The New World Order Will Be Defined by New Dividing Lines

Ukraine will not succeed in shutting its eyes and peacefully drifting in a boat down the river between two powerful worlds without strengthening its state power every single minute: its economy, army, diplomacy, information strategy, and global influence.

On July 13, 2020, the United States stated that China's claims to territories and resources in the South China Sea were 'completely illegal' and condemned 'Beijing's attempts to bring them under its control'.

As is well known, China is disputing control over territories in the South China Sea region with a number of countries in the Asia-Pacific region. It Furthermore, it is no secret that from the very beginning of its existence, the United States has relied on maritime trade as a source of the country's wealth and prosperity. According to various estimates, around 125 million Americans currently live in coastal areas of the US, with 80 per cent of the country's exports and up to 90 per cent of its foreign trade being carried out by sea.

It is no coincidence that Roger Wicker, US Senator and Chair of the US Congress Subcommittee on Maritime Affairs, and Jerry Hendrix, Director of Defence Programmes at the Centre for a New American Security, emphasised in The National Interest: 'Protecting freedom of navigation is a paramount U.S. interest.'

Meanwhile, Washington's aforementioned statement also serves as an indicator of today's large-scale geopolitical shifts as evidenced, for example, by the landmark assertion that 'The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire'.

Clearly, the transition to a new world order is gradually approaching its first stage, against the backdrop of attempts to alter the global balance of power, as yet amorphous coalitions of states are emerging in various regions of the world, united solely by shared national interests.

The old world order, with its system of international security law that existed following the end of the Second World War and the Cold War, with its division into the 'World of Democracy' and the 'World of Communism', and later the 'Developing World', is practically ceasing to exist. Russia's annexation of Crimea, without a corresponding response to its military aggression and the changing of borders in the heart of Europe from other nuclear-weapon states that signed the Budapest Memorandum, has also practically buried the system of international law in the field of nuclear non-proliferation.

The isolationism and national self-interest of the current US leadership, China's traditionally distinct ideological path – as it too aspires to global leadership – and the consequences of the coronavirus have significantly accelerated other centrifugal trends which will evidently soon determine the overall direction on the international stage. We are already seeing signs of this today during important votes within the UN.

At the same time, the overall assessment of the situation on the international stage is complicated not only by global instability, which is intensifying year on year, but also by the unpredictability of the superpowers' behaviour, the intensification of an uncontrolled arms race involving both nuclear and conventional weapons, and the emergence of new threats that only yesterday seemed taken straight from the scripts of numerous disaster movies.

We can now observe the onset of a struggle for new global leadership amongst states inclined to disregard human rights – at least human rights in countries other than their own – to impose their will on other members of the international community, and to violate international law, even by countries with a genuine, rather than a fictitious, democratic system. This system, despite all its flaws, nevertheless remains the best possible path for the development of civilisation on the planet.

For the time being, one thing can be said: the dividing line of this confrontation is likely to run along the intersection of the key interests of the United States of America and China, and its arena will evidently be the whole world. Although it is still rather difficult to envisage the exact configuration of the camps of supporters of each of these global poles, there are grounds to believe that its contours will become apparent in the very near future.

Ukraine will not succeed in shutting its eyes and peacefully drifting in a boat down the river between two powerful worlds without strengthening its state power every single minute: its economy, army, diplomacy, information strategy, and global influence. That is, if it truly wishes to remain an independent and influential country within the global community.

Date: July 17, 2020

Source: https://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/smeshko/5f113c29ca5f9/

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