A New Paradigm for a non-Polar World

The Post-Post-Cold War World is Here

The rules based international order is over.  The military and economic dominance of the West in general and the US in particular that fueled it has been ended both by a loss of will and self-confidence of the Western establishment and by the rise of China as a military, economic and technological power.   The luxury values that Western elites have forced upon their countries are not values that can sustain the economic and military strength necessary for keeping the law of the jungle at a minimum in the geo-political realm.  The demographic collapse of the West (and not only the West) and the turn in politics from fairness and towards a fanatical self-righteousness means that the sense of togetherness that existed even in large Western cities has now gone.

I was never a big believer in Rawls’s “justice as fairness” but even that seems to be too compromising for the current Western totalitarians which has turned politics into a zero sum game.  Instead of fairness, justice is now the subjective definition of the few – a return to the aristocratic way, I guess.

It has been over 30 years since the Cold War ended and the West is still struggling to come to grips with the new reality.   The wishful thinking at the end of the Cold War was of a uni-polar world where prosperity through free trade was the main tool through which the world could be organized.  No longer did we need to worry about Communist influence or destructive ideologies.   Although no one expected China to become a liberal democracy there was an expectation that it would be America’s “wing man” in the global order.   Russia might be autocratic and corrupt, but it was their corruption and greed that would make them buy into the new order and forget the Slavic historical mission with which Tolstoy ended “Anna Karenin”.  There would be special relationships between the US and the UK and the European Union would be the third wheel in new global order and shared interests would prevent the type of tension and proxy wars that were the bread and butter of the post-WWII world.

Global problems that were based on issues that didn’t mesh with the values of the new rules-based order would be dealt with as if they were business negotiations.   Iran wants a nuclear weapon?  We will work with them to bring them into the rules based global order so that even if they get one (which was to happen legally with the Obama Iran nuclear deal) it would not be relevant.  At worst, they would continue their anti-Semitic threats and would balance Israel in a sort of cold-war type MAD (mutual assured destruction) ignoring Iran’s boast that Israel is a one bomb country, indicating that Israel would have one opportunity to retaliate, and the Moslems can handle the destruction of Damascus, Baghdad or even Teheran.  

China is building up the Spratly islands in the South China Sea?   We won’t have to deal with it because China is so enmeshed in the rules-based order that they wouldn’t dare threaten their own prosperity.  North Korea?  China will deal with it as they want quiet and stability above all else.

Western leaders have never given up this view and that is why we are in the crisis we see before us.   There is not one part of the world that is not involved in an ideological/theological war  - not Africa nor the Indo-Pacific.  Not the middle east, of course, not Central Asia.  Not South America nor, one could argue – the US-Mexican border. The Chinese even threaten to make the Arctic Circle and Antarctica part of the conflict.

During the Cold War (or Cold War I in Niall Ferguson’s take) Israel’s place was pretty clear.   Israel was an ally of the anti-Communist West and a key player in keeping the Soviet Union at bay by holding off its main allies, Syria, and Egypt – the latter until Kissinger and Sadat changed the middle east.  That does not mean that Israel was not under pressure by the West in general and the Americans in particular.  First there was the plan to unilaterally give a chunk of the Negev, including Eilat, to the Arabs so they could have a direct land bridge from Morocco to Iraq.  Then there was the Rogers Plan for Israel to withdraw from all territories won in 1967.  Reagan continuously pressured Begin on the West Bank and Bush Sr, with his sidekick James Baker – oilmen from Texas, had no patience for Israeli “intransigence”.  

But that one thing that both Israel and the US understood was Israel’s place in the Cold War global order.  It was a fixture in the anti-Communist alliance along with countries that hated it – Saudi Arabia, Jordan and after 1974 – Egypt.  Each side seemed to know how far it could push the other.  There were still punishments and re-assessments, but Soviet allies would never be allowed to defeat a US ally in the Mideast.   Soviet arms would never be allowed to defeat US arms.

The Post-Cold War world has been teetering on the edge since the second Bush administration.  It got a nudge from Obama’s foreign policy, a kick in the ass from Biden’s Afghan debacle, a shove from the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and came tumbling down with the Western reaction to the Hamas invasion of Israel one year ago.  Regarding Israel, the invasion itself could have been a localized event had the West stopped its appeasement of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah and allowed Israel to do to Hamas what the US did to Nazi Germany.   This “regional war” that Biden-Harris have been trying to avoid is their own fault.  When Hezbollah attacks on October 8, that is expected.  When Israel fights back, that is escalation.  Iranian attacks on Israel are apt punishments for Israeli behavior but Israeli responses need to be “measured”. 

