Mapping the Multipolar World
Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2023 10:20 am
This is intended to be exploratory in nature.
1. Russia-Iran-India.
Russia and Iran are united by their pariah status in the eyes of the transatlantic alliance. Their relatively small size (in people and treasure) belies their importance as the gatekeepers through the centre of Eurasia. Through the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), Russia is set to finally achieve its childhood dream of acquiring an overland warm-water port that doesn't exit into Japan or the Dardanelles. This is a rather big deal. I once saw a YouTube comment accurately state that the House Words of the Russian people ought to be, "Looking for warm water port". It's a centuries-long ambition.
India, on the other hand, continues its comfortable strategy of non-alignment. It is a friend to all (except China). Happy with the Americans, happy with the Europeans, happy with the Russians, conversant with the Chinese. To understand India you must understand the balance of power in eastern Eurasia. Russia, India, and China form three points of a triangle and China has metastasised beyond the containment of the other two. For reasons that I'll discuss below, the current U.S. Administration is hell-bent on punishing and reducing Russia in Ukraine. There are myriad arguments for and against this policy, but the result is nevertheless a close Russia-China partnership formed around their common enemy. For India, this development is thoroughly untenable and thus India has gone to risky lengths to engage the Russians over the past 18 months. Cheap energy imports don't hurt, either.
The INSTC binds the Indians, Iranians, and Russians together into a conglomeration down the middle of the continent, but there is a shearing force. Russia and Iran lean towards Beijing while India leans towards Washington. Time will tell whether or not the Indians persist in this tripartite bloc, but given the importance of Russia for Delhi's balancing-act with China, and India's importance for Moscow's feud with NATO, there's good reason to believe that this Mackinder-esque corridor through the centre of Eurasia will represent the most, or among the most, important geopolitical relationships for the three nations.
2. China.
To understand China's ambitions for the future, one must first understand the American-lead system of the past half-century. The United States has treated the world as a single community governed by international law. This international jurisprudence has lead Americans (and American corporate media) to treat disobedient foreign governments as if they were insurrectionists operating illegally in an otherwise lawful worldwide society. China avidly rejects this American global legislature and seeks to build one of its own. China stands alone in the world as being the only other nation that wishes to ascend the final rung and become the new global hegemon. Its ambitions are not quarantined to its neighbourhood and it is increasingly stretching its arms.
The past 30-years have been spent building out the capacity to evict the U.S. from East Asia. The kinetic fight has not yet come, but the options for the U.S. are to acquiesce or go to war. Beijing has released the architecture for its bid for global dominance in the Global Development Initiative (GDI) and Global Security Initiative (GSI), which will form the two instruments (economic and military) that it will employ over the next three decades to muscle-out the old American international system. Beijing hopes this will culminate by 2050.
3. Europe.
It may sound strange if it's your first time hearing this, but the European Union is not a democratic organ in the way we would understand it in Westminster or Washington democracies. The executive and upper house are populated with political appointees rather than elected representatives and it's the executive branch (the European Commission) that holds legislative initiative (the authority to craft and submit laws). The only chamber of the seven EU institutions that is duly elected is the European Parliament (lower house), which again does not hold legislative initiative. The EU is actually a technocracy / political bureaucracy of appointees that involves a popular assembly in a vetting process, but the citizenry do not directly wield legislative initiative through their elected representatives.
Unlike the Chinese system which is entirely top-down and ruled by the autocratic Party (with no material checks-and-balances to speak of), the EU still invites popular consent to its rule (through the lower house), but is otherwise still a top-down system. The unelected executive branch proposes the laws that it wishes to execute but seeks Parliamentary consent before ratification. This differs to the Westminster or Washington systems whose legislative initiative is vested in the House of Commons / House of Representatives and thus legislates (comparatively) from the bottom-up. Quite different approaches to governing.
Within the EU exist four discernible sub-blocs. We have the Scandinavians of the north (Denmark, Sweden, and Finland), the Three Seas Initiative (12 members lead by the Visegrad Group), Club Med, and finally Western Europe proper (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg). The latter presently wields the majority of economic and political power in the EU.
