At the same time, the relative independence of all other countries in the world is growing - proportional to their size and the resources at their disposal. China has long been the leader of this process, representing a real alternative to the West, since it does not make its own economic development dependent on direct or indirect control over other countries. We do not yet know how convincing China's global political initiatives will be. But they have already become a reality, and are not based on the previously dominant idea of governance through forceful domination.
Russia, as a country with enormous military capabilities, but less weight in the global economy, also contributes to the democratisation of world politics by the very fact of its existence. The military-political challenge that Russia has thrown down to Western power has dealt a major blow to the remnants of its universal domination. It is already leading to a revision of the entire strategy of US interaction with the rest of the world, which has clearly manifested itself in the rejection of the idea of Moscow facing “isolation and strategic defeat”.
India, as the third most important power in the non-Western world, is striving to follow its leaders and uses resources from cooperation with the West to achieve its own goals. At the same time, it shows colossal independence in cases where its fundamental interests are at stake, among which the most important is preserving the population's faith in the progressive development of the country. As a result, international affairs are increasingly less subject to the rules that were created over the centuries, when the dominance of the West was unconditional and allowed the results of conflicts between its states to serve as the basis for international order.
One of the least appreciated consequences of the comparative exhaustion of the liberal economic model that emerged in the last third of the 20th century is the reduction in the ability of Western countries to effectively and rationally dominate international affairs. Europe provides the most striking and dramatic example of this change, but the United States, which still retains colossal potential, also no longer feels as confident as it did a decade and a half or two ago.
At the same time, the relative independence of all other countries in the world is growing - proportional to their size and the resources at their disposal. China has long been the leader of this process, representing a real alternative to the West, since it does not make its own economic development dependent on direct or indirect control over other countries. We do not yet know how convincing China's global political initiatives will be. But they have already become a reality, and are not based on the previously dominant idea of governance through forceful domination.
Russia, as a country with enormous military capabilities, but less weight in the global economy, also contributes to the democratisation of world politics by the very fact of its existence. The military-political challenge that Russia has thrown down to Western power has dealt a major blow to the remnants of its universal domination. It is already leading to a revision of the entire strategy of US interaction with the rest of the world, which has clearly manifested itself in the rejection of the idea of Moscow facing “isolation and strategic defeat”.
India, as the third most important power in the non-Western world, is striving to follow its leaders and uses resources from cooperation with the West to achieve its own goals. At the same time, it shows colossal independence in cases where its fundamental interests are at stake, among which the most important is preserving the population's faith in the progressive development of the country. As a result, international affairs are increasingly less subject to the rules that were created over the centuries, when the dominance of the West was unconditional and allowed the results of conflicts between its states to serve as the basis for international order.
Moreover, as a result of the events of recent decades, the likelihood of an internal conflict in the West has disappeared altogether - the consolidation of its states around the United States now looks like an irreversible process. It is based on increased international competition and the inability of the United States or Europe to maintain their privileged position using previous methods. A decisive step towards the consolidation of the West was made with the beginning of the military-political confrontation around the Ukraine problem.
However, it began earlier. The shocks that hit Europe after the economic crisis of 2008-2011 (including the internal crisis of solidarity), the migration crisis of 2014-2015 and, finally, the crisis in connection with the coronavirus pandemic, had devastating consequences for it. A little later, they were joined by the inability to compete with the US and China in the field of new technology, especially with respect to artificial intelligence.
By the events of 2022, Europe had already, in principle, prepared to completely hand over the determination of its strategy to its senior partners overseas. Under the Democratic Party administration in the US, this management was still carried out relatively delicately, but with the coming to power of the Republican Party in January 2025, all doubts seem to have been cast aside. We now see that in the US, European leaders are expected only to bow down and fulfil the most extravagant wishes.
It is becoming increasingly clear that for European states, sovereign power is not a matter of defining their own strategy, but of finding their place in US strategy. There are currently no serious grounds to believe that such an evolution can be revised in the foreseeable future. Firstly, there is no economic basis for this. Secondly, political leadership in Europe was formed amid the special conditions which followed the Cold War, when the question of responsibility for decisions was not raised in principle.
Such a remarkable transformation, in turn, also deprives Western countries of the space in which competition, natural for interstate relations, could create new rules of the game. For more than 500 years, and in fact much longer, it was precisely conflict within the West that became the main force driving progress in the development of the rules and norms by which states interact on a global scale. Beginning with the Westphalian Treaties of 1648, it was precisely as a result of internal “civil” wars in the West that the basic procedures by which countries interact within the broader international community were created.
In the mid-20th century, it was on the basis of Western ideas, the product of the internal conflict that arose there, that the United Nations was created. It cannot be said that the rules created within the West for everyone were fair in nature. However, they were the only ones that were created for an organization capable of forcing countries to pursue relatively consistent implementation. Now, under the pressure of its own evolution and external forces, the West is losing the ability to conflict within itself and thereby generate an agenda for the rest of the world. We do not yet know to what extent those states that have already become leaders in the democratisation of world politics will want to offer alternative solutions to the West.
We already see that the most common reaction to the sharp decline in the West's ability to determine the course of international politics is a readiness to behave in a destabilising manner. In part, this can be interpreted as an attempt to regain its central position through a general crisis. However, it is also possible that we are witnessing a spontaneous reaction to the reduction of its own potential and the apparent lack of opportunities (resources and ideas) to restore it. The most destructive behaviour is shown by those forces that act as a kind of proxy for the US or Europe: Israel, Turkey and puppet regimes like Kiev. Each of them, to the best of their ability, is betting on creating a permanent conflict within their own survival zone.
Other countries throughout the world are exhibiting more restraint and are only responding to the challenge thrown at them. They are also doing this in accordance with their capabilities and constraints: Iran has exceptionally large constraints, Russia has them to an insignificant degree, and China, although it has colossal capabilities, is balanced by an incredible number of internal and external constraints. Most other countries throughout the world are looking with alarm at the hysterical behaviour of the US, its European satellites and various proxies, and are trying to use the policy of “appeasement,” while showing varying degrees of persistence in what concerns their core interests. An example of the latter took place in India in recent weeks.
It is difficult to say now what the evolution of international politics will be like, given the disappearance of the organizing centre and, especially, the acquisition by its former states of a new quality in terms of their influence on global stability. However, given a universal deterrent such as mutually assured destruction between Russia and the US, world politics has a certain head start for developing a new normal, in which there will no longer be a single centre creating rules within itself that are applicable for general use. But something new will arise, perhaps reminding us of earlier periods in the history of relations between states. The duration of this reserve of time is unknown to us - no one is able to limit the leading nuclear powers in creating new weapons of defence and attack. At the same time, there is hope that it will still be long enough for world politics to adapt to a completely unusual situation.
Source: Valdai. Discussion club
