The global geopolitical phenomenon of the early 21st century is the end of the dominance of the Western world. The West began its global expansion at the end of the 15th century, when the Spanish arrived in America in 1492 and the Portuguese in India in 1498. Since then, the expansion of the European empires in America, Asia, Africa and Oceania has been the axis of development. geopolitical during the second half of the second millennium. Western dominance not only implied geographic and economic supremacy, but also practical scientific-technological capacity. Paper, gunpowder and printing originate from the East, but in the hands of the West they became instruments of its global expansion. The Spanish and Portuguese empires first; English and French later; and the German and Italian third, were different instruments of Western global dominance.
The decolonization that takes place after the Second World War is probably the dominant political event of the beginning of the global hegemony of the West, and perhaps the return of Hong Kong to China by Great Britain and that of Boa by Portugal to India symbolize , at the end of the 20th century, the meaning of this geopolitical change. The independence of India in the middle of the 20th century is also a fact in that direction.
In the geopolitical vision of the United States at the beginning of the 21st century, its dominant idea is to continue being the power in the Pacific, and for China and Russia the expansion of their influence in the immediate environment. This was expressed verbatim by Biden, who as Obama's Vice President 10 years ago said in Beijing: “The United States is and will continue to be the power of the Pacific”, taking hegemony in the Atlantic for granted. His intention to continue being the bioceanic power par excellence is reflected in his 11 aircraft carriers that sail the world's waters.
Regarding China, its central geopolitical idea is the New Silk Road. It sinks its roots in the passage from the first to the second millennium. It is a fundamentally terrestrial axis, which goes from the coasts of the Far East and the Pacific, to the Baltic in the Atlantic, passing through the Mediterranean. Just as Anglo-Saxon geopolitics has had a maritime vision, China's has been terrestrial. While the United States has borders with only two countries, Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, the Asian power has them with eighteen countries. The New Silk Road is a historical and geographical project that has three chapters arising from geopolitical ambitions: expansion to Southeast Asia, Africa and South America.
Russia is the largest country in the world, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific and is the dominant power in the Arctic. Its geopolitical project is very clear and it began to develop at the beginning of the 18th century by Tsar Pedro I, who defeated Sweden and reached the Baltic. For this Tsar, Russia was the "Power of the Five Seas": Black, Azov, Caspian, Baltic and Arctic (Putin in July, when presenting the new naval strategy, added a sixth: the Oj, where he has islands in dispute with Japan ). The Russian geopolitical project in the 21st century is the reconstitution of the Soviet Union, dismantled after the dissolution of communism. Europe has been the center of Western global dominance and perhaps for this reason it is the continent that faces the greatest relative setback. Its central challenge is to maintain the cohesion achieved through the European Union and its key debate is whether to continue as a subordinate ally to the United States or try to play a balanced policy between this country and China, from which today it seems far removed.
In the first decades of the 21st century, the NATO conflicts that are simultaneously developing with Russia and China are actually the struggle between Washington and Beijing for global hegemony. In the long term, the cohesion of the European Union and NATO is a question mark, although it is not in the short or medium term, and the ideological division of the United States is possibly, together with the questioning of the functioning of democracy in the West, its most important ideological threat. Thirty years ago, geopolitics was out of fashion. The idea that the national state was disappearing due to economic globalization and political multilateralism dominated. The new technologies made the territory lose meaning and in which natural resources lose value compared to the possession of knowledge. Nationalism was a receding value. Today the vision is different. New technologies have not only been nationalized, but are a central battleground between the United States and China for global hegemony. The multilateral has weakened and the regional powers have more gravitation. Social networks, which were believed to impose a universal culture, today are more instruments that reinforce identity conflicts. Wars, which thirty years ago were considered a thing of the past, today have once again become a dramatic present, in which diplomats speak like warriors and military exercises are central instruments of foreign policy.
