World Order Collapses

World Order Collapses

Written by Alfonso Elizondo

The quarter-century following the end of the Cold War was marked by sustained economic growth in many regions of the world, the fall of authoritarian regimes, the expansion of democracy, the proliferation of multilateral cooperation forums and a high degree of stability in the international system.

 

Right now we are living in the post-Cold War era, in which the 2007-2009 financial crisis stands out as marking the key point in the transition from one stage to another, and that was the historic moment that signalled the systemic decline of the United States and the rise of China.

 

However, China faces tough economic, demographic and ecological challenges that could hamper its upward trajectory of the last 50 years. The same thing is happening with the United States, which could become once again the world’s leading power in the short term.

 

It is obvious to everyone that the international environment is more complex and contested than at any other time since the end of World War II, especially since the election of Trump, an opportunity China could use to achieve its ambitions in Asia to control all the countries in that region with its huge capacity for funding.

 

In view of the massive destructive power of nuclear weapons and the economic disruption that a war in the Pacific would cause, no country in the world is interested in seeing China fight with the United States, since both nations are in fact economically interdependent, and this is in addition to the fear of nuclear weapons.

 

So China and the United States will be forced, sooner or later, to make mutual concessions and reach official agreements. With a bit of political wisdom, one can tell what will happen in the first half of the 21st century.

Addendum: We can now no longer resort to the old method of materialist dialectics to try to recreate something similar to what happened in the past. In the first half of the 21st century there is only the present and a few years into the near future.