The “American peace”

Dmitry Kosyrev

Yes, we know, we have known for a long time that the “American peace”, which was almost established after 1991, is over. And there are so many publications on this topic that you can’t keep track of them all. But try to explain to us what kind of world will be next or already exists – and here everything is sad with ideas.
An article in the American journal Foreign Affairs puts the question well, cheerfully and boldly: the new world will come because Germany and Japan are changing before our eyes. But then the author predicts in the most timid way (in fact, he consoles): yes, nothing special will happen in this case, there will be a slightly different West, everything else will remain as it is.
And then it becomes somehow too obvious that it, “other”, even today is not the same as it was. And what will happen next… Here you need a person with a good imagination. But not everyone has one.
As for Germany and Japan, the author of the article only lists the obvious. Germany, or rather, its current leaders, speaks of a fundamental change in the entire foreign policy of the country, based on the idea of cooperation in Europe, including with Russia. Jap-an is doing about the same, but timidly and uncertainly, in addition, adjusted for the fact that Tokyo ‘s main headache is China.
Actually, here we have really serious changes, because the important supporting structure of the w-orld order established after the Second World War is crumbling. After all, it was built not only on the East-West balance. There was also the open and unspoken status of the defeated, which was rightly assigned to those who in the 30s and 40s were the leading military and technological powers, each with a trail of allied countries and clients or occupied territories. And the guarantor of maintaining this post-war defeated status of theirs was to a large extent the United States. With the general consent of another center of power – the USSR.
Smart people have long said that this is not forever – two such countries are in a half-bent position. But what exactly does their return to “normality” mean: a rollback to an aggressive policy or something else? So far, even the doubling of military spending by Berlin and Tokyo (and both of them quite officially talk about this) does not mean that their power will be compared with the pre-war status. However, their elites and populations at least understand that they can no longer rely on the United States as a protector (and leader). Which will speed up the process of “normalization” for the two former disenfranchised.
As a result, America, the author writes, “will have to reinvent its military alliances and begin to treat allies as real shareholders in the world order, and not as infantile junior partners.” Yes, it will be difficult at first, but then both the United States and the world will feel better.
Namely, Europe will stop trying to build a single system of existence based on the European Union and NATO, instead it will create some new alliances based on several large countries, always with German participation. Japan will do something similar with a small group of Asian countries that are afraid of China. And then America will have to promote, toget-her with real allies, values and standards that in any case will not be Chinese.
And all? That is, all the changes in the world will come down to restructuring within the Western group of states, which will become less American? Yes, the article does not suggest anything else.
And after all, the author casually touches on one very remarkable shift in the world order. Namely, what began to happen in the Middle East after the actual departure of the Americans from there. Where earlier all regional politics revolved around the enmity between Saudi Arabia and Iran, this main axis for some reason disappears before our eyes, the enmity between Arabs and Iranians is melting away (and it has been for many centuries). And what will happen then – it is impossible to imagine.
In fact, among the numerous team burying the “American world” is dominated by supporters of the theory of chaos. Namely, those who believe that without the American “clamp” the collapse of everything in our world will go unexpectedly and simultaneously. How it happens is best shown by an amazing and seemingly not the largest country in the world – Turkey. She felt years ago that, with or without NATO membership, the Turks were on their own. And they do whatever they want and whatever they want at the slightest opportunity. True, we still need to see such opportunities in time and understand in time that there will be nothing for Turkey’s next initiative. And how many more such Turkeys appear?
A typical mistake of Westerners is to see only their own group of states and their own problems. But so far the countries of Africa or Latin America have had almost no influence on world affairs. And in the new world, that might change.
But here we have a very narrow conversation – it concerns only the currently existing states and their security policy. However, there are still societies and civilizations. And how many other factors, besides traditional military security, can quickly destroy everything around? For example, ideas. Everyone forgot about Islamic extremism – and it is not that it has completely disappeared, especially in our world with its rampant flowering of information technology and the aggressive idiocy of social networks. The same with biological weapons that were tested in American laboratories around the world, but this business began in a different era and was under some kind of control.
And do not think that all of the above and much more are solid threats. That is, for some they are threats, but for others they are opportunities. Change doesn’t have to be from a horror series. A very strong impression on everyone is made by the fact of the existence of large territories where nothing seems to be happening, but life there is exactly why everything is better – and they become centers of attraction for neighbors. This is how the phenomenon of the growth of China and other Asia arose. But after all, the experience can be repeated, and to anyone.
What is the result: the world will be built anew, from below, from temporary and unexpected alliances of groups of states for a variety of reasons. Not only will there not be an American world, but the world that many of us have dreamed of will also (probably) not exist. One where the African Union is responsible for order in Africa, ASEAN in Southeast Asia, and so on. The UN as a platform for conversations will not go anywhere, but many of its divisions and mechanisms will lose their significance. Everything will be created anew, locally, not globally. It is in the form of a reaction to emerging problems. And the only thing that is clear: now the one who does the previously unthinkable wins.