Endless War, on the Cusp of Deglobalization

Dídimo Castillo Fernández*

http://redan.cisan.unam.mx/pdf/08BoletinJunio2022.pdf

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, created a complex geopolitical scenario whose development still remains unknown. The world system has been deeply shaken in recent decades. After the crisis of the neoliberal financialization model in 2008, with major effects in the U.S., and the social and economic crisis sparked off by the pandemic —which showed the contradictions inherent in the dominant neoliberal model— we were suddenly faced with another global crisis, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the endless war that erupted. During both the first and the second crises, precipitated by the arrival of the pandemic, the U.S. showed a major weakness and internal incapacity to tackle them. Particularly in geopolitical terms, the impact of the pandemic revealed the limitations of the U.S. when compared, for example, with China and its relative success in handling the health crisis. Additionally, the pandemic put neoliberalism in a tight spot again, in favor of a form of digital capitalism, a new modality of the emerging global capitalism that reframes the predominance of laissez-faire by the logic of accumulation based on captive markets.

The Fight for Global Hegemony War and its economic and social consequences show the fight for global hegemony derived, on the one hand, from the situation and conditions related to the hegemony crisis in the U. S. and, on the other, from the exhaustion of the neoliberal accumulation model related to these conditions. Since the mid-1970s, the U. S. has been going through a hegemony crisis, internally worsened by the adoption and development of the social and political contradictions of the neoliberal model, paradoxically marked in the late 1990s. Regardless of the early adoption of the neoliberal model, the U. S. was able to maintain unprecedented conditions in a hybrid form of welfare state until neoliberalism had already advanced in the world. This helped the U.S. to postpone its effects until the end of the last century and, more precisely, in the 21st century. The U. S. lost hegemony precisely when the Cold War ended because, until then, the existence of an external enemy worked as a social and political cohesion factor that it could resort to in order to displace and mask the contradictions of the predominant model. By losing hegemony, not only did the U. S. face internal weakening, but it also had to pursue other legitimation strategies and the creation of new threats, such as those based on xenophobia, the reactivation of racism, and the rejection of migrants, among other forms of toxic nationalisms.

The U. S. hegemony crisis and its geopolitical consequences are not exclusively derived from the tensions and confrontations among States, but rather from the lack of internal legitimacy and cohesion, in the context of the global capitalist crisis and neoliberal globalization, aimed at resolving the systematic fall of the capitalist profit rate. Hence the fact * Research Professor, School of Political and Social Sciences, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México and member of the National Researchers System, Conacyt, Mexico, and Número 8 / Number 8 Junio de 2022 / June 2022 5 that the loss of hegemony essentially originated and became exacerbated socially and politically within its borders. This loss also expresses the dispute between two classes, economic, and Nation projects, and the resulting fracture at the heart of the political power structure. The first project, a predominant one, was promoted by the financial, neoliberal, and globalizing capitalist sector, whose ideological and political foundations are based on the so-called ruling class, united around the so-called establishment. The second project, that of the traditional industrial capitalist class, put the Nation-State at the core and prevailed during the long period of U. S. hemispheric hegemony, integrating a heterogeneous class sector linked to traditional industrial production, displaced from the power structure during the long period of neoliberal domination, which defends and suggests the consolidation of the Nation-State over neoliberal globalization as the only alternative to overcome the internal crisis. In other terms, these are two economic, social, and political models. The first one is that of international relations, promoted with the Second World War and apparently closer to the U. S. —with which it became completely hegemonic and whose ideologist was and currently is Henry Kissinger and his book World Order. The second one is that of globalization or global competition, which conceives a borderless world or considers it a big market. This does not mean that the U. S. has given up its expansionist interests. These are two very different, opposing views or forms of expansion of contemporary capitalism.

The hegemony crisis shows the contradictions and consequences of the adopted neoliberal model. According to Daniel Bell, the U. S. has never wholly mastered the art of collective solutions. The most imperialist country in the world did not seem to be fit for global competition. Its difficulty to compete in the world economy made its structural weakness and vulnerability increasingly patent. In that model created with the Second World War, the international relations scheme was an imposition, given its condition as a dominant country. It favored bilateral negotiation and the establishment of monopolistic economic relations. With this model, the U.S. dominated and became hegemonic. Based on the foregoing, we can infer the way in which the fight for global hegemony is based on the tensions and confrontations in the bicephalous internal power structure of the country and the fight for the imposition of said models that, as such, have opposing geopolitical expressions. The origin of the hegemony crisis lies in the exhaustion of the social, economic, and political structures that prevailed during that period and their incompatibility in the context of neoliberal globalization. 

