By Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein
Last week we made a descriptive observation of international events, but making an analysis of them is a bit more complex. It seems to me that the difficulties come from the idea that it is possible to understand the current situation from a dichotomous vision of unipolarity vs. bipolarity and that the categories of analysis used during the Cold War still retain validity. Some analysts even speak of the emergence of a new China-United States bipolarity.
A few days ago, a friend who is always well informed and concerned about following the events of international reality wrote to me to say: “I don’t understand what the game is. I’m lost. Maybe the empire wants to redesign the world. You wrote something many years ago about the divisions…”
All of this motivated me to write this article, which, due to its length, had to be published in two parts, which is not necessarily advantageous. Indeed, in March 2014, my book “The Balance of Power: The Reasons for the Balance of the International System” was published in Chile first, and then in Argentina by the Biblos publishing house. A few months later, in September, the English edition of Henry Kissinger’s work “World Order” was published.
In my book, in an attempt to establish what the international system of the future would be, I reviewed the existing variants based on the study of the causes of conflicts and the cooperation between States to resolve them. Then, I explained the proposals of bipolarity, multilateralism, multipolarity and apolarity that were on the table. Personally, I dared to state that the various existing conditions announced that, in the medium term, an international system of balance of power would be established.
The clearest definition of the balance came from the studies of the American political scientist Morton Kaplan who, in a work written in 1966 entitled: “Some obstacles in the research of international systems”, established that the actors in the balance had to be at least 5, exclusively of a national character and fit the category of “essential national actor for the system to function”.
He then instituted six fundamental rules that characterize the balance of power system. These include negotiating before fighting, fighting before failing to increase capabilities, stopping fighting before eliminating a key player, opposing any coalition that tries to dominate, limiting those players that accept supranational organizational principles, and allowing defeated or limited players to re-enter the system.
This is a very succinct summary of the proposal outlined by Kaplan. In my book, published just 11 years ago, I argued that, from my perspective, for China the search for balance is part of its permanent policy while for the United States, a wounded beast that lashes out, balance is an obligation for survival.
My opinion was and is that the world is moving towards a balance of powers. The possibility of destroying the planet as an option to impose capitalism is not viable. Capitalists are immoral, not suicidal. Accumulation has a limit – which is currently imposed by opposing powers – which, in fact, point to a deepening of weakness and the loss of imperial hegemony. A rationality of capital – if it exists and is possible – establishes as more viable a balance that allows it to maintain a share of power rather than resorting to a nuclear confrontation in which it is difficult to obtain any gain.
As I said before, a few months after the publication of my book, the Penguin publishing group Random House published Kissinger’s book under the suggestive title “World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History.” From another perspective, even antagonistic to mine, Kissinger establishes that balance is the only alternative for the United States to preserve its power.
Shortly before the publication of his book, at the end of August 2014, Kissinger wrote an article entitled “On the Assembly of a New World Order” which was published in the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal. In this text, he advances some elements that he develops much more extensively in his book. He considers it positive that democracy and participatory governance have gone from being an aspiration to becoming a “universal reality”. Watch out, it should be noted that Kissinger talks of “participatory governance”.
He points out that most of the planet is made up of countries that form independent sovereign states but adds that Europe does not have the attributes to create a state, which offers a “tempting vacuum of authority.” Here, he seems to be aiming to update the characteristics of the essential national states mentioned by Kaplan, which are oriented towards the configuration of a balance between China, Russia, the United States, India and some European country that will emerge as a leader in the current conflict: Germany? The United Kingdom? France? It doesn’t matter which one, but it will be only one of them.
Kissinger believed that the international order was facing a paradox, since – according to him – prosperity depended on the success of globalization, but the process was producing a political reaction that aimed to question its objectives. To resolve this anomaly, he proposed the creation of “an effective mechanism for the great powers to consult and possibly cooperate on the most consequential issues.”
To achieve this, the United States would have to accept that there are two apparently contradictory levels: universal principles on the one hand and particular local and regional characteristics on the other. In any case, Kissinger did not abandon his imperialist ideological foundation when he established that everything must be considered from the perspective of the exceptional nature of the United States.
Domestically, however, this is happening because American citizens will come to understand that, in colloquial terms, they accept that they are not the only ones living on this planet, and that they must give up some of their rights in order to advance globalization, and that even those rights should continue to be violated [as is happening today in the United States] to make room for the opinions of other countries.
Already in the book, Kissinger believes that different cultural traditions allow the concept of order to be established as the basis of international relations. In this, he seems to contradict Huntington, who believed that the future would be marked by civilizational conflicts. On the contrary, he believes that current conflicts have originated in the identification of opposing ideas about the form that the international system should take at a time when the challenge is to organize the regional order while ensuring that this order is compatible with peace and stability in the rest of the world.
Without seeming to be writing anything, Kissinger believes that there is a great risk if the West tries to extend its model of democracy throughout the world, warning that in particular, “American idealism” without a clear strategy to put it into practice will not lead to amplifying the presence of “liberal democracy” throughout the world.
