Naka-pin na Tweet
Timofey Bordachev: Here’s why building a new world order to break Western hegemony won’t be an easy task rt.com/russia/580626-…
Full article for those in blocked countries:
Timofey Bordachev: Here’s why building a new world order to break Western hegemony won’t be an easy task
Published: 1 Aug 2023 | 13:48 GMT
Even if Russia succeeds in Ukraine, it would be somewhat naive to expect our adversaries to change their view of the world.
The axiom of Western foreign policy logic is the fundamental impossibility of a just international order. This conclusion was not drawn by our adversaries out of thin air, and not simply out of a desire to provide an ideological basis for a world order that serves only their interests. It has emerged in the course of the historical process, on the basis of the huge experience of the history of inter-state relations in Europe – perhaps the richest if we are talking about such a geographically localized part of humanity. Several millennia of tumultuous social interaction and inter-state clashes have formed the basis of the political culture of the powers with which Russia has historically been in a state of confrontation.
The reason for this entrenched injustice, as all Western science and civilization assures us, is that the balance of power between states is linked to objective factors of a geopolitical nature and will therefore always remain the cause of its inequality. It is impossible to solve this problem, and at best we can talk about reducing its negative impact on global security. This logic seems quite reasonable. Especially since the middle of the last century, it has been reinforced by the factor of nuclear weapons, the possession of huge arsenals of which puts some powers in an inherently superior position. Now international politics is entering a new phase of development, but the nuclear factor remains central to the survival of the great powers.
Dmitry Trenin: Russia is making its biggest geopolitical shift for 300 years. Here’s how it’s playing out.
Moreover, the last 500 years of world political history have indeed been marked by the total power dominance of the West. This has allowed its leading powers to shape the basis of international law and the rules of the game, which since the mid-19th century have been imposed on the entire world. As Henry Kissinger, who recently celebrated his 100th birthday, has noted: “The genius of the Westphalian system and the reason it spread across the world was that its provisions were procedural, not substantive.”
So, the modern international order is based on a procedure created by the countries of the West, and the central idea underlying this procedure is the inherent injustice of international politics.
The creation of numerous international institutions in the last century has not changed anything in this respect. As is well known, they were also created on the basis of the balance of power between states and, in this sense, had no effect whatsoever on the continuation of the policy of arbitrariness pursued in past centuries by the strong against the weak. Nor does the UN, which we love because of the exclusive formal rights granted to Russia, represent a revolutionary solution that would remove injustice from world politics. In its present form, it is the product of Western intellectual endeavor, which has allowed it to maintain its dominance even as Russia has emerged from the Second World War and after the re-emergence of China. As for all other relatively large international organizations, they are tools in the hands of those with the most serious power capabilities.
1/
English