It's the nations of the Three Seas Initiative that I find most interesting. With the exception of Austria, the other 11 members joined the EU after 2004 and represent the post-Soviet states of Europe's east. They are socially more conservative than the Western Europeans and on account of their recent history in the USSR, are growing increasingly uncomfortable with apparent authoritarianism in left-wing political philosophy. At the moment, Europe doesn't exactly have a right wing in the way an Anglo might understand. The two major parties of the European Union (the European People's Party, and the Progressive Alliance for Socialists and Democrats) would be considered Progressive Left by the standards of Anglospheric conservatives. More surprisingly, a left-right divide does not clearly involve itself in EU politics in the way it does in the Anglosphere. A divide is more cleanly observed between Major and Minor parties -- demonstrated by the Left-wing S&D and the ostensibly Right-wing EPP forming a coalition to head out the various minor parties. It's contentious to say, but this resembles to my own eyes a single-party system, at least in 2023.
This may change as the Three Seas Initiative shifts the economic balance of power away from Western Europe and towards the East. As the post-Soviet states acquire more economic independence from Berlin, they may begin exercising greater political independence within the EU as well. If Ukraine (with its 40-odd million citizens) emerges victorious in the war and thereafter ascents to the EU and the Three Seas Initiative (if the former, then the latter is almost a foregone conclusion) then the 13 members will collectively represent 150 million European citizens (up from the current 110m) and command perhaps 265 seats (35% of 747) up from the 223 (31% of 705) of today. This would head-out even the 231 seats held by the five Western European states. A victorious Ukraine is likely to be heavily politically indebted to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and the U.S. and thus would represent a formidable ally to the Visegrad group in internal European politics.
In such a scenario, with the Eastern Europeans beginning to operate in an increasingly equal manner (though the East-West economic gulf is likely to remain broad for decades) Europe may finally acquire a counterbalancing conservative half to the prevailing progressive whole. This may sound wildly unpleasant on this particular forum which tilts progressive left, but a pluralistic and balanced democratic system is eminently desirable in my eyes, especially in one of the four global giants. In the decades ahead, currently minor conservative parties (like the ECR) may find more fruitful land in the East of Europe to challenge the existing progressive major parties. Just as the U.S. maintains progressive coasts around conservative hinterlands, Europe too might acquire an easterly right.
On account of Giorgia Meloni, I can imagine a future wherein Franco-Germany (+ the Netherlands and Belgium) represent the left wing of Europe, the Three Seas Initiative the right, and Club Med occupies the position of swing states. Scandinavia might err left and Italy right. Time will tell.
Of note, as Western Europe pushes for decarbonisation, the members of the Three Seas Initiative have quite tacitly rejected this policy direction and are chasing energy security through LNG. The initiative itself is focused on the areas of energy infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, and digital infrastructure along a north-south corridor from Estonia in the north, to Croatia and Bulgaria in the south -- these infrastructures form the basic nation-building foundations of any nation or supranational group. Energy has been identified as the most pressing of the three infrastructure classes and almost all of the investments heretofore undertaken by the 3SI Investment Fund (3SIIF) are related to LNG. These including LNG power plants, LNG terminals, and LNG pipelines. I'm aware so far of 12 major LNG-related projects but I understand there to be a long list of smaller undertakings also. These nations are expected to require an abundance of baseload power as they develop in the decades ahead, and it appears they have selected LNG to make up the bulk. To this end, Ukraine is of central importance. In 2012, enormous LNG resources (2.3 trillion cubic metres) were discovered under Ukraine's share of the Black Sea, which threatened Russia's dominance in European energy supply. Now in 2023, much of the LNG infrastructure being built-out under the Three Seas Initiative is orientated to take Ukrainian natural gas to Polish pipelines and thence north into the Baltic states. This makes it somewhat easier to understand why Poland would be willing to enter the war (or at least, promise to enter the war [appendix 1]) directly if the situation turns sour for Kiev.