 Just as the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communist rule and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the post-post Cold War world ended for good with the reaction of the US State Department and the Western elites after Hamas broke through the fences separating Israel from Gaza.

Could any of this have happened without the rise of China as a power that can challenge the United States or would this have happened anyway with the loss of faith of the Western elites in their own way of life?   It seems to me that it would have happened anyway although a decade or two down the road.   The causes are not important and are merely academic.  What is important is the current geo-political situation and that points to a non-polar world where each country is on its own to form alliances and fight wars.   The UN has gone from a harmless but useless body to one that encourages crises by mainstreaming fanatics. 

It is clear now, with the demographic changes that have overtaken (Western) Europe, Japan, South Korea and now the US and the combination of the post-Modernism of the American establishment and the distrust in institutions that has overtaken the American people that there is no longer a unified power block defending freedom in the world.   The Cold War world was neat and tidy, the post-Cold War world was uni-polar and the current post-post Cold War world no longer has a power or a block that can persuasively defend its way of life and deter aggression from those that oppose it.

That doesn’t mean its each country on its own only that the assumptions of the Cold War and the post-Cold War are over and everyone has to figure out how to manage.  The cheaper technology and the open internet means that technological and military superiority are no longer a deterrence for the strong and no longer an impenetrable wall for the weak.  Just look at Ukraine against Russia and what Hamas managed to do to Israel.  And the threats that the weaker powers have over the stronger to deter them can be destroyed by a series of brilliant tactical moves – see Israel and Hezbollah now. 

Economic and technological superiority might determine the ultimate victor in a war but with the strong theological drive in middle east combined with the rush to rare earth minerals and other commodities in Africa will mean that there will be groups and countries that can have maximum profit with minimal investment.   The green movement may have slowed the rush to find oil, coal and natural gas but it has increased the need for minerals found in mines.   The tech industry needs them just as much.  Just look at sub-Saharan Africa where Russian, Iranian and Chinese power is creating hell in a region that has not been a Garden of Eden for centuries if not millennia.  The WSJ had an article recently saying that 80% or more of women and girls aged 8 and above, in a specific area of Congo have been raped -  most multiple times.   The mines are “staffed” with slaves.  This is being carried out by Russian and Iranian funded gangs and militias whose goal is to mine these minerals for their bosses.  It is a lot cheaper to mine minerals with child slave labor then it is to extract oil and gas from the ground.  This means easy financing for terrorist groups and rogue states. 

The world will now be divided into five groups. 

1.      Free States -There will be the successful states that have working economies and a stable, fair and free legal system. These are for the most part what we now call “the West” – including the US, most of Europe, Japan, Israel, India, Australia, South Korea, etc.

2.       Authoritarian States - There will be economically successful or powerful (if not successful in the capitalist sense) countries that are authoritarian or worse.   China leads the pack in this category.  Russia borders this and the next category

3.      Non-successful Authoritarian States - There will be states that have the resources to become successful but have never managed to find economic success due to corruption and other political causes.   Egypt would be in this category.

4.      Failed States - There will be failed states that sadly dot the African continent and other parts of the world.

5.      Revolutionary States and non-State actors - Finally, there will States built on terror, and non-state actors.  The Islamic Republic of Iran is a key example of this as the raison d’etre of the Islamic Republic is to export its theology by means of arms via Jihad.  The non state actors are Iranian proxies, ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the drug gangs of Mexico.  They all specialize in drug and sex trafficking, money laundering and other activities with which to fund either mafia lifestyles or theological and ideological terror groups. 

You will look at this list and say to yourselves that that is how it has always been – and that would be right.  The main difference is that there are no more blocs and no great power able or willing to lead at least the Free States.  The United States was that one country noted as guarantor of freedom in the world but the current fiscal and political situation in the US means that that has ended.   Not that it will end – it no longer exists.  That doesn’t mean that the US can’t recover and reclaim that role -but rather the will is gone.  That doesn’t mean that the US has withdrawn from the world or that the US will longer help its allies (whichever group they fall into).  They do now and they will.  But the equation has changed on both sides.  On the American side the people no longer want to be the guarantor of freedom no matter where it is.  Fiscally, without major reforms it is not clear that the US can afford to be that great power either.  That doesn’t mean it is no longer the most powerful, creative and most successful country in the world, but it does mean that the President of the United States is no longer “leader of the free world”.  This was no accident.  Obama led from behind, Trump demanded that allies pay their own way and Biden-Harris ran from trouble in Afghanistan and have a minimal risk/surrender policy in other areas – notably Ukraine and the middle east.   Armaments are still being shipped in massive quantities; intelligence is still being shared and armies are often training together.  But the alliances have changed.