The notions of imperialism and equilibrium may seem antagonistic, but they are not. I want to reiterate that for the United States it is about survival. Perhaps it is necessary to study Kissinger’s book to understand the international performance of the new US government. It is known that during the first Trump administration, well into his 90s, Kissinger was a frequent visitor to the White House. He died in 2023 at the age of 100, and his ideas and his imprint form the core of the international performance of the United States in the current situation.
In December 2022, a few months after the start of the Russian Military Operation in Ukraine, with Joe Biden in power in Washington, Kissinger, in an article entitled “How to avoid another world war?”, opined that peace should be sought with a double objective: to confirm Ukraine’s freedom and to define a new international structure in which Russia should have a place. Likewise, the former Secretary of State disagreed with the opinion that Russia was forced to become a powerless country after the conflict in Ukraine since it was imperative to recognize that Russia “had contributed decisively to the search for world equilibrium and the balance of power for more than half a millennium” so its historical role should not be degraded.
The issues that have been brought to the forefront of current international dynamics, such as the deportees from the United States, the Panama Canal or Greenland, are just smokescreens to “entertain” the planet and make it think and debate about issues that are not priorities. According to US Senator Bernie Sanders, Trump’s real objective is to “illegally and unconstitutionally dismantle government agencies” so that the billionaires and the “ruling classes [who] have always wanted and believed that [power] is theirs by right, [obtain] more power, more control, more wealth.” To do so, they need to blow up the country’s institutions and restructure the international system according to the parameters indicated by Trump.
Of course, to achieve this, they need China, not Russia, to be the enemy in the new system they want to build. However, given the strategic deepening of the critical situation, the only solution to try to avoid catastrophe and safeguard some share of power is to focus on the search for balance, as Kissinger pointed out.
This was made clear almost two years ago, in May 2023, by US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks at a conference in Washington, where she stated that the Pentagon perceived China as the military challenge that set the pace for her country and “the only strategic competitor with the will and increasingly the ability to remake the international order.” She added that China constituted “a generational challenge,” which, while it will change over time, “is not going anywhere.”
Recalling Kissinger’s influence during the 20th century, Hicks recalled the historical experience of facing the Soviet Union, a competitor that she said was “slow and cumbersome,” while now, in terms of defense, the American nation has to “evolve faster than the threats.”
Hicks said that in this “new era of strategic competition,” the goal of the United States “is to deter, because competition did not mean conflict.” According to the undersecretary, the Pentagon’s success was that “China’s leaders wake up every day, consider the risks of aggression, and conclude: ‘Today is not the day, and think about that today and every day between now and 2027, now and 2035, now and 2049, and beyond’”—curiously pointing to the landmark years in which the People’s Republic of China has set out to achieve strategic objectives.
At this point, Trump knows the costs of maintaining 800 military bases and 1.32 million soldiers outside of his territory, not counting 11 aircraft carrier strike groups of which 7 are deployed and 4 are under repair with a very large economic burden that conspires with the objective of making “America great again.” For this reason, he has anticipated the circumstances and on February 20 he expressed his willingness to negotiate with Russia and China to reduce the number of nuclear warheads, emphasizing that he considers the use of atomic weapons and the increase in the number of nuclear powers unacceptable. Paraphrasing former President Bill Clinton, one could say “It’s the economy, stupid.”
It must be said clearly and reiterated: the post-war international system has collapsed and is about to give way to a new one. It is true that NATO continues to exist formally, but the reality is that, as President Macron certified in November 2019, it is “brain dead”. The General Secretariat is an empty position created only so that Europeans believe they can decide something. True power rests on the shoulders of the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, who is always an American general. It is already being said that Trump will order the withdrawal of his troops deployed in Eastern Europe, in those countries that were part of the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact. This would return to the status quo at the end of the Cold War when the Soviet Union disappeared, and the West made commitments to Russia that it never fulfilled.
Now, when top-level delegations from Russia and the United States met in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, “the waters are returning to their course.” Marco Rubio knows that Sergei Lavrov is not the unworthy and foolish foreign minister of Panama, nor is Putin the subservient José Raúl Mulino. It is not about the size and power of one country over the other. A Panamanian leader, General Omar Torrijos, forced the United States to sit down and talk, negotiated as equals only with the power given to him by the dignity and history of the heroic Panamanian people, and won: he forced them to return the canal.
In Riyadh, Rubio had to measure his words and even his gestures. It was a first step, which was more a matter of bilateral politics than a review of the international agenda, although the issue of Ukraine was on the table. But the fact that the two largest nuclear powers on the planet sat down to talk and that some of their main leaders looked at each other face to face and extinguished the match that only a few weeks ago threatened to ignite the fire of nuclear disaster, indicates a relief and a positive path for all peace-loving and life-loving humanity.
Today there is doubt, confusion and uncertainty, and for Europeans, perplexity, but we must get used to it: this is the Trump dynamic, and this will be the case for at least the next four years. In the meantime, while acknowledging and applauding what happened in Riyadh and the events that have led to the easing of the possibility of a nuclear war, we must always remember Commander Ernesto Che Guevara when on November 30, 1964, from Santiago de Cuba, he recommended that in imperialism, “one could not trust even a little bit, not at all.”