So, if Ukraine emerges victorious and supplies the 3SI with cheap energy, it may accelerate the relative economic growth of Eastern Europe and expedite the rebalancing of political power too. Imho, the 3SI receives far less attention internationally than it ought to.
4. ANZUK.
The relationship between the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand remains special. Despite occupying near-antipodes on the globe, these three nations retain an effectively familial relationship. In fact, the citizenry retain a literally familial relationship with the largest foreign-born immigrant group in Australia hailing from Britain -- not English descent, I mean individuals born in the U.K. who then flew over to Australia. There is a greater British diaspora living in Australia than in the entirety of the European Union. The former PM of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, not only undertook her political initiation in the United Kingdom by working as a policy advisor for then-PM, Tony Blair, but in retirement has now returned to the island to receive a damehood (the female equivalent of knighthood) and been appointed as trustee for Prince William's Earthshot prize.
Calls for a CANZUK arrangement (ANZUK + Canada) have received some positive reception in Australia's senate, but the relationship between Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. stands a peg above our relationship with Canada (though that is warm and proximal, also). Our former PM, Scott Morrison, previously said that he was receptive to a CANZUK-like arrangement, but wished to focus on the U.K. first, rather than induct Canada from the outset.
Australia and New Zealand possess an effectively free migration policy through the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement, which makes living in Australia as a Kiwi only fractionally more complicated than living in Australia as a natural-born citizen. Just this year, this arrangement was fortified to make it even easier than before. In 2021, the Australia-U.K. Free Trade Agreement (AUKFTA) was signed and included important provisions to further integration, making it simpler to live and work in either nation and recognising qualifications in both countries.
There exists a potential for a supranational arrangement to form between these three islands, similar in some respects to the European Union, but hopefully differing substantially in implementation to more closely resemble a Westminster-style democracy. We represent 100 million citizens between us and together command an economy of $5.5 trillion. This would put us in the same league as Japan in international standing, elevating us firmly into the second-tier of global powers -- a category currently occupied by Japan and Russia. The dispersal of the U.K. and Australia to opposite halves of the globe may in fact prove to be an ANZUK-arrangement's greatest strength, as a company incorporated under ANZUK might gain access to the European market from London and the Asian market from Sydney or Perth (Perth shares a timezone with Singapore and Beijing). If Canada someday accedes to this arrangement then this fourth corner would batten down the North American market -- the last of the three great markets in the world.
The implications here for weight in foreign policy, common market negotiations, and military power are rather evident. Australia presently has to walk a delicate diplomatic line between Beijing and Washington, as appearing excessively loyal to Washington has raised the question of, "why would China negotiate with us directly when they can just speak to the head office?". ANZUK speaking with one voice would go far in placating this dilemma.
Behind that diplomatic force would rest a military plan-B. Already, Australia and the U.K. are pursuing joint naval hardware in the Global Combat Ship (named the Type 26 City Class in the U.K. and the Hunter Class in Australia), and much to my overwhelming delight, Australia and the U.K. have set about jointly developing a new class of nuclear-powered submarines (the AUKUS Class). Japan, the U.K., and Italy are currently engaged in an endeavour to develop and acquire a new 'sixth-generation' (that silly naming convention) air-dominance fighter called the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP). I'm holding out hope that in the years ahead, Australia will enter into this arrangement to mature our domestic engineering capabilities and acquire a dedicated air superiority jet to complement the F-35. I also just posted another thread proposing a joint Japanese-British-Australian reusable launch vehicle program to compete with the U.S. and China.
Note that while the U.S. will remain Australia's most important ally, it is too large to enter into a combined statehood. Freedom of movement, common market, joint trans-national legislation etc is possible between Australia and NZ, and potentially the U.K., but trickier to imagine with a state 15-times our size in population and economy.
5. The United States.
I'm choosing not to write about the U.S. since it's so famous there's little to add.
6. Various minor powers.
Egypt, Turkey, South Africa, Brazil, a highly hypothetical East African Federation. If anybody has found the above text interesting then perhaps it will be worthwhile also discussing the regional powers of the new multipolar world.
