, but also political weight of China. Later the United States lost the battle for Syria and was forced to make a decision to withdraw from Afghanistan after 18 years of pointless and futile war. But a series of political defeats of the US started with Iraq.
today no one is surprised by insights about becoming thinner, like shagreen leather, US hegemony. Its disintegration, Americans attempt to hold back sanctions, threats, demonstrations of military might and power pressure. But this profound process to stop anymore. Until 2010 the United States was the undisputed leader by share in world GDP, starting in 2015, the volume of GDP calculated at purchasing power parity, China is ahead of them. According to the IMF, in 2019 China accounted for 18.6 percent of world GDP, whereas the USA – 15.2 percent. The decrease in the economic weight inevitably leads to weight reduction political. Not to mention the fact that the US is less on costly foreign policy and military operations. According to political scientist Michael Mendelbaum of Johns Hopkins University, the United States has no more funds for the Hyper-active foreign policy, which they conducted in the second half of the twentieth century. And inevitably they are less likely to intervene in international issues. “New selfishness” Donald trump is a reflection of this shift.
In 2013, Barack Obama from the rostrum of the UN General Assembly strongly urged present leaders in more than 200 countries that the United States is “exceptional nation” and almost intended more than to rule the world. In the mouth the first African-American President of the United States that were especially offensive: the Declaration as a kind of “political racism”, signed in the division of the world into one “exceptional nation” and all others “non-exclusive”. Dazzled by the common American ideology, Obama did not understand that he is grossly opposed to the USA the rest of the world. “Yes, we are exceptional,” echoed Obama, his staunch opponent, ��respublikanets dick Cheney in his political Manifesto, and called “Exceptional” (published in 2015). So the two wings of American politics, externally, eternally vying for power, showing similarity in the main – fanatical belief in the exceptionalism of America and the consequent right of the US to impose its will on the rest of the world.
Undoubtedly, the US remains on a number of critical parameters leading country in the world. However, the claim to “exceptionalism” is not checked by the speeches in Congress or in the UN, and the country’s readiness to cope with both old and completely new challenges, in this case with the coronavirus. If this willingness is not, then what kind of “exceptionalism” and about what “global leadership” could even be a question?
Pandemic coronavirus only visibly revealed this new weakness of the United States. Despite claims Pompeo on Washington’s readiness to take a leadership role in the fight against coronavirus, none of their allies – neither Italy nor Spain is in the most critical moment of the fight itself, the epidemic did not wait for help from the United States. Help came from China, from Russia, even from Cuba. But not from the United States. Signed by trump in mid-April, a Memorandum on the aid Italy is very late and not so much confirmed, as expected trump leads the role of the United States as shown by its absence.
in addition, instead of having to lead the global war against the pandemic, the US administration began to blame the disinformation that Russia, and especially China in an attempt to absolve themselves of responsibility in the eyes of its own population for the complete unwillingness to confront the coronavirus. In the end, they themselves are entangled in their own web of accusations. In an interview with broadcaster ABC on may 3, Secretary of state Pompeo said two completely opposite things: first, that the US has “plenty of evidence” that the virus was created in a lab in Wuhan; and, secondly, that he agreed with the conclusion of National intelligence that the virus is of natural origin. Understand who can.
In the end, the German intelligence service in its report called the accusations Pompeo in China “a calculated maneuver, distracting from their own mistakes”. And even always loyal London said that, although he does not reject American version of the laboratory origin of the virus, said it was unlikely. And then official Washington began to recognize that the U.S. does not know where the virus. About the “mass of evidence” would prefer to forget. And this means that the US attempt to “punish” China for the coronavirus fell: China won in this information-political conflict, victory, and the US was defeated.
This feverish willingness to accuse anyone of anything, just to divert the blow from himself, further undermines the U.S. claim on the role of lider the modern world. And if Iraq was the starting point of the beginning of the end of “unipolar world”, the pandemic coronavirus set in the process’s final point. She completes the funeral ceremony, “the new global hegemony” the United States – or rather what was left of it by the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century.
Four factors have a decisive impact on the state of the European Union at the beginning of the pandemic. This is the financial crisis, which led to a quasi-default of Greece; the economic sanctions against Russia; the process Brekzita with final British withdrawal from the EU; the wave of refugees flooded Europe in the 2015-16 and caused an acute crisis of the traditional liberal policy in this area. Coronavirus became the fifth factor, clearly exposing the weakness of the EU and the limitations of its capabilities.
