Opinion Sur
CHINA
Centralism
RUSSIA
Revanchism
USA
Polarization
Every world power, however imposing it may seem, has a weak point. In the three that I have chosen to illustrate the front cover, each of them has a fatal defect. In China, it is an exaggerated centralism, with a long tradition. In Russia, it is the desire to avenge the Soviet collapse and recover its empire. In the United States, it is the disunity provoked by the extreme enmity between progressives and reactionaries. The three powers are at odds but each is unstable. The rest of the world suffers confused.
Jerusalem Bible (Daniel 2:1) tells that during the Hebrew captivity in Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that disturbed him. His advisers and necromancers did not know how to interpret it. At the verge of executing them, the king sent for the Hebrew captive Daniel, who knew how to do it, and thus saved his life and that of his Babylonian colleagues. In the dream, the king saw a giant with a gold head, a bonze chest, and iron legs. The feet, on the other hand, were made of baked clay, and when they received a blow from a stone, the entire monument collapsed. Daniel maintained that the giant was the empire, the head its despot, the body its army, and the legs its weapons. The feet, on the other hand, being made of clay, endangered the entire structure. We can use the story as a metaphor for power.
Great powers have, each in its own way, a weak point, and that point is precisely the other side of its strength.
China
Transferring the legend to the geopolitics of our time, the Chinese case is sobering and quite easy to interpret. We know that the Popular Republic knew how to combine capitalist development with communist centralism. For a while, the result was spectacular: a GDP growth of 10% per year, which allowed it to reach the developed countries and therefore worry and even threaten them. But that period of several decades served—to put it in the language of Marxists—as a stage of primitive accumulation. After that stage, the economy slowed down, as was to be expected in any development theory. Already in full modernity, the system developed functional requirements of flexibility and openness, which correspond to higher stages of an industrial and post-industrial economy with large internal and external markets. The political corollary of this advanced development would be a kind of governance with checks and balances, and some kind of popular participation in the replacement of elites, institutional arrangements that serve to correct mistakes, advance innovation, and have greater legitimacy. However, the very development of previous accumulation (strongly authoritarian) created a remarkable tension between the party—extensive, powerful, and bureaucratic—and society, which witnessed an astonishing overcoming of the everlasting poverty of the celestial empire, and the creation of new prosperous and educated middle and upper sectors. In simplistic terms, we can say that it is about the tension between State and market. That tension is not new in the very long Chinese history. In such a struggle, the central State always triumphed, at the expense of an incipient bourgeoisie and a consequent and relative democratization. Today, we are witnessing a new edition of this struggle, with the rise to almost absolute power of President Xi Jinping, the reinforcement of the vertical discipline of the party-state, and the systematic repression of an emerging bourgeoisie (to prevent its autonomy) and popular participation movements independent of the communist party. The great question that arises from this situation is the following: What price does China have to pay for the maintenance of a hyper-disciplined society under a single totalitarian party (with a professional staff of 96 million people)? Will these be the clay feet of the system? We know its virtues and strengths (long-term strategies, expeditious execution, mobilization of immense resources without further hesitation or discussion). But will they be enough to overcome the dysfunctions? These all focus on the absence of a thermostat, which can lead to an explosion. [1] It is the other side of the coin in a country that aspires to be the first world power.
There is a hope, based on the professional competence and seriousness of the Chinese elites, who are well aware of these difficulties, and among which there is a—quite disguised—discussion between a hard strategy and another more open to a relative opening of society and an eventual willingness to move towards a condominium with the US, while patiently arranging the location of the pieces of their Go game in different parts of the planet.[2][3]
Russia
The weakness of the Russian giant lies in the counterproductive effects of its tendency to open aggression and the underhand disruption of other powers. The attack on Ukraine revealed both the brutality and military failure of Putin’s regime. Even in the best-case scenario (for current Russia), the conflict must lead to a frozen war with the West, with a forced limit in the East and South of Ukraine, whose model is the Korean peninsula. Putin’s survival and his group, or their eventual replacement by a similar regime with someone different at the top, will only perpetuate an armed and unstable peace, with other similar incursions in the future.