Appendix
[1] https://news.yahoo.com/polish-ambassado ... 21342.html
1. Russia-Iran-India.
Russia and Iran are united by their pariah status in the eyes of the transatlantic alliance. Their relatively small size (in people and treasure) belies their importance as the gatekeepers through the centre of Eurasia. Through the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), Russia is set to finally achieve its childhood dream of acquiring an overland warm-water port that doesn't exit into Japan or the Dardanelles. This is a rather big deal. I once saw a YouTube comment accurately state that the House Words of the Russian people ought to be, "Looking for warm water port". It's a centuries-long ambition.
India, on the other hand, continues its comfortable strategy of non-alignment. It is a friend to all (except China). Happy with the Americans, happy with the Europeans, happy with the Russians, conversant with the Chinese. To understand India you must understand the balance of power in eastern Eurasia. Russia, India, and China form three points of a triangle and China has metastasised beyond the containment of the other two. For reasons that I'll discuss below, the current U.S. Administration is hell-bent on punishing and reducing Russia in Ukraine. There are myriad arguments for and against this policy, but the result is nevertheless a close Russia-China partnership formed around their common enemy. For India, this development is thoroughly untenable and thus India has gone to risky lengths to engage the Russians over the past 18 months. Cheap energy imports don't hurt, either.
The INSTC binds the Indians, Iranians, and Russians together into a conglomeration down the middle of the continent, but there is a shearing force. Russia and Iran lean towards Beijing while India leans towards Washington. Time will tell whether or not the Indians persist in this tripartite bloc, but given the importance of Russia for Delhi's balancing-act with China, and India's importance for Moscow's feud with NATO, there's good reason to believe that this Mackinder-esque corridor through the centre of Eurasia will represent the most, or among the most, important geopolitical relationships for the three nations.
2. China.
To understand China's ambitions for the future, one must first understand the American-lead system of the past half-century. The United States has treated the world as a single community governed by international law. This international jurisprudence has lead Americans (and American corporate media) to treat disobedient foreign governments as if they were insurrectionists operating illegally in an otherwise lawful worldwide society. China avidly rejects this American global legislature and seeks to build one of its own. China stands alone in the world as being the only other nation that wishes to ascend the final rung and become the new global hegemon. Its ambitions are not quarantined to its neighbourhood and it is increasingly stretching its arms.
The past 30-years have been spent building out the capacity to evict the U.S. from East Asia. The kinetic fight has not yet come, but the options for the U.S. are to acquiesce or go to war. Beijing has released the architecture for its bid for global dominance in the Global Development Initiative (GDI) and Global Security Initiative (GSI), which will form the two instruments (economic and military) that it will employ over the next three decades to muscle-out the old American international system. Beijing hopes this will culminate by 2050.
3. Europe.
It may sound strange if it's your first time hearing this, but the European Union is not a democratic organ in the way we would understand it in Westminster or Washington democracies. The executive and upper house are populated with political appointees rather than elected representatives and it's the executive branch (the European Commission) that holds legislative initiative (the authority to craft and submit laws). The only chamber of the seven EU institutions that is duly elected is the European Parliament (lower house), which again does not hold legislative initiative. The EU is actually a technocracy / political bureaucracy of appointees that involves a popular assembly in a vetting process, but the citizenry do not directly wield legislative initiative through their elected representatives.
Unlike the Chinese system which is entirely top-down and ruled by the autocratic Party (with no material checks-and-balances to speak of), the EU still invites popular consent to its rule (through the lower house), but is otherwise still a top-down system. The unelected executive branch proposes the laws that it wishes to execute but seeks Parliamentary consent before ratification. This differs to the Westminster or Washington systems whose legislative initiative is vested in the House of Commons / House of Representatives and thus legislates (comparatively) from the bottom-up. Quite different approaches to governing.
Within the EU exist four discernible sub-blocs. We have the Scandinavians of the north (Denmark, Sweden, and Finland), the Three Seas Initiative (12 members lead by the Visegrad Group), Club Med, and finally Western Europe proper (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg). The latter presently wields the majority of economic and political power in the EU.