The Russia-Ukraine War and The U.S. Internal Power Structure The U. S. is trying to reestablish or, in any case, assert its global hegemony. Hegemony is not only the predominance of one country over another country or the rest of the countries. It is the imposition of an economic, social, and political model or project, and it implies ensuring that country’s leadership. The U. S. hegemony crisis is first of all internal, facing the quandary about the imposition of one model or another: the model focused on the Nation States or the globalizing model, supposedly consistent with the current expansive dynamics of capitalism. Trump’s victory in the previous administration as a result of the said crisis. This internal situation was momentarily resolved in favor of the globalizing project with Biden’s victory. Nevertheless, based on this logic and internal and geopolitical conditions, the U.S. is facing a twofold difficulty and challenge. On the one hand, the threat related to the consolidation of the globalizing model, fueled by this country’s dominant sectors, which implies ensuring that it is internally viable. And, on the other hand, the difficulty of recovering its full, global leadership. Regarding the former, Russia could be a nuisance, if it is more akin to the model focused on the Nation States, as could be assumed. As for the latter, perhaps China —being more compatible than Russia with the globalizing project, given its economic growth and boom— could represent a greater problem to the U.S.'s deteriorated global hegemony. Thus, Russia does not pose a higher risk to the hegemonic interests of the United States, but China does. China is a country that, at this moment, appears as a passive, marginal, offstage actor. This is, however, not the case for the globalizing model, because its strategies focused on commercial expansion and, by the same token, on what is truly at stake: global hegemony. This means that seen both from the inside and from the outside, the U. S. is facing a difficult way out in the context of the strategies pursued by the current administration. Trump may have understood the problem better than Biden, or there was simply far more common ground with Russia than with China. Trump was far more akin to the project focused on the Nation-State driven by Russia than the Chinese trade expansion globalizing model. The rapprochement with Russia was not circumstantial. 

The target of Trump’s “flirtation” with Putin was China. Número 8 / Number 8 Junio de 2022 / June 2022 6 Trump tried a strategic partnership with Russia to deal with China. On the Cusp of Deglobalization, The war between Russia and Ukraine is largely incited and maintained by the U. S. However, the global impact of the war is not clear yet. A question that arises is whether we are on the cusp of new world order. In this respect, Biden said that this crisis must lead to a new international order, i. e., settle the internal dispute in favor of the globalizing model and impose its leadership. The new world order that he brings up is globalizing. Biden stated that there is going to be a new world order and that the U. S. has got to lead it. Is that possible? Maybe not because, first of all, the internal dispute over the project to follow is not settled and, second, because the lead actor that puts at stake and compromises its leadership and global hegemony is not on stage. The U. S. is facing too many obstacles. The difficulties for this country call for the resolution of the internal and external disputes, in light of the Chinese threat. We know that Trump became president as a result of that crisis, and nothing prevents him from doing it again under the same premises. China and Russia just entered into a strategic partnership, which has been ratified during this juncture of the war with Ukraine. Hence, Trump’s possible victory could represent the reproduction or repetition of a new form of relationship with Russia, or even generate new tensions in the face of the pact between Russia and China. In any way, China seems to be the gratuitous winner. The crisis is riddled with contradictions and uncertain scenarios. Nevertheless, the measures imposed against Russia, aimed at weakening it, theoretically compromise the globalizing project by segmenting the economic and political world into at least two large partitions. It is not yet clear which could be the final global consequences of the war, openly promoted by the U. S. Seeking to assert the hegemony of the globalizing model, dominating for almost four decades, the U. S. might be encouraging the end of globalization. The economic isolation from which Russia has suffered—and still does—will force it, beyond its planned projects, to stress statist, antiglobalizing, deglobalizing, and anti-neoliberal measures.

The duration of the war is a mystery, but maintaining it or even expanding it would play a significant role in the strategy of the current U. S. administration, aimed first of all at achieving Biden’s reelection, and second of all at ensuring the continuity of the globalizing project. Hence the benefit for the Biden administration of extending the war as long as possible. The victory of either candidate will set the course, in one direction or another, of the projects in the internal dispute and their world or global geopolitical projections.

** Research professor, School of Political and Social Sciences, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México and member of the National Researchers System, Conacyt, Mexico.