Geopolitics was shaken to the core this 4th of February !

 

 

 Some Western commentators speculate that Western societies are facing a moment of truth because '...perhaps we are touching the crux of what is hybrid warfare that threatens the System with general upheaval.'  

 

 

But there is another hypothesis, based on much more prosaic elements and whose weight in the daily life of Western citizens is all too real. This hypothesis can be summed up in three words: 

 

 

Western societal atomization

To this day this concept has not been approached in any systematic way to my knowledge. I personally have been writing about it over the last 5 years and distinguish 3 of its aspects that I find  determinant: 

1. The disappearance of the founding narrative, which once aggregated citizens into united national groups, has given way to individual atoms that are isolated in an unhappy solitude that many of them compensate by fleeing to artificial paradises where they lose their lives, which, by the way, explains how American life expectancy in 2019-2021 was down more than 3%! The intensity of this fall in the American population is comparable to the fall in population in Russia during the period of the collapse of the USSR between 1988 and 1991.



2. The disappearance of the natural and traditional solidarity of the united national groups of yesteryear has given way to the total corruption of Western societal institutions by a small minority representing far less than 1% of the citizens. Forced to suffer the social consequences of this state of disrepair of their societies, the vast majority of citizens are disgusted by the misery that this small privileged minority imposes on them to pay for its own opulence. The spirit of the times has therefore naturally turned towards revolt.



3. The disappearance of the founding narrative  +  the disappearance of natural and traditional solidarities   =   the disappearance of the unity of Western societies which means that these societies have lost their institutional operationality and are thus incapable going forward to act as united national entities !  Their treatment of Covid19 is clear proof of this.

A realistic observation of the current geopolitical field

In light of this Western context, along this first part of the 21st century, a realistic vision of the situation of humanity gives us to see the following : 

• As I have just illustrated, the West has become institutionally inoperative !



• The center of gravity of the economy-world has also shifted to East-Asia with Beijing becoming the new commanding center of the nervous system of the capitalist world !  In other words, for the first time in the history of Modernity, the nervous system of the capitalist world is going to be controlled from outside the territorial domain of the Western civilization !



• And what's more; the fact is that the people of East-Asia are generally optimistic about their future and the region is effectively transforming year by year into a powerful 'regional economic bloc' which will soon represent 50% of the economic output of the world (33% today). In contrast Western people are undergoing a serious nervous breakdown and nobody knows if they ever will be able to recover from the treasonous behaviors of their elites.
  

A new world order

From a realistic geopolitical point of view, what is evident today is that the West must urgently wake up to take the measure of the new reality of the world that its own ineptitude has helped to create over the past 50 years. Blaming others will not change the new situation. The fact is that it was indeed Western ineptitude that opened a breach which China hastened to engage in. The whole world then witnessed the irresistible economic rise of that country. And the only good explanation we have for its uninterrupted rise resides in its unparalleled governance system that got polished over the last 2,000 years.

Accepting this new reality is imperative for the West; now. Failing to do so will push East-Asia to ignore the West in the future. This is already emphasized by China and Russia in their February 4 statement (1). These two nations indicate that the time to look in the rear view mirror has passed. Their declaration is a first approximation of the new multilateral order which they have decided to build in association with the other nations that wish to participate. This document is the most detailed to date in its description of a new multilateral order based on the recognition of three fundamental principles: 

1. The will of the people is the sole criterion of the principle of democracy and its application by nations must naturally be adapted to their cultural and historical context. There is no perfect single model of the democratic principle and, in this sense, no nation has the right to impose its own conception on others. The sole judge of the governance of a country is its own people !
   



2. The sovereignty, equality and security of all nations is the necessary foundation of a new multilateral order that seeks to exclude the hegemony and domination through force by the strongest.



3. In the current context, the UN is the sole institution recognized by all nations and in this sense the decisions of the UN form the only legal platform binding all nations. Any temptation by a minority of nations that would like to impose their own vision of a “rules-based order” is therefore void which the magazine The Diplomat recognizes explicitly : 
   

   “The 'rules-based order' is a new and vague description of how the world should work. More established and legitimate descriptions refer to the United Nations and international law. Although the United States has shaped the UN and much of international law, its relationship with these institutions has become increasingly strained, especially since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. why he fell back on the 'rules-based order'."  (2)

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Notes

1.  Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development. 2022-02-04.

2.  "The Trouble With Washington’s ‘Rules-Based Order’ Gambit", in The Diplomat, by Ben Scott. 2021-08-03.