Financial crisis, the most painful impact on Greece showed themselves in a difficult situation the country is counting on the EU, can expect only hard program “tightenings of belts” which to her with the same success could require the IMF. Safeguards social well-being membership in the EU does not. This, incidentally, was one of the reasons that influenced the choice of the British in favor Brekzita: many of them are disappointed in the EU because of what happened with Greece, “humiliated and subordinated to Brussels.” Illusion at the expense of solidarity within the EU, if they were, was destroyed.
the Wave of refugees flooded in 2015 Europe, has created a split between advocates of open and closed borders within the EU. The second group was more numerous than might be expected. To the supporters of closed borders and opponents of a liberal approach to refugees should include the UK, Austria, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Italy which later joined them. “Collision with the future” in the face of millions of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa led to the weakening of the traditional ruling parties, especially in Germany, where the CDU lost about a quarter of usually voting for her citizens, and the SPD for the first time in the postwar period, have sunk to the level of the secondary party. At the same time intensified the right-wing conservative party, like the Northern League in Italy, the National front in France or the Alternative for Germany in Germany. Dramatically decreased the credibility of the authorities. These processes have led to profound perturbations in several countries – such as France – collapsed the traditional two-party system, to ensure political stability in those States.
Breaksit. What would be a good mine did in Brussels, arguing that the British withdrawal a United European Union, decision of the citizens of great Britain was a great shock to the idea of “United Europe”. Care UK struck if n�� deadly, very powerful blow to the plans of turning Europe into a single Federation with a common President, foreign Minister etc. And the EU can not recover from the shock. The loss of such a major player as the UK, appeared to give new opportunities for the smooth functioning of the Franco-German tandem, which is no longer hampered by whims and special position of London. However, this did not happen, but the opposite happened. Now Merkel and macron infinitely sort out among themselves relations: Merkel sees in the renovation projects of Macron threat to “European unity”, and the macron is indignant that any of his proposals to modernise the EU and to prepare it for the growing global challenges be met only by silence or even obstruction from Germany.
Finally, sanctions against Russia have deprived Brussels of the ability to engage in a broad strategic dialogue with Moscow, which has limited foreign policy capabilities of the European Union. On the one hand, the EU was faced with the Hyper-selfishness of the administration of the tramp with its slogan “America first”, and with another – has deprived himself of potential cooperation with Russia. In consequence, the EU is not actually involved in resolving major regional crises: the Syrian, Iranian, Korean, and has become the “great absent” Great middle East, where the role of the first violins sing Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and, to a lesser extent than before, the United States.
of Course, using the “channel process”, the EU is indirectly involved in the attempts to resolve the crisis in Eastern Ukraine, but not in a private capacity, through France and Germany. So here the EU does not act as an independent foreign unit. And where acts, it is difficult to boast of the results. Timid attempts to hold the sleeve rushing into battle with Iran trump nor to no avail. Expressing disagreement with trump, EU leaders nevertheless sadly adjusted to the United States. And in Ukraine, whose final transition into the Western camp so vigorously celebrated in Brussels and other European capitals, was not a success story. From a political point of view, investment in Ukraine has been very questionable. On the one hand, the EU seemingly gained an ally : expanded area Association, and the Ukrainian leadership is not tired to declare their desire to join the EU and NATO. But even if all that warms the soul of Brussels bureaucrats, by itself, the Ukraine with its poverty, corruption, territorial conflicts and weak prospects – not an acquisition. And it is no accident almost no one in the EU does not want to accept such a problematic country in their ranks. Neither Berlin, nor Paris, nor Rome, you don’t want to see Ukraine in NATO, no matter how it was Packed member of Ala��sa.
moreover, for Ukraine, the EU countries imposed sanctions against Russia, which turned some of them into real economic curse. The trade turnover between the EU and Russia fell from 420 billion in 2013 to 212 billion in 2017, investments came to naught, large projects were frozen. The trade is gradually recovering (it amounted to 278 billion in 2019), but it does not compensate for already incurred by the EU the loss and especially future. No compensation for the damage “acquisition” of Ukraine could not give. The Europeans were in this case, the hostages are placed wrong priorities. As the United States in the early 1990s, and the European Union in the mid-2010s, have failed excessive self-confidence. Such confidence paralyzes the mind, in its place comes the ideological ecstasy, and it causes the sleep of reason, engenders monsters. In the EU case, it is difficult to imagine a more irrational policy than was chosen in relation to Russia in 2014-15. The EU actually traded the benefits – both economic and political, which gave him the partnership with Russia, to support obsessive nationalist fervor of the leadership of Ukraine, which will not soon part with the stigma of “black hole” of Europe.
it is No accident the Europeans thinking all of this is overt dissatisfaction. Recently, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder urged to cancel sanctions against Russia in terms of pandemic, because the Russian market may help the economic recovery of EU countries. Here forecasts are disappointing: the EU is facing the prospect of 5-8% drop in GDP and a prolonged recession. But, judging by the reaction of European political elites, they intend to persist in their conflict with Russia. To pay for this, of course, will not they, but ordinary citizens.