What is changing is two things – first that the stakes in these wars are more localized.  In the Ukraine they are taking major risks while the US is lowering its risks. Poland and Germany are more worried than the US over the outcome of that war. This was not the case in the cold war regarding Germany.  They had their Ost-Politick because they knew America will save them if they went to far.   That is no longer the case.  I am not saying this is correct or not, but it is what is happening.   In the middle east Israel is at higher risk while for the US risk is lower.   Part of this has to do with US energy independence and part of this has to do with policies.  The second thing that has changed is the relationship between superpower and ally. 

As a case study lets look at the evolution of the US-Israel relationship over the past year.  Pre-October 7 everyone assumed that we were still in the post-Cold War paradigm and that the job of the US was to allow its ally to win without allowing them to make changes to the regional order.  It was the job of Israel to maintain its security without effecting the US geo-political position.   As the US was the major geo-political force in the free world it was understood that Israel’s local concerns were part of the American big picture that included its interests in the rest of the globe.  As the major power the US has always been able to keep its allies on a leash, be they in the middle east or elsewhere.  

The US was determined to help defend its ally under the conditions that the ally take America’s other interests into consideration.  This was the deal during the Cold War and the post-Cold war eras.  During the Cold War it was true for both the United States as well as the Soviet Union.  After the fall of the Soviet Union, the US still maintained its alliances and with the same conditions.   One year ago, the US sent carriers to the region, President Biden made a heartfelt defense of Israel and condemnation of Hamas, famously said “don’t” to Hezbollah, and started arms shipments to Israel. 

This was preceded by another example of the post-Cold War paradigm when the US all but forced Israel to cede natural gas fields to Lebanon for the purpose of pleasing Iran.  Or some would say the Lapid government willingly ceded the territory since they were in America’s interests, as the administration saw them - which consisted of bribing and appeasing the Islamic Republic of Iran into a balance of terror with Israel.   Giving Hezbollah additional revenues independent of Iran, would free up Iranian dollars to be spent elsewhere.  For the US the thought was that they would buy consumer goods but the Iranian plan was to help their other Jihadi allies like the Houthis.

Not long after October 7 both President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken forced themselves into Israeli War Cabinet meetings hoping to get veto power over Israel’s war plans.   Blinken went so far as to sit himself down and demand a document the Cabinet would approve after Blinken’s OK, regarding “humanitarian aid” to Hamas/Gaza.

Israel though started to see things differently.  As opposed to the US, Israel knew it needed a major ground invasion of Gaza to destroy Hamas and bring back the hostages.  The fact that the IDF (with the approval of the politicians) decided not to occupy and control Gaza surely has its roots in the concept that Israel needs to do what the US wants.   The same is true regarding the harmful leaks by the security establishment regarding hostage negotiations.  And of course allowing Hamas to control the humanitarian aid was a disastrous decision.  But Israel started to chart its own course and the Administration, while obsessing on preventing a regional war that was already under way had no real arguments to make because they had already abandoned the global scene.   Abandoning Afghanistan and a hands off approach towards Russia in Ukraine and China in the South China Sea showed Israel that Americans did not consider themselves a global power and therefore, Israel did not have to take their interests as a global power to heart. 

As the year progressed and the so called negotiations for a hostage deal went on and on, with the presidential election coming closer, Israel started to change course.   First it was the Rafah operation and the continuous raids into Khan Yunis and Gaza city.   Things took a backward turn in April when Iran lobbed hundreds of rockets into Israel and Biden forced Israel to “take the win”.   But as preparations for the north started to jell the government and even the army started to realize that the US of the Cold War and the post-Cold War eras was a different country – one that cared less about the world and saw its interests more parochially instead of globally.  The beeper attack followed by the walkie talkie attack and finally the killing of Nasrallah that changed the relationship entirely.   America was angry at not being given advanced notice but Israel understood that with the US a non-global player, it didn’t need to give them notice.  

