Thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, the Russian leadership is increasingly striving to turn back the clock and take revenge for the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.. The stakes in this dangerous game are constantly rising., but, no matter what they think in the Kremlin, its outcome is already largely predetermined. As the history of the world shows, that true hegemony is impossible without a solid economic foundation.
There are many examples of this. In particular, The two-day "Summit for Democracy" starts this Thursday, which the, how it is now accepted, Joe Biden will host via videoconference. In this global international event, organized by the US authorities, leaders and representatives of one hundred and ten states and territories will participate. They all have to, in fact, recognize the political and economic primacy of the United States. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, of course, not invited to this meeting.
Meanwhile, the United States itself has plenty of serious domestic and foreign policy problems.. China's increasing pressure on Taiwan should certainly be mentioned among the latter., permanent crisis around Ukraine and possible breakdown of negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. Moreover, the United States actually has no right to make a mistake., because all these tasks are interconnected in a certain way, and even a small error can be fatal and eventually lead to the destruction of the existing world order. After all, Beijing and Moscow are just waiting, when Washington, like Kipling's Akele, misses.
Until then, the Chinese comrades and Russian gentlemen-comrades from time to time negotiate with their American counterparts. At the same time, only an approximate range of questions is known., that are discussed during these meetings. Nothing concrete will be known to the general public, as the contracting parties do, can say, mutually exclusive official statements. But, judging by, that no obvious changes occur, the aforementioned creators of world politics remain unconvinced, and the status quo remains. Anyway, till.
experts, of course, will try to explain, what exactly Biden and Xi discussed in November, and then Biden and Putin in December. But their reasoning, likely, will not help to make the secret clear. And everything else, lying on the surface, and so well visible to any unbiased observer. However, the deliberate incompleteness of any third-party observation should not be an obstacle to expressing one's own point of view.
so, what, in fact, known. Biden first met Xi. Their conversation lasted about three hours.. And the only obvious consequence of this communication between the leaders of states was a diplomatic boycott, which the United States announced to the Beijing Olympics, which will take place next year.
Putin's talks with Biden took place about three weeks after the US-China video conference and lasted about two hours.. Information about their results, naturally, was also the most common. However, the US has not yet imposed unprecedented sanctions against Russia., and Moscow did not go to war with Kyiv. Although both of these threats, anyway, are still preserved. Perhaps, it would be more correct to say, that they are postponed for the time being.
At the same time, one significant detail draws attention.. Immediately before the conversation with Biden, Putin went on a visit to New Delhi. Enough is known, that Russia is one of the largest suppliers of weapons for the Indian army. But it would be naive to think, that in this way Vladimir Vladimirovich tried to alienate India from the United States, in whose orbit it enters. The only thing, what comes to mind (of course, except for the commercial component), that it was a kind of hint to senior comrades from China: Moscow has room for foreign policy maneuver.
In this way, geopolitical triangle, consisting of USA, PRC and RF, looks like, remained unchanged. Russia, due to its economic weakness, is in no way able to become an equal partner for the United States. Although highly doubtful, what the current Russian leaders have forgotten, how at one time the Chinese, with the help of the Americans, pushed the USSR. However, and the joint efforts of Beijing and Moscow are now clearly not enough, to crush Washington's hegemony. And generally speaking, the formation and decline of world political and economic centers took place under somewhat different circumstances.
French historian Fernand Braudel is considered the forerunner of world-systems analysis., which became one of the still existing approaches to the study of human history. It was he who introduced the concept of "world-economy" into scientific circulation.. According to his concept, in contrast to the "world economy", covering the whole world, "world-economy" acts as a self-sufficient economic entity. That is, the "world-economy" is only a part of the entire earthly world, but at the same time seeks to extend its influence to all its space.
According to Braudel, "succession of dominant cities of the West" (actually the whole world) is built as follows: Venice, Antwerp, Genoa, Amsterdam, London and New York. However, only the last three cities possessed a full arsenal of means - economic, financial, trade, naval, which allowed them to establish world hegemony. Moreover, all these conditions, as unconditionally necessary elements of maintaining dominance, are still preserved.. The replacement of one hegemon by another in the last two hundred years has taken place exclusively as a result of large, usually, world wars, the maintenance of which required colossal economic and financial resources.
One of the main creators of the Soviet state, Leon Trotsky looked into the water, when I wrote the following: “The main economic superiority of the bourgeois states lies in, that capitalism still produces cheaper goods and, moreover, of better quality, than socialism. In other words, labor productivity is still significantly higher in countries, living by the inertia of the old capitalist culture, than in the country, which is just beginning to apply socialist methods in conditions of inherited lack of culture. We know the basic law of history: wins, eventually, that mode, which provides human society with a higher level of economy. The historical litigation is decided by the comparative coefficient of labor productivity ".
If we discard the terms "capitalism" and "socialism", which today, probably, not very relevant, we can say, that hardly anything has changed since then. So China, not to mention Russia, obviously have to wait for better times, to take the place of the United States.
Roman Trunov