At the same time, it seems, the EU aims to continue on pure inertia scenario: sluggish conflict with Russia over Ukraine (without hope of success); to wait for the US elections, hoping a victory for Biden, who all “do as before” ( but he does train American selfishness will continue to move away from Europe); and expect that somehow it will work itself out. Will not be adjusted.
“and Merkel And macron well enough to know trump to understand that Europe should take its policy into its own hands, writes a British columnist Philip Stephens. – …Since the United States withdrew from Europe, it is time for the EU to develop its own foreign and defence policy”. But no signs are seen. And when Emmanuel macron made his sensational statement on “brain death to NATO”, he did not mean that the Alliance is in a coma. He just wanted to say that NATO and the EU stopped to think about the future, about the place of Europe in tomorrow’s world, and just go with the flow, do nothing and nothing is the same��Aya to change. With this policy the EU is a major global player will not.
coronavirus Pandemic will contribute to the further fragmentation of Europe and the increasing contradictions within the EU at the inertial rate of its leaders. To talk about the new project “United Europe” in these conditions it is impossible to keep what we have. The citizens of Italy, Spain and other countries are outraged that their closest allies in the EU not only did not come to their aid during a pandemic, but also de facto declared the principle of “for themselves”. Italy fought with the coronavirus alone – from Brussels just dispassionately watching it. And moved there only when the peak of the epidemic was passed.
Thus, the pandemic will further strengthen the trend of geopolitical sluggish drift in the Wake of the US that has become characteristic of the EU, even in a frankly anti-European lines of Donald trump. No independence from the European Union in the middle East, in Syria, against Iran should not wait. The range of its activity will be limited to Europe and attempts to gain influence in the Eastern partnership countries – Belarus, Armenia, maybe, Kazakhstan. Although Europe remains the most important continent in terms of world politics, the passivity of the EU at the global level and internal fragmentation will not allow him to develop coordinated policies that can bring the EU, despite its economic weight, the political leaders of the modern world.
In the post-coronavirus inevitably intensify the world – and in demand – the role of the state. It is the state, thousands of times defamed and stigmatized by liberals as the source of almost all the ills of the individual will return to the forefront as the only factor that is able to combat new threats – as an individual and humanity as a whole.
“The state is the enemy” – “the state is the enemy.” This formula for many years drummed into the heads of gullible consumers, the adherents of Reaganomics and Thatcherism. Their task was to destroy national boundaries, freeing transnational corporations from state control and any kind of constraints, to reveal the front gate of total freedom of entrepreneurship with the aim of creating a single global market and the globalization of all spheres of human life. On a European scale the same goal, supporters of the “United Europe”. National state, of course, was a hindrance to these far-reaching plans. Therefore, it was necessary to weaken, to deprive of economic role, to transfer it into the hands of the so-called “free market” (a euphemism for the domination of the TNCs), to the “deregulation” of all spheres of human life, and to leave to the state only the function of the removed supervisor (supervisor) on public and economic processes.
Since the beginning of PA��emy this neo-liberal mantra collapsed. It was confirmed that there are several areas in which no country can do without an effective and current state. Is – external security, internal law and order, health and education. Lenin’s definition of the state as an apparatus of violence – primitive formula absolyutiziruyut only one – and not the main function of the state: the violence against its citizens. It needed Lenin to contrast the state of the proletariat and peasantry, i.e., to prepare the seizure of power. The definition of the state max Weber, not far from Lenin: also fascinated by the function of violence, the German philosopher did not seem to see other major public functions of the state. In the context of the epidemic state, on the contrary, of the “apparatus of violence” turns into a “machine of salvation” citizens from threats, which by definition cannot cope private sector and to which, in horror freezes the so-called “Davos man” with its cult of individualism, money and liberal values.