It's the nations of the Three Seas Initiative that I find most interesting. With the exception of Austria, the other 11 members joined the EU after 2004 and represent the post-Soviet states of Europe's east. They are socially more conservative than the Western Europeans and on account of their recent history in the USSR, are growing increasingly uncomfortable with apparent authoritarianism in left-wing political philosophy. At the moment, Europe doesn't exactly have a right wing in the way an Anglo might understand. The two major parties of the European Union (the European People's Party, and the Progressive Alliance for Socialists and Democrats) would be considered Progressive Left by the standards of Anglospheric conservatives. More surprisingly, a left-right divide does not clearly involve itself in EU politics in the way it does in the Anglosphere. A divide is more cleanly observed between Major and Minor parties -- demonstrated by the Left-wing S&D and the ostensibly Right-wing EPP forming a coalition to head out the various minor parties. It's contentious to say, but this resembles to my own eyes a single-party system, at least in 2023.
This may change as the Three Seas Initiative shifts the economic balance of power away from Western Europe and towards the East. As the post-Soviet states acquire more economic independence from Berlin, they may begin exercising greater political independence within the EU as well. If Ukraine (with its 40-odd million citizens) emerges victorious in the war and thereafter ascents to the EU and the Three Seas Initiative (if the former, then the latter is almost a foregone conclusion) then the 13 members will collectively represent 150 million European citizens (up from the current 110m) and command perhaps 265 seats (35% of 747) up from the 223 (31% of 705) of today. This would head-out even the 231 seats held by the five Western European states. A victorious Ukraine is likely to be heavily politically indebted to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and the U.S. and thus would represent a formidable ally to the Visegrad group in internal European politics.
In such a scenario, with the Eastern Europeans beginning to operate in an increasingly equal manner (though the East-West economic gulf is likely to remain broad for decades) Europe may finally acquire a counterbalancing conservative half to the prevailing progressive whole. This may sound wildly unpleasant on this particular forum which tilts progressive left, but a pluralistic and balanced democratic system is eminently desirable in my eyes, especially in one of the four global giants. In the decades ahead, currently minor conservative parties (like the ECR) may find more fruitful land in the East of Europe to challenge the existing progressive major parties. Just as the U.S. maintains progressive coasts around conservative hinterlands, Europe too might acquire an easterly right.
On account of Giorgia Meloni, I can imagine a future wherein Franco-Germany (+ the Netherlands and Belgium) represent the left wing of Europe, the Three Seas Initiative the right, and Club Med occupies the position of swing states. Scandinavia might err left and Italy right. Time will tell.
Of note, as Western Europe pushes for decarbonisation, the members of the Three Seas Initiative have quite tacitly rejected this policy direction and are chasing energy security through LNG. The initiative itself is focused on the areas of energy infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, and digital infrastructure along a north-south corridor from Estonia in the north, to Croatia and Bulgaria in the south -- these infrastructures form the basic nation-building foundations of any nation or supranational group. Energy has been identified as the most pressing of the three infrastructure classes and almost all of the investments heretofore undertaken by the 3SI Investment Fund (3SIIF) are related to LNG. These including LNG power plants, LNG terminals, and LNG pipelines. I'm aware so far of 12 major LNG-related projects but I understand there to be a long list of smaller undertakings also. These nations are expected to require an abundance of baseload power as they develop in the decades ahead, and it appears they have selected LNG to make up the bulk. To this end, Ukraine is of central importance. In 2012, enormous LNG resources (2.3 trillion cubic metres) were discovered under Ukraine's share of the Black Sea, which threatened Russia's dominance in European energy supply. Now in 2023, much of the LNG infrastructure being built-out under the Three Seas Initiative is orientated to take Ukrainian natural gas to Polish pipelines and thence north into the Baltic states. This makes it somewhat easier to understand why Poland would be willing to enter the war (or at least, promise to enter the war [appendix 1]) directly if the situation turns sour for Kiev.
So, if Ukraine emerges victorious and supplies the 3SI with cheap energy, it may accelerate the relative economic growth of Eastern Europe and expedite the rebalancing of political power too. Imho, the 3SI receives far less attention internationally than it ought to.
