Decline Of The West? We May Find Out For Real In 2024
BUENOS AIRES — Is the West in decline, while the power and influence shift to the rest of the world? Are mid-level powers having their moment, and is the bipolar world order breaking into a fuzzy hierarchy? Yes, these things are happening, but none can explain by itself either the grammar or mechanics of power in our world. For a strategic reading of the global power agenda in 2024, we must first identify the significant dates and locations where the world’s major interests intersect, and clash.
The Sino-Russian declaration of “boundless friendship” (issued February 4, 2022) was one of those. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, both countries identified a shared goal of thwarting U.S. and Western hegemony. They chose a joint strategy around the central idea of weakening the United States and “mobilizing” the states of that shifting space termed Global South.
Their isolation would be noted in multilateral forums like the United Nations, and complement the increasing autonomy of certain midranking powers whose interests were now diverging from those of the West. A perfect illustration is Saudi Arabia, which has chosen to work with Russia to govern the OPEC+ group of oil producers. This isolating strategy includes a particular element of ‘quantifiable’ diplomacy. The United States and its allies are often in a minority at critical moments, which causes them to lose important votes at the UN. This consolidates the impression of defeat and of the West’s waning influence before rising blocks and new alignments.
There is of course a narrative at work here that diverges from realities on the ground. The BRICS association led by China is not, for example, homogeneous. It includes India, which sees China as a security threat and backs Israel in Gaza. It is also loathe to ditch the U.S. dollar as chief trading currency, lest that benefit the RMB, the currency of its overbearing neighbor to the east. Brazil and India want to reform the UN charter and each win a seat on the UN Security Council. Beijing isn’t keen on that happening. India buys Russian oil in the face of Western sanctions, but pays for them in rupees, not dollars, to avoid flouting those sanctions!
What about a common currency? Now, while there is no “Southern” unity, clearly Washington is finding it more difficult, and costly, to assure and manage its alliances. It may have been here before, in this Gulliver’s Dilemma. The academic Stanley Hoffmann coined the term in the 1970s to describe the superpower’s entanglement in costly commitments. It had to spend big money to defend countries not crucial to its security, just as it bears today the cost of assuring the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea or the Red Sea. While the Sino-Russian axis is significant, it also nurses rivalries, like the BRICS, notably over Central Asia as a sphere of influence. A Russian authority and Kremlin hand, Aleksandr Dugin, recently warned that post-Soviet states could only assure their territorial integrity by maintaining positive or neutral relations with Russia. The message was aimed at eastern Europe and the “Stans” or the Central Asian autocracies. Yet China is trying to draw the Central Asian states away from Moscow, into its orbit. Some of them, significantly, no longer use Russian in bilateral meetings with Russia.
In Europe, Ukraine will hold a central place in the 2024 agenda. The war is at a stalemate, with an impression of Russia regaining the upper hand. Ukraine failed to grab its “moment” with a counteroffensive, in spite of Western aid. Putin seems to have the initiative again after quashing the Wagner threat. Some explain Russia’s military comeback in terms of its successful use of its vast geography and demographics, which are decisive in an artillery war. It can throw more troops at the front, manufacture shells, and import more supplies from North Korea, with China’s connivence.
Kyiv needs military aid that may be threatened this year, especially if Donald Trump returns to the White House. That has turned Ukraine’s president into a traveling salesman or publicist, seeking to keep aid flowing at all costs. The EU is decisive now and its help will allow Ukraine to keep fighting. But while the big members, France, Germany and Poland, are backing Ukraine, dissenters like Hungary have proved to be a veritable thorn, a pain and a drain on their resolve. Will Europe finally throw its weight behind Ukraine this year?
In 1956, France and Britain became painfully aware of their imperial decline, if not irrelevance, after losing control of the Suez Canal and failing to win U.S. backing. France came to see, following good advice from Germany, that unity inside Europe was now the way to assure it of a role in the world. A year later the Treaty of Rome was signed to pave the way for the European Union. Ukraine’s salvation likewise rests today on a similar pact, and its full entry into Europe.