Coronavirus has dramatically changed the balance between the private and public dimensions of social life, even in such bastions of liberal ideology, as the US and Western Europe. “The content of political discourse undoubtedly shifted in recent months in favor of the state – notes on the pages of the Financial Times commentator Janan Ganesh. – We live reputational revival of that …recently contemptuously denounced as “the administrative state”.
“We were told that the state should be abolished. That private better public. That the state is evil. What hospitals need to close for economic reasons…, – says the Italian philosopher Diego Fusaro. – However, a single virus was enough to demonstrate the falsity of neo-liberalism.”
(by the Way, in the face of COVID-19 Italy physically felt the effects of neoliberal austerity policies imposed on it by Brussels over the last 10 years in the country was abolished 70 thousand beds, and hospital costs reduced by € 37 billion).
That the state is capable to ensure functioning of the necessary medical infrastructure and the system of expert evaluations, in conjunction with some coercive measures, including the imposition of quarantine or emergency, in order to limit the extent of the epidemic, to minimize the number of victims and to provide conditions for gradual overcoming. In a pandemic emergency was introduced in Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Czech Republic, Switzerland and ten other countries of Europe. To do so could only state.
the Shift in the public perception of the state is very concerned about supporters l��Berlingo world order. First, second life seemed forever receding into the past the national borders on the European continent given the flooded streams of refugees and migrants. Then Donald trump decided to build an impenetrable wall on the border of USA and Mexico. And then the coronavirus has made these boundaries are vital: those countries that were fenced off from the neighbors, for example, Montenegro has suffered from the epidemic is less likely.
the Theorists of “liberal world order”, for example, Henry Kissinger, saw the revival of the state a threat to this world order. “Pandemic once again brought to life an anachronism – the revival of the walled city, while the prosperity depends on global trade and free movement of people,” wrote Henry Kissinger recently in the American newspaper the Wall Street Journal. However, rather, the pandemic has corrected the excessive “enthusiasm for” globalism to the detriment of the role of the nation state. This passion had a powerful financial basis – the interests of transnational corporations. In result the Western world has gone too far towards freedom from frontiers and freedom from the protection of the individual from the state. The results are clear: the top five countries in terms of mortality from COVID-19 – is, paradoxically, the leading countries of the West: USA, Italy, UK, Spain and France.
of Course, the fight against coronavirus and other epidemics of the future (and they undoubtedly will – there are predictions that the world has entered the era of epidemics), involves international efforts and cooperation. But to be this struggle will, in any case, national States or under their tight control. Only the most reckless and irresponsible politicians will agree to entrust this task to such controversial figures like bill gates and their supranational corporations and supranational interests.
Another issue is that in new conditions the state cannot afford to be sedentary and self-sufficient bureaucratic Leviathan: citizens will be willing to give him their confidence only if it is effective. Not democracy or authoritarianism, and the efficiency and capacity for action becomes the main criterion of public perception of the role and importance of the state.
About the growing role of China has been said a lot. Is China capable after pandemic to play that role in relation to a number of regions of the world, played by the U.S. towards war-torn Europe after the Second world war. Today, the US has funds for a new Marshall plan there, and China is. And its influence in the world will only increase. This is not a new trend, but it will be strengthened. Insists Singaporean scientist, a former representative of this country in the UN Kishori M��bubani pandemic “will accelerate the changes already happening, we are talking about the withdrawal from globalization, focused on the United States, and the transition to globalization, focusing on China”.
Today, neither China, nor Russia, nor Iran, nor India, nor Turkey, nor many other countries do not recognize the moral right of the US to lead the modern world. The concept of a “multipolar world” is gaining more and more supporters. But its framework are also highlighted three countries from which international politics depends more often: instead of the bygone “unipolar world” in our eyes there is a world of “tripolar”. Recently, the Hong Kong newspaper “South China Morning Post” expressed the opinion that postcolonialism world’s major players will be USA, Russia and China. Note that in this neravnomernoi triangle two vertices – Russia and China – are much closer to each other than to the third in the United States. And it will partially balance the still greater power of the United States on a number of fronts (e.g., informational, or military-technological).
so, having lost their sole ability to world leadership the United States and a fragmented Europe, the efforts of China to gain a foothold in the “big triangle” Russia – these are the main features of post-coronavirus the world in which national States will significantly increase its role and social weight. Global peace will not disappear, but will be largely different. Globalism, like any excessive trend will be limited to the objective needs of societies, better realize both the positive and dangerous aspects of this doctrine. We do not say goodbye to global peace, but it will be different. We will live in it otherwise.
*This is an extended version of the text published in “RG”.
