Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The conflictual nature of today’s world combines and integrates elements of the old world with the new. Trotsky would say that the situation is the product of the uneven and combined development of the capitalist world. The Cold War between capitalism and socialism ended abruptly with the collapse of the Soviet Union’s socialist system in 1991. But the expansionist aspirations of Russia, China, the United States, and other nations did not disappear. Instead, they mutated into different forms of articulation.
Market forces are aligning themselves in opposing ideological camps, now between liberal capitalism, led by market interests, and state monopoly capitalism, which is subordinated to the strategic interests of governments with authoritarian regimes.
While the triumphant market economy accelerated the expansion of competition for profits worldwide, the struggle for energy, food, water, and raw materials intensified, as did the desire to control strategic resources. Science has accelerated its competitive development with the advent of quantum physics and artificial intelligence, and all these fields have become spaces where new players seek dominance.
New world powers are emerging before us, notably the United States and China, along with a myriad of regional powers, including the United Kingdom, the European Union, Russia, Israel, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, North Korea, and Australia. The possession of weapons of mass destruction serves to separate and distinguish nuclear-armed powers from non-nuclear-armed powers.
These are new forms of domination, of some over others. Trump’s tariff wars and the war in the Middle East to destroy Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons are current expressions of the same intertwined tensions. Competition for control of markets and trade routes can, in the blink of an eye, go from culturally “soft” confrontations to ‘cold’ wars to “hot” wars. The tariff war could escalate into a nuclear war.
To the extent that countries can respect and adhere to market rules and competition, there will always be room to settle differences through diplomacy and political agreements. But when those differences are mixed with ideas of ideological, religious, or cultural hegemony, as well as the desire for economic domination, then international legal rules begin to get in the way of political leaders, who prefer to ignore them. This occurs when international tensions reach a boiling point and confrontation ensues.
For example, European or US liberal capitalism is unlikely to be able to coexist with China’s “Marxist” capitalism or the capitalism of orthodox and authoritarian Russia, especially when one side considers the other to represent the annihilation of its way of life. International uncertainty arises when leaders put the political model ahead of their idea of capitalist economic competition, a productive model, incidentally, in which they all believe and which makes their nations prosper.
Today’s Russia seeks to revive its concept of an “empire,” one that is no longer socialist, yet remains rooted in the Russian imperial ideology that has been in place since the time of the Tsars.
The same can be said of the United States, with its Manifest Destiny, which allows it to envision an “American fortress” stretching from Panama to the Canadian North Pole, passing through Greenland.
And China will not rest until it has conquered Taiwan and completed the new “Silk Road” project, conceived by the Chinese empires many centuries ago, which offers “soft” Chinese domination over large areas of Africa and South America.
Future wars will likely be fought over natural resources that are increasingly difficult to access, such as minerals, including rare earths, as well as water and food. Capitalism and market logic ultimately prevailed in the Cold War. However, the same capitalist market can also destroy the planet if rules and norms for international coexistence are not established.
Today, more than ever, there is a need for rules that are accepted and respected by all, with a redefinition of the United Nations that enhances its capacity to enforce norms for balanced economic competition, environmental sustainability, human rights, and arms control. Only in this way can the foreseeable wars of the future be avoided.
The dilemma arises between two major political trends that are developing in these times of global turmoil. One trend promotes an international order dominated by major economic and military powers in constant friction, seeking to impose their norms and rules on the rest of the essentially subordinate nations, much in the style of the Cold War after World War II. They prefer to rule the world with their dictates, disregarding multilateral organizations and the mandates that emanate from their consensus.
The other world order proposes to build a world based on rules accepted by all, with rules of economic competition on an equal legal footing between sovereign states, based on the control and containment of weapons of mass destruction and respect for human rights as civilizing principles. In this logic, the mandates issued by multilateral bodies must be obeyed, even if a government disagrees with their orientation.
The great dispute is no longer between socialism and capitalism. Rather, it is between the different types of capitalism that exist today and, therefore, their forms and methods of interacting with the market, which stretches the definition of what is meant by “market competition.” For European and US capitalism, competition is understood as the free play of private productive forces in the global market.
However, in China and Russia, capitalism is planned and directed by the state. Its intervention in the market is guided by and subordinate to state interests. Even existing private capital is subordinate to state logic.
Between liberal capitalism and state monopoly capitalism, some histories drive ideological, cultural, and religious confrontations that transcend and sometimes condition the boundaries of economic conflicts.
Between imperial China, imperial Russia, and the American Manifest Destiny, the world will live in the uncertainty of economic competition and military confrontation. Hence, there is a need for a strong international regulatory framework that compels hegemonic states to accept that the rights of weaker states are equal to their own to the fullest extent of their applicability.
Each state must be respected as legally sovereign and not subject to the imposition of hegemonic forces. The world will have to revitalize the international rule of law in the face of the tendency of hegemonic forces, whether global or regional, to impose their economic and military will on weaker states.
ricardopascoe@hotmail.com
@rpascoep
Further Reading: