For the implementation of a new multipolar world order without war

by Stefan Hofer,* Basel

(19 September 2022) After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the European socialist states, after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA),¹ the power elites in the West triumphed that the capitalist market economy and the Western system of states controlling it, dominated by the USA, had finally prevailed in the system competition with the socialist world, thereby defeating socialism. The end of history had already been proclaimed.

The message of the bombing of Serbia and the war in Iraq was: we, the USA and the NATO led by us, can now determine where things go all over the world, what is permissible and what is not; we are the victors of history; there is no longer a counter-power.

The 30 years that have passed since then, have shown that this was a glaring misjudgement. Above all, the phenomenal economic rise of the People’s Republic of China combined with an internationalist geostrategic reorientation of this state’s policy has created a new, stronger counter-power that is increasingly limiting the power of the USA and its junior partners.

The establishing of a stable pro-Western regime in Iraq has not succeeded. The desired regime change in Iran and Syria has not succeeded either. In Serbia, too, a clearly pro-Western regime could not be installed. The regime changes in Nicaragua and Venezuela, which was attempted by all means, has failed and in Cuba, too, regime change has not yet succeeded. In Latin America (in Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and recently also in Colombia), developments are underway that displease the USA and are only possible thanks to the changed global balance of power.

Under Putin, Russia, which is not a socialist country any more, was no longer prepared to accept the global hegemony of the USA and to become a junior partner in the US-dominated Western system of states or to subordinate itself to the USA, with the result that since then the West has tried to outlaw, weaken and destabilise Russia as an authoritarian and undemocratic power.

However, the US-dominated West’s policy against Russia has not yet led to the desired regime change. Rather, in recent years, Russia and China have developed and deepened their strategic partnership in the cooperation in politics, in the economy and in the military defence of their interests.

The People’s Republic of China and Russia, together with other states, are striving for a new multipolar world order in which a hegemonic power with its junior partners can no longer determine what is permissible and what cannot be tolerated, or the hegemonic power USA can no longer determine what its “vital interests” are and how it wants to assert and enforce them everywhere in the world.

This new world order will offer peoples and states completely different opportunities to choose the path they want to take for their social and economic development, freely and without pressure from a hegemonic power. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the BRICS group are international organisations that aim to create a new multipolar world order.

The USA and its junior partners, politically referred to as the “West”, want to defend the capitalist world order with the USA as the leading power by all means against efforts to impose a new multipolar world order based on the principle of equality of peoples.

However, the USA and its alliance partners cannot close their eyes to the fact that, above all due to the rapid development of the People’s Republic of China, the international balance of power is shifting from year to year to the disadvantage of the West. China is becoming stronger and stronger economically and militarily and will be the strongest economic power on earth in just a few years.

Because the USA wants to stop this development, it is doing everything it can to sabotage the economic growth and scientific and technological progress of the People’s Republic of China. However, they must realise that they have little success in doing so. They rightly explain that the struggle against the People’s Republic of China is not simply a competition between capitalist economic powers, but a systemic competition.

In this constellation, there is a danger that the USA could try to stop and reverse the further rise of the People’s Republic of China and the further strengthening of the forces advocating a new multipolar world order by military means, i.e. by war, as long as they are still militarily superior in their estimation. The USA would like to wage such a war as far away from its territory as possible and, if possible, with the use of armies from allied states. Such a war would be an unimaginable inferno and must be prevented at all costs.

Recently, the USA has adopted huge rearmament programmes to ensure military superiority. Since they maintain that they are and must remain the legitimate global hegemonic power, they believe they have a right to military superiority on a global scale to militarily secure their hegemony.

Since the end of the Second World War, the USA has always led the arms race and it is now forcing China and Russia into further military armament efforts, since the USA will only be deterred from a major war against China and Russia if it knows that such a war would also result in the devastation and extensive destruction of the USA. With the arms race, Reagan wanted to weaken the Soviet Union economically, due to high expenditure for arms systems, ultimately succeeding. However, this will not succeed with the People’s Republic of China, since China today is already much stronger economically than the Soviet Union ever was.

In view of this serious danger of war, it is of the utmost importance today, regardless of ideological and religious orientation, to gather and mobilise the forces that want to prevent war, and pursue a powerful commitment to disarmament and against war. A strong international peace movement against extensive rearmament and war is needed.

* Stefan Hofer, born in 1948, is a Swiss citizen residing in Basel. He worked as a lawyer in Basel for 40 years. He has been retired for some years now.

(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)

1 The “Council for Mutual Economic Assistance” was an international organisation of socialist states led by the Soviet Union. CMEA was founded in 1949 as the socialist counterpart to the Marshall Plan and the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation. (Wikipedia)