2015: A Time of Trouble and a Time of Opportunity

... reality. New macro-tendencies are tentatively making their way through this chaos, which may shape the contours of a new world. The first such tendency is the emergence of a new kind of bipolarity. Strictly speaking, contrary to conventional wisdom, bipolarity never existed before. Or, rather, it existed only in the late 1940s and the 1950s until objective circumstances and the mistakes of the Soviet leadership resulted in the confrontation with China. Thanks to the shrewd diplomacy of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon in the early 1970s, there emerged de facto a tripolar system of relations. Together with a group of expensive and unreliable allies, the Soviet Union had to confront the United States and the West all over ...