A New Era

At certain points in time, albeit irregularly, momentous events happen that fundamentally change the course of history. The first world war brought down the Habsburg Empire, produced the Bolshevik revolution, and destroyed imperial Germany. The second world war left two superpowers and irrevocably marginalized western Europe. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union destroyed communism and ended the cold war. And now there is a similar momentous change occurring, partly brought about by the war in the Ukraine, but also, and perhaps more fundamentally, rooted in the rivalry that has surfaced between China and the United States.

Where will it lead? It is highly uncertain, and some might even say unusually uncertain. But the consequences of the other changes just mentioned were perhaps “predictable” only in hindsight. At the time of the Versailles meeting many people believed that the world was entering a new era of peace and brotherhood among states based on ethnicity that had replaced multi-ethnic empires, the Habsburg one in particular, guarded by the League of Nations. How wrong they turned out to be. After the second world war the colonial empires of Europe—England, France and the Netherlands—thought they could return to the status quo ante, not realizing that they were bankrupt and that their colonial subjects had gotten new ideas about their role in the world. Gradually they realized that their future lay in economic growth and prosperity on their home turf. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union seemed to imply the victory of the western world, loosely defined, with the United States as supreme and unchallenged leader. The famous title “The end of history and the last man” captures the illusions of the era, with the states of the world living in peace, competing in commerce, and sharing in prosperity. For a while it seemed to be borne out, and if some things had turned out differently it might still be true, but is now only another shattered illusion.

So what now? The defining fact of the day is that we have two aggressive big powers, Russia and China, keen on not just reconquering lost provinces but also on shaping the world in their own image, just as the United States has tried to do and largely succeeded in doing. The two discontents have few inhibitions about using their military and police power to force their goals on recalcitrant subjects, internally or in the countries or provinces they covet. Being ruled by unscrupulous autocrats, they seem to attract others of their own ilk: North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Saudi-Arabia, Myanmar, and other outcasts. The coming years seem bound to be characterized by a struggle between this axis of evil and those who still are committed to peaceful coexistence and rule-based relations among nations.

The most immediate concern is the outcome of the war in Ukraine. How that war ends will, in turn, have long-lasting repercussions for international relations for years to come, not so much due to what the end will bring, but rather to how that end will come about, whether it will be due to western endurance and resolve or to irresolution, weakness and poor leadership.

First the endurance and resolve. The world press has been full of articles expressing both surprise and satisfaction at the unity of the NATO countries in their response to the Russian invasion. Comprehensive sanctions were quickly imposed and successively widened. The Ukrainians have been supplied with effective weapons that have made it possible for them to halt the invaders and even repel them in some areas. But that help is primarily coming from the United States, and some NATO countries have been reluctant followers, some more so than others. Orban of Hungary and Erdogan of Turkey are unreliable allies trying to ride two horses simultaneously, as is perhaps not surprising of such autocrats. Their affinity with Putin is well known.

So the question is how long will this somewhat fragile alliance hold? This gets us to the irresolution scenario. There are strong reasons why the European resolve, such as there is, will not survive the frosts of the coming winter. Russia has skillfully used its energy supply as a weapon against Western Europe, which over the past decades made itself critically dependent on Russian gas. When Germans and other Europeans begin to shiver in their homes, unable to cook their food and with no workplaces to go to, they will ask themselves hard questions about whether the independence of Ukraine is worth the trouble. They will long back to the good old days when the gas flowed without interruption from the east. Fully restoring that situation will not be possible, but the effect on the support of the Ukraine will be there all the same.

But the decisive factor is what the United States will do. So far, the military aid from the US dwarfs anything else. There is not the slightest chance that the European part of NATO could step in and replace what the United States is doing. There are signs that the support of the United States might not continue for long, as there is opposition both among Democrats and Republicans to the military aid to Ukraine. Several Democratic Congressmen and women have already written to Biden asking him to reconsider the aid to Ukraine. A Republican presidency in 2025 is highly likely, and the most likely Republican candidate is Donald Trump or somebody of his ilk. That could very well be the end of military aid to Ukraine, if the war is still ongoing by then. More fundamentally, it could be the end of NATO and other similar commitments by the United States. As our friends on the left like to put it, NATO is an instrument of American imperialism. That is indeed so and the very reason why Norway and other European nations are members of NATO; American interest in protecting NATO members from Russian encroachment is a product of American imperialism in which Europe and many others have a shared interest. Why on earth would the United States be interested in committing manpower and other resources to the defense of Norway or some other far away territory if not to preserve and to promote its influence over world affairs? Many Americans think, and have always thought, that the United States will do just fine on its own, in splendid isolation. They do indeed have a point. If this will be the outcome of the ongoing change to a new era we will see vastly wider spheres of influence for Russia and China, with China taking back Taiwan and Russia widening its sphere of influence in eastern Europe to include the Baltic states, Moldova and Ukraine, and possibly also all previous member states of the Warsaw pact. Russia has long coveted northern Norway. Other European nations would seek and find a suitable accommodation with Russia, which would probably leave them to govern their own affairs to escape the trouble otherwise associated with meddling too deeply in their affairs. A “Finlandization” on a grand scale, to use a term from the cold war, would result.