Geopolitics is closely linked to history and at the Davos Forum, Henry Kissinger pointed out that it was a mistake to expel Russia from Europe, because that would make the continent more insecure. It should be remembered that Great Britain and Russia were military allies in the three modern world wars: the Napoleonic ones, as well as the First and Second. He also said that it was a mistake to push Russia into a military alliance with China, something that has happened in recent weeks. He also added on that occasion that Ukraine was going to have to accept territorial concessions. It should be remembered that Khrushchev handed over Crimea to Ukraine on the 300th anniversary of this country agreeing to submit to the Russian Empire. Crimea was, in the middle of the 19th century, the reason for the war that Russia waged with Great Britain, France, Turkey and Sardinia.
Linking the concepts of geopolitics and geoeconomics, the UK's strategic vision for 2030 presented last year points to three prevailing trends: the growing importance of the Indo-Pacific, a more assertive and threatening China, and a greater role for what it calls the “middle powers”. The latter has been corroborated in the almost six months of war between Russia and Ukraine. It should be remembered that countries like Mexico, Brazil and Argentina in Latin America; Egypt, South Africa and Nigeria in Africa; Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam in Asia; and Saudi Arabia and the Emirates in the Arab world, coincided, without prior coordination, in condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine because it affected the principle of sovereignty, and they did not join the economic sanctions against Russia carried out by Europe and the United States at the same time. for the same reason, because it affects the principle of sovereignty. That is, they have maintained an independent position in the conflict. Moving forward, a geopolitical axis is drawn between the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere. But the first will continue to be in the coming centuries, the one that concentrates population and resources. Historically, the geopolitical has been linked to the military capacity of the powers to achieve their strategic interests.
Almost a year into the Ukraine war, Russia's determination to recruit 137,000 men for its Armed Forces ; the decision by NATO and its allies announced on August 23 that they will maintain support for Ukraine "for years"; and the geopolitical conflicts that are developing simultaneously between the Western alliance and its allies around Ukraine and Taiwan, show a dangerous and uncertain global geopolitical situation.
Geopolitics of the 21st century and almost a year of war in Ukraine
The global geopolitical phenomenon of the early 21st century is the end of the dominance of the Western world. The West began its global expansion at the end of the 15th century, when the Spanish arrived in America in 1492 and the Portuguese in India in 1498. Since then, the expansion of the European empires in America, Asia, Africa and Oceania has been the axis of development. geopolitical during the second half of the second millennium. Western dominance not only implied geographic and economic supremacy, but also practical scientific-technological capacity. Paper, gunpowder and printing originate from the East, but in the hands of the West they became instruments of its global expansion. The Spanish and Portuguese empires first; English and French later; and the German and Italian third, were different instruments of Western global dominance.
The decolonization that takes place after the Second World War is probably the dominant political event of the beginning of the global hegemony of the West, and perhaps the return of Hong Kong to China by Great Britain and that of Boa by Portugal to India symbolize , at the end of the 20th century, the meaning of this geopolitical change. The independence of India in the middle of the 20th century is also a fact in that direction.
In the geopolitical vision of the United States at the beginning of the 21st century, its dominant idea is to continue being the power in the Pacific, and for China and Russia the expansion of their influence in the immediate environment. This was expressed verbatim by Biden, who as Obama's Vice President 10 years ago said in Beijing: “The United States is and will continue to be the power of the Pacific”, taking hegemony in the Atlantic for granted. His intention to continue being the bioceanic power par excellence is reflected in his 11 aircraft carriers that sail the world's waters.
Regarding China, its central geopolitical idea is the New Silk Road. It sinks its roots in the passage from the first to the second millennium. It is a fundamentally terrestrial axis, which goes from the coasts of the Far East and the Pacific, to the Baltic in the Atlantic, passing through the Mediterranean. Just as Anglo-Saxon geopolitics has had a maritime vision, China's has been terrestrial. While the United States has borders with only two countries, Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, the Asian power has them with eighteen countries. The New Silk Road is a historical and geographical project that has three chapters arising from geopolitical ambitions: expansion to Southeast Asia, Africa and South America.