How would Russia end after this war? It is the fundamental question that the Western powers must ask themselves and that today are also asked by those in the Russian opposition (in prison or in exile). The reproduction of the regime will find him even more tormented by resentment and imperial fantasies, with an economy damaged by sanctions but always large, based on the export of raw materials and a permanent military mobilization, with a nuclear support that guarantees impunity in other adventures of provocation and disruption of its rivals. In that case, the loss of prestige will be compensated by brute force, in a fatal cycle of cold war (sometimes also hot) and on the verge of nuclear catastrophe.
The alternative would be the seizure of power by a group willing to dismantle the tyrannical centralization of the State and make the transition to a parliamentary and more decentralized republic, with a more modern and diversified economy and a controlled opening towards Europe. Today, this alternative seems utopian, but we must remember that sometimes regime change seems impossible and yet it occurs. In 1916, Lenin thought that he would never see a revolution and the revolution took place in 1917 despite his pessimism and brought him to power. It is an example au contraire (the emergence of a dictatorship) but nevertheless an example of an unexpected change. In this case, change would be for the better, distancing himself from the tendency to solve problems with an iron fist, which is Putin’s foot of clay. It would consist of the formation of a government with a parliamentary majority, an increase in local power in the region, and a containment of the bellicose party (Putin’s henchmen), which would be forced to negotiate with other parties and other elites. In this scenario, Russia would maintain its power and regain prestige as a power, while being a good neighbor for Europe.[4]
USA
It is known that the crisis of representation is a global phenomenon that has led in many countries to the disappearance of traditional political parties in favor of unstable coalitions fueled by social movements. These movements are in many cases reactionary in character, in protest against the inequalities of globalization but with a retrograde gaze and in search of scapegoats, which leave intact the class structure and the domination of the established elites.
The US is a separate case, given that the two traditional parties have remained in appearance, but with one big caveat. One of them has been captured by a movement of fascistic character around an authoritarian and charismatic figure. The other is divided into factions that coalesce around identity claims. All these cracks give the United States an anarchic look, with disregard for the previous semi-democratic system.
This disunity (the feet of clay of the pax americana) has important consequences in terms of foreign policy, with a consensus reduced to a common denominator, namely: the arming of an aggressive nationalism, which in one pole is isolationist and in the other keeps the pretension of maintaining a hegemony of yesteryear that today works badly in the face of the challenge of emerging powers. The two poles divide states, communities, and even families, but both poles agree on feeding the military-industrial complex. The country is reluctant to stop being the primus inter pares and adapt intelligently to a new multi-polar situation. The loss of positions on the world chessboard has not yet produced a more realistic and flexible strategy, willing to accept a possible condominium with China and diplomatic arrangements with increasingly less submissive nations.
The hope in this case is centered on the generational change of elites[5] and the return to a modest common sense (strategic realism), following Churchill’s wisdom, who at the time knew how to adapt the declining British empire to a panorama of new powers. At the present time, the world is in an extremely dangerous waiting period for peace, social justice, and environmental sustainability.
[1] A concrete example is the Covid Zero policy to contain outbreaks of virus Omicron and stop another pandemic. According to journalist Muyi Chiao, who examined the many videos of the lockdown with which the authorities forced the inhabitants of entire cities to remain in situ, the problem is authoritarian verticalism and the absence of flexibility in the implementation of health policies on a daily basis for fear of authority. The result is a series of violent protests in Guangzhou and other districts—counterproductive and unwanted effect of the system. Report by Daisuke Wakabayashi and Claire Fu, translated into The New York Times, 17 November 2022.
[2] For an explanation of this strategic game, Go, see https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go
[3] For a lucid analysis of the options at stake see https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2022-10-15
[4] See the position of Alexey Navalny, a reserve leader (for the moment in prison): https://www.almendron.com/tribuna/this-is-what-a-post-putin-russia-should-look-like/ and Joy Neumeyer’s essay on the Russian opposition meeting in Poland: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/opinion/russia-putin-opposition.html and the First Congress by the representatives of the Russian people: https://www.realcleardefense.com/2022/11/04/russian_revolutionaries_prepare_for_post-putin_future_863130.html
[5] The top leaders of the two parties are elderly—one arrogant and the other powerless.
If you like this text, by filling up the form that appears in this page you can subscribe to receive once a month a brief summary of Opinion Sur English edition