So much for accommodation and irresolution. But that outcome is, of course, not foreordained. The United States shows some vigorous signs of responding to the challenge of China. China’s economy is second only to the United States, and it is probably a matter of a few years until it overtakes the United States. In per capita terms this could be a matter of 30 years or so if recent growth rates continue. The United States is well aware of what this means in terms of influence over world affairs: such influence goes hand in hand with military and economic might. China is now rapidly building up its military, as its newfound industrial might allows. Recently the Americans have woken up to the Chinese challenge and are trying to hold China back as much as they can. To this end they have banned exports of advanced chips to China, in the hope that this will keep the United States well ahead in that field. This is probably a forlorn hope. Empires of the past have repeatedly tried to keep their technological advantage for themselves by prohibiting exports of technologically advanced goods. All such attempts have failed. There is no reason to believe that the attempt to hold back chipmaking in China will fare any better; there is no reason to expect that the Chinese do not have sufficient ingenuity of their own to produce gadgets that are as technologically advanced as anything in the western world. As a matter of fact, the world’s most advanced chips are produced in Taiwan.

It has long been recognized that China is the number one challenger to the United States. This is simply a matter of economic and technological strength; the basis of military might is economic strength. China is the second largest economy in the world and it has been growing vastly faster than the economy of the United States. Russia is a third rate power and at best characterized as half-potent, as their lack of success in the Ukrainian adventure has amply underlined. There are those in the United States who have called for an alliance with Russia to respond more vigorously to the challenge by China. This would make eminent strategic sense; the dominating hegemon forms an alliance with number three to respond to the challenge of the up and coming hegemon who aspires to become number one. This was articulated a few years ago in an anonymous article entitled “The very long telegram”, inviting comparison with the famous “long telegram” from Moscow by George Kennan at the end of the second world war, describing how to contain the influence of the Soviet Union. To this way of thinking the war in Ukraine must have come as an unwelcome surprise. And it is indeed surprising because Russia has long since lost its position as number two in the world, despite all their nuclear weapons, and they are not likely to regain it by swallowing Ukraine, least of all by military means which will antagonize and debilitate Ukraine for years to come. Why Russia is seeking alliance with China, with which it has had clashing interests in the past, is more than a little surprising, given that Russia is decidedly behind China in terms of economic power and technology, unlike the way things were back in the days of Mao and Stalin. To China Russia will be decidedly number two and probably lagging further and further behind. It seems that Russia, as number two or even less in an alliance with the United States, would have served its interests far better. There was a time when Russia could count on a lot of goodwill and support in the United States and other western nations.

But those days are gone. For a long time Russia will be treated as a pariah by the United States and their allies. Russia has no longer any goodwill to count on, nor should it have. If the United States continues to maintain its global ambitions we will see them and their allies fighting a cold war against both China and Russia and other authoritarian states that are unwilling to cooperate with the United States. This would in fact be good news for Norway and other countries in western Europe and elsewhere that have reason to fear encroachment by Russia and China. As already stated, the interest of the United States to support those far-flung territories is directly related to their global strategic ambitions. The greater those ambitions, the more committed the United States will be to defend its allies.

But there are developments afoot that give reason to doubt whether the United States and their closest and strongest allies have that ambition. The first and foremost obstacle is the climate phobia that increasingly plagues both the United States and western Europe. In order to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that are supposed to create havoc with the world’s climate, both the United States and Europe have pledged to stop using fossil fuels over the coming decades. The problem is that there is no credible alternative to these fuels other than nuclear energy, the use of which is hampered by groundless fear of disasters and problems with long-term storage of spent fuel. The proposed solution—wind and solar power—will not be able to support the industrial economies of the United States and Europe. We have already seen the beginnings of the problems this leads to. The production of electric energy must at all points in time exactly match the demand for energy, which is uncontrollable and depends, among other things, on sudden and uncontrollable weather events. Wind and solar energy compound the problem by making production uncontrollable as well, unless there are very large and costly back-up reserves of other power plants and batteries. We have already seen blackouts and power rationing in places that have become critically dependent on solar and wind energy like Texas, California and South Australia.

In Europe we have seen unprecedented high prices of electricity, a development that began well before the war in Ukraine, but the war has made it worse. Energy-intensive industries in Europe have partly shut down, and some companies have announced relocation to countries that have a cheaper and more reliable power supply. The most astounding announcement is the one by the German chemical agglomerate BASF to relocate to China. On present trends, Europe will not be able to maintain its industrial base, and with it goes the ability to support a credible military power. If the United States goes down the same route it will meet a similar fate. In this scenario we are going to see a world dominated by unscrupulous authoritarian powers whose influence the United States and other western countries will not have the ability to challenge. Or perhaps the will. People who are preoccupied with hypothetical climate changes in the far future and nourish the illusion of maintaining their welfare states without a thought of the material basis needed for that purpose cannot be expected to have the stamina and the endurance to protect themselves against unscrupulous challengers.