Russia is the largest country in the world, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific and is the dominant power in the Arctic. Its geopolitical project is very clear and it began to develop at the beginning of the 18th century by Tsar Pedro I, who defeated Sweden and reached the Baltic. For this Tsar, Russia was the "Power of the Five Seas": Black, Azov, Caspian, Baltic and Arctic (Putin in July, when presenting the new naval strategy, added a sixth: the Oj, where he has islands in dispute with Japan ). The Russian geopolitical project in the 21st century is the reconstitution of the Soviet Union, dismantled after the dissolution of communism. Europe has been the center of Western global dominance and perhaps for this reason it is the continent that faces the greatest relative setback. Its central challenge is to maintain the cohesion achieved through the European Union and its key debate is whether to continue as a subordinate ally to the United States or try to play a balanced policy between this country and China, from which today it seems far removed.
In the first decades of the 21st century, the NATO conflicts that are simultaneously developing with Russia and China are actually the struggle between Washington and Beijing for global hegemony. In the long term, the cohesion of the European Union and NATO is a question mark, although it is not in the short or medium term, and the ideological division of the United States is possibly, together with the questioning of the functioning of democracy in the West, its most important ideological threat. Thirty years ago, geopolitics was out of fashion. The idea that the national state was disappearing due to economic globalization and political multilateralism dominated. The new technologies made the territory lose meaning and in which natural resources lose value compared to the possession of knowledge. Nationalism was a receding value. Today the vision is different. New technologies have not only been nationalized, but are a central battleground between the United States and China for global hegemony. The multilateral has weakened and the regional powers have more gravitation. Social networks, which were believed to impose a universal culture, today are more instruments that reinforce identity conflicts. Wars, which thirty years ago were considered a thing of the past, today have once again become a dramatic present, in which diplomats speak like warriors and military exercises are central instruments of foreign policy.
Geopolitics is closely linked to history and at the Davos Forum, Henry Kissinger pointed out that it was a mistake to expel Russia from Europe, because that would make the continent more insecure. It should be remembered that Great Britain and Russia were military allies in the three modern world wars: the Napoleonic ones, as well as the First and Second. He also said that it was a mistake to push Russia into a military alliance with China, something that has happened in recent weeks. He also added on that occasion that Ukraine was going to have to accept territorial concessions. It should be remembered that Khrushchev handed over Crimea to Ukraine on the 300th anniversary of this country agreeing to submit to the Russian Empire. Crimea was, in the middle of the 19th century, the reason for the war that Russia waged with Great Britain, France, Turkey and Sardinia.
Linking the concepts of geopolitics and geoeconomics, the UK's strategic vision for 2030 presented last year points to three prevailing trends: the growing importance of the Indo-Pacific, a more assertive and threatening China, and a greater role for what it calls the “middle powers”. The latter has been corroborated in the almost six months of war between Russia and Ukraine. It should be remembered that countries like Mexico, Brazil and Argentina in Latin America; Egypt, South Africa and Nigeria in Africa; Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam in Asia; and Saudi Arabia and the Emirates in the Arab world, coincided, without prior coordination, in condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine because it affected the principle of sovereignty, and they did not join the economic sanctions against Russia carried out by Europe and the United States at the same time. for the same reason, because it affects the principle of sovereignty. That is, they have maintained an independent position in the conflict. Moving forward, a geopolitical axis is drawn between the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere. But the first will continue to be in the coming centuries, the one that concentrates population and resources. Historically, the geopolitical has been linked to the military capacity of the powers to achieve their strategic interests.
Almost a year into the Ukraine war, Russia's determination to recruit 137,000 men for its Armed Forces ; the decision by NATO and its allies announced on August 23 that they will maintain support for Ukraine "for years"; and the geopolitical conflicts that are developing simultaneously between the Western alliance and its allies around Ukraine and Taiwan, show a dangerous and uncertain global geopolitical situation.
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