4. ANZUK.
The relationship between the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand remains special. Despite occupying near-antipodes on the globe, these three nations retain an effectively familial relationship. In fact, the citizenry retain a literally familial relationship with the largest foreign-born immigrant group in Australia hailing from Britain -- not English descent, I mean individuals born in the U.K. who then flew over to Australia. There is a greater British diaspora living in Australia than in the entirety of the European Union. The former PM of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, not only undertook her political initiation in the United Kingdom by working as a policy advisor for then-PM, Tony Blair, but in retirement has now returned to the island to receive a damehood (the female equivalent of knighthood) and been appointed as trustee for Prince William's Earthshot prize.
Calls for a CANZUK arrangement (ANZUK + Canada) have received some positive reception in Australia's senate, but the relationship between Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. stands a peg above our relationship with Canada (though that is warm and proximal, also). Our former PM, Scott Morrison, previously said that he was receptive to a CANZUK-like arrangement, but wished to focus on the U.K. first, rather than induct Canada from the outset.
Australia and New Zealand possess an effectively free migration policy through the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement, which makes living in Australia as a Kiwi only fractionally more complicated than living in Australia as a natural-born citizen. Just this year, this arrangement was fortified to make it even easier than before. In 2021, the Australia-U.K. Free Trade Agreement (AUKFTA) was signed and included important provisions to further integration, making it simpler to live and work in either nation and recognising qualifications in both countries.
There exists a potential for a supranational arrangement to form between these three islands, similar in some respects to the European Union, but hopefully differing substantially in implementation to more closely resemble a Westminster-style democracy. We represent 100 million citizens between us and together command an economy of $5.5 trillion. This would put us in the same league as Japan in international standing, elevating us firmly into the second-tier of global powers -- a category currently occupied by Japan and Russia. The dispersal of the U.K. and Australia to opposite halves of the globe may in fact prove to be an ANZUK-arrangement's greatest strength, as a company incorporated under ANZUK might gain access to the European market from London and the Asian market from Sydney or Perth (Perth shares a timezone with Singapore and Beijing). If Canada someday accedes to this arrangement then this fourth corner would batten down the North American market -- the last of the three great markets in the world.
The implications here for weight in foreign policy, common market negotiations, and military power are rather evident. Australia presently has to walk a delicate diplomatic line between Beijing and Washington, as appearing excessively loyal to Washington has raised the question of, "why would China negotiate with us directly when they can just speak to the head office?". ANZUK speaking with one voice would go far in placating this dilemma.
Behind that diplomatic force would rest a military plan-B. Already, Australia and the U.K. are pursuing joint naval hardware in the Global Combat Ship (named the Type 26 City Class in the U.K. and the Hunter Class in Australia), and much to my overwhelming delight, Australia and the U.K. have set about jointly developing a new class of nuclear-powered submarines (the AUKUS Class). Japan, the U.K., and Italy are currently engaged in an endeavour to develop and acquire a new 'sixth-generation' (that silly naming convention) air-dominance fighter called the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP). I'm holding out hope that in the years ahead, Australia will enter into this arrangement to mature our domestic engineering capabilities and acquire a dedicated air superiority jet to complement the F-35. I also just posted another thread proposing a joint Japanese-British-Australian reusable launch vehicle program to compete with the U.S. and China.
Note that while the U.S. will remain Australia's most important ally, it is too large to enter into a combined statehood. Freedom of movement, common market, joint trans-national legislation etc is possible between Australia and NZ, and potentially the U.K., but trickier to imagine with a state 15-times our size in population and economy.
5. The United States.
I'm choosing not to write about the U.S. since it's so famous there's little to add.
6. Various minor powers.
Egypt, Turkey, South Africa, Brazil, a highly hypothetical East African Federation. If anybody has found the above text interesting then perhaps it will be worthwhile also discussing the regional powers of the new multipolar world.
Appendix
[1] https://news.yahoo.com/polish-ambassado ... 21342.html