The ground invasion of Lebanon was also done against US advice.

Israel is still cooperating with the US regarding an attack on Iran, which it needs to do, due to the major US presence in the Persian Gulf and because intelligence and maybe surveillance aide is important.   That is a good thing and is part of the new paradigm.   The relationship between Israel and the US has changed but not necessarily been made worse.  The US can now honestly disassociate itself from Israeli actions it feels are embarrassing if not harmful to it, while profiting from those same actions.  Israel maintains a freedom of action that it would not have had on the Cold War and post-Cold War world and that could lead to the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities.  Ukraine is doing something similar in their taking of Russian territory.

It would not surprise me if a country like Japan looks at the Israeli model and starts to act that way, too.   They could probably go nuclear in a matter of minutes and they have the capital to build  a navy that can challenge any attempt at Chinese infringement into their territorial waters.  Of course, the US has a large military presence in Japan but with a new paradigm that would not stop it from acting unilaterally if it felt necessary.  I am not saying this is what they will do, but they might see it as an option for a new type of relationship.   One caveat here is that the Pacific Ocean, unlike the Mediterranean or Red Sea, is as much an American sea as a Japanese or Chinese one. 

Regarding Israel’s relationship with the rest of the old Western bloc that has changed too and can no longer be considered an alliance of any sort.  The UK, France and Spain are no longer allies of Israel and Israel should treat them as it treats any neutral or semi-aggressive country.   Greece, Italy and Germany could be in a different category and “new Europe” – Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary are in a different one altogether. 

The decline of the western bloc is happening.  NATO may still survive but I don’t think that the US will support and dominate it the way it has in the past.   The new alliances in the Indo-Pacific may be a different story and the new paradigm with its allies in Europe and the middle east might actually strengthen them.   No one in the US can deny that the Pacific Ocean needs to remain an American lake if America wants to continue to thrive economically.  Europe?  The middle east?  Not so sure.

This new paradigm, at least regarding the middle east will take different directions depending on the outcome of the US elections.  A Harris victory means that Israel will either have to become a vassal of the US or have a more contentious relationship with them.   A total break will not occur as there is still substantial public support for Israel in the US.

 A Trump victory may use the new US-Israel paradigm as a model for the rest of the world (with the possible exception of the Indo-Pacific) and be willing to allow countries to pursue their own national interests as they see them so long as they continue purchasing US arms and sharing intelligence and technology.  The US will in turn agree to back these allies up diplomatically and be a “safety net” of sorts regarding the quantity and quality of armaments.

Is this the direction I want US foreign policy to take?  Not really – but reality limits one’s choices.   Can the geo-political scene go in other directions?  It can.  But the free countries that want to remain free that want to maintain their traditions – religious, cultural and political – and that want to prosper, will have to figure out a way to deal with other countries in a way they have not done before.   Internally, those with substantial Moslem populations will either have to give into the radical jihadi way that has dominated the conversation or forcefully encourage the Islam in their countries to abandon Jihad and assume a more moderate stance.  For those who drank the materialist Kool-Aid to the last drop they may have to start looking for other ways to motivate themselves and their fellow citizens in order to survive and thrive.

There is no rule that says that free countries must remain free  - “a Republic if you can keep it” – just like there is no rule that says the unfree must remain unfree.  The free countries of the world and those now aligned to it need to understand that the American people are looking for a change in their position in the world.  Personally, I think they don’t look at the advantages at having their President as “leader of the free world”, the most important being able to have the world’s one “reserve currency” but also a world where carrying an American passport gives one peace of mind. 

But that is for the American people to decide.  However, if they decide that a non-polar world is one they want to live in then their allies need support that includes freedom of action to do what they feel needs to be done and they need to know that the United States will sell them what they need to get the job done. 

This new paradigm needs the major and the minor allies to accept reality in the same way.  Risks are greater in this world, especially for the free countries that will have to deal with foreign enemies, terrorists and violent criminal gangs and often internal dissent that looks to divide and destroy society – often due to external funding and pressure but sometimes by homegrown malcontents of various sorts.   People who care about their countries will have to be extra careful how far they want to push their opposition to it when there is no daddy in the room to set things straight. 

The most important advice we can give to the free world besides reclaiming its virtues and values is to quote Teddy Roosevelt – “speak softly and carry a big stick”.