The coming world order

[Celerity]

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has upended the world order—and with it the energy, production, distribution and finance systems.

https://socialeurope.eu/the-coming-world-order



The war in Ukraine is part of the struggle for a new world order. Russia and China are openly challenging the Pax Americana. But what the next world order will look like remains an open question.

In Moscow and Beijing, but also in Washington, the model of a multipolar concert of the great powers, with exclusive zones of influence, is finding support. Despite a growing unwillingness to play the role of world policeman, however, the majority of Americans have not yet abandoned the unipolar, American, liberal world order. And there is still support, not only in China, for the Westphalian model with its emphasis on nation-state sovereignty and its condemnation of post-colonial meddling in internal affairs.

These three models envisage very different ground rules. Who is authorised to use force—all states, only the strongest or only the hegemonic power? Does the law of the strongest apply or the strength of the law? Is there a historical ideal (such as liberal democracy and a market economy) towards which all states will (or should) develop, or are there multiple modernities with competing political systems and cultural civilisations which can coexist more or less peacefully? Will there be a global showdown between an alliance of democracies and the ‘axis of autocrats’? Or is the price of peace giving up on implementing universal human rights?

Which of these models will prevail—or from what precise mixture of old and new elements the new world order will emerge—will determine not only war and peace but also what the global energy, production, distribution and finance systems of the future look like.

snip

[DavidDvorkin]

1. China is challenging Pax Americana

Russia is falling on its face.

[Celerity]

2. Yes, but the very fact they invaded was a large act of defiance, and no one ultimately knows how it

plays out in the end.