Collapse Of The US-centric Global Order And Its Aftermath

Empowering Weak & Oppressed

Tahir Mahmoud

Rajab 20, 1445 2024-02-01

News & Analysis

by Tahir Mahmoud (News & Analysis, Crescent International Vol. 53, No. 12, Rajab, 1445)

As far back as 2017, the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute published a report indicating that the US-led global order is collapsing. The intent of the study was to galvanize the American political establishment to spend more money on military, thus filling pockets of the barons of the military industrial complex.

Contemporary global developments are far more nuanced and multidimensional for the US to simply spend its way out of its decline. The American-centric global order is not merely experiencing a management problem, its fundamental problem is in institutional decay and crisis of values.

The best way to understand the fundamental institutional deterioration the US is experiencing today is to look at the presidential primaries. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are once again the front runners for the upcoming presidential selection process masquerading as an election.

A country with over 300 million people is unable to produce political leaders with a fresh program and new vision. This is not only due to the oligopolist nature of the American political system.

It is also because its intellectual and ideological foundations are inapplicable to today’s realities. Simply put, the world progressed, while the US regressed.

If one examines various sectors of the US empire it becomes clear that it faces severe problems in many fields, from economics to foreign policy.

There is a massive detachment between the ruling caste and millions of ordinary Americans. When one looks at this reality through the perspective of a society obsessed with guns and a massive cultural divide, the emergence of a deadly socio-political cocktail is quite clear.

While these factors do not mean that the US is about to experience internal collapse like Yugoslavia or the USSR, it certainly demonstrates that in these conditions a country cannot retain its status as a global hegemon.

On the foreign policy front, things are even more catastrophic for Washington. It is not merely due to the increased pushback from traditional opponents of the US.

Multipolarity is driving America’s allies to make choices in alignment with the realities of the new global order rather than Washington’s ambitions and priorities. While the US is trying its outmost to marginalize China economically, the German private sector has taken a different view.

Germany’s BASF began operations at its massive plant in China and initiated the construction of a new polyethylene facility. Although this may seem unrelated to US imperialism, when viewed in the broader context, it certainly is.

A significant business shift to China by BASF shows that economic actors now have options outside of the west-centric economic and political architecture. There are greener pastures beyond western imperialism.

This reality combined with the fact that Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as China’s top oil supplier is a clear indicator that American interests can be disregarded. Saying no to American imperial ambitions is no longer taboo. It has become the norm.

Economic and geopolitical issues are not the only indicators which highlight a fundamental disintegration of a global political system instituted by the US since 1945.

One of the key sacred foundations of the west-centric systems of governance, centred around citizenship, is also crumbling. This will destabilize western regimes internally. Specially as the cultural wars progress.

The notion of citizenship instituted by western regimes as the most sacred pillar of their political order was being violated for many years against renditioned Muslims.

Inapplicability of basic citizenship rights of Muslims was easy to sweep under the rug. This ended up having a boomerang effect.

Today, modern, and mainstream fascist parties in western political domains are openly planning mass deportation of their citizens. Violation of citizenship sacredness was not initiated by the so-called far right groups. It was the ‘liberal’ Barack Obama who instituted the policy of assassinating US citizens abroad.

This brief overview is a clear indicator that a deadly cocktail of challenges is brewing for the order imposed by the west. This leads to the question as to how this west-centric global order will unravel.

In the economic domain it is quite evident that China will be the primary pole of attraction for developing and developed markets. Whether through investment, manufacturing or logistics, economics without doing business with China will be quite challenging.

There is plenty of evidence for this, but the most intriguing one is the drive by Germany to expand trade relations with China. Even though Berlin understands that this is to the detriment of America’s global standing.

As regionalization of the global economics is rapidly taking place, major players will be scrambling for Africa’s resources and markets.

Recent events in West Africa and beyond show that being a western country is a political liability in Africa today.

Increasingly African leaders talk frankly about their negative perspective of what western regimes represent and stand for. Like leaders elsewhere in the world, African leaders realize that the days when upsetting western elites meant loss of power are over.

This means that more developing countries in Asia and South America are likely to be granted freer access to African markets and minerals.

Liability of being closely associated with American jingoism and western imperialism will inadvertently lead some European countries to distance themselves from US-centric global policies. This has already started to manifest itself in multiple arenas.

In Europe, Hungary and Serbia are openly defying the western line on Ukraine. Even west European regimes find it difficult to fully obey US-driven sanctions on Russia.

Isolating Russia economically will get a lot more difficult in the coming year as Moscow gains the military upper hand in Ukraine.

To assuage Russia’s “wrath” on western Europe for siding with the US proxy war in Ukraine, Europeans will increasingly court China to stall Moscow by attempting to play Beijing against Moscow. This is unlikely to succeed.

A more plausible scenario is Russia and China playing good cop, bad cop with the Europeans. This will make Europe more dependent on China in economic terms and more accommodating towards Russia geopolitically.

The success of this strategy will depend on how closely Beijing and Moscow coordinate their policies. Currently there is significant cooperation between the two. Time will tell how strategic this cooperation will become.

Climax of the above-described processes is currently taking place in West Asia. The Axis of Resistance is confronting Israeli and US-led genocide in Palestine through low intensity regional war. What is clear is that China understands that it holds many important global leverages.

The only big headache missing from the laundry list of US problems is some type of China-driven political and security pressure in Asia against American interests. It is unlikely that Beijing does not realize this.

If the US continues to cling to its rapidly declining hegemon status, things will get a lot worse before they get any better, if at all. If the Americans and their European surrogates learn that multipolarity means compromising with others, the world might be spared a series of avoidable wars.