WAR IN UKRAINE, DECLINE OF "THE WEST', RISE OF CHINA--AND, NOW, A WESTERN CATHOLIC FASCIST BLOC. . . IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THIS IS WHAT A HEGEMONIC TRANSITION LOOKS LIKE?

The basic structure of the world has shifted quite radically in the last few months.  All that raises questions like . . .  

- What exactly is a "tactical" nuclear weapon? Can humankind survive its use, even if only "limited" use? When does a "tactical" nuclear warhead become "strategic"? Is it even possible to separate the battlefield from civilian life? (Rhetorical questions: of course not.)

- Can the first use of a "tactical" nuclear weapon stop just there? (I.e., why would the use of a nuclear weapon remain "limited?") 

- Even if it does, how large a "territory" (i.e., what part of humankind) will be destroyed by it? That would be equivalent to how many Chernobyls? And how many Hiroshimas/Nagasakis? Can anyone be "lucky" to survive it just by virtue of distance from the crater?

- Given its historical record (colonialism, World War I, World War II, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Korea, Vietnam, Arab peninsula, Afghanistan--a partial list), is it even conceivable for the "west" to wait for Russia to use nuclear weapons first? 

- Is the successful test of a military attack targeting a celestial object--a thinly veiled rehearsal for space warfare--a warning on part of the military wing of the US government? Who is it directed to? If NASA can hit an asteroid, to "redirect" it as the official language goes, why would it stop at smaller targets, i.e., "enemy" satellites? Is there even a conversation about this, anywhere? Why is nobody asking this question?

- Is it really the case that the United States is planning to fight a space war against extraterrestrial objects on its own, as part of "national defense"--i.e., leaving out all other governments and societies of Planet Earth? How is that going to work? Would even the thought of this possibility disqualify such efforts? Where is the UN? Hallo?

- Will 

1. the currently emerging strategic bloc of "Western" Roman Catholic neofascist governments destroy the EU or
2. take it over and transform it into a global post-colonial Spain of Franco-on-steroids? (Mind you, his emergence to a pan-European, "continental" power broker has been Orbán's ambition, as I have argued, for some time.)

- How would the world work when Creep1 is re-elected together together with, say, a Palin as VP? What about a leaner and meaner, one generation younger and less absurdly corrupt / non-dislexic / non-narcissist extreme-right leader?

Let's put this in the context of the transformation of global economic power over the last three generations. I would like to invite you to re-consider a graph, something I produced and published 11 years ago. It demonstrates a few important trends, e.g., . . . 

. . . 

• the decline of both the US and the *EU* on a global scale, 
• the "rise of China" (taking the two facts together looks very much like what Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi and others have called "a hegemonic transition"--a tricky possibility, with a non-"White," and ostensibly "Communist" state becoming the new hegemon--there's something to think about), and, importantly,
• the obvious decline of the former-USSR.

Given all that, consider an updated and more focused version of the previous graph, something I have just produced for this blog post. This graph focuses on the global economic weight of three actors: the US, China (both from 1950 through 2018) and Russia (1960-2018).  

Now. We know that. . .: 

1. there is a hegemonic transition afoot, the US is coming down as a global hegemon, 
2. with China as the unparalleled contender for the position of the occupant of the throne of the world (there is no way that Russia, or any other entity with <5% of the total world GDP, could become a global hegemon), and
3. in any hegemonic transition, there is an insanely high incentive to, hence likelihood of, the use military force. . . --but, importantly, 
4. NOT NECESSARILY ON PART OF THE NEW HEGEMON.

And here comes Russia back into the picture. It is entirely possible to have a situation in which two powers not in contention for the position of the new hegemon--say, the declinining hegemon and a third party with no chance to win it--will get embroiled in a fight with each other, creating an opening for a new hegemon. In a situation like that, a "third party player" can emerge. 

👉 If that is so, can we say that the current moment in global history is consistent with the following ideas? 

Russia's military onslaught on Ukraine is an attempt to foreground global rivalry in a dimension (military, eventually nuclear confrontation) where Russia has the semblance of strategic parity with "the West", in contrast to its economic power where it clearly doesn't? 

Global military weight by global economic weight, USA, Russia, China and Ukraine, 1992-2015
(Source: Maddison online data and SIPRI)

This is all the more so because Russia's geopolitical situation--a large state that is considerably stronger in terms of military, especially nuclear, power than its economic weight--is not unlike that of the United States (on a different scale, but still). (See the graph above this paragraph: states to the left and above the diagonal have a military posture that is more extended than their economic position in the world.) Russia and the US reveal similar structural tensions: Both are large states with a military might whose size (measured in the graph in share in global military spending) transcends their economic significance (measured in their shares in world GDP). In other words, the "deep" structure of the confrontation--US versus Russia--seems to covary with the structural imbalances in their global, historical position inherited largely from their positions in the cold war. 

In other words yet, is it possible that the US-Russia military conflict reveals a very large scale, indeed global structural transformation that takes the form of a post-cold-war proxy war, a war that likely benefits neither "side" directly participating in it, but a third party (in this case: China)? In this sense, not only would Ukraine be a proxy for the US--or Nato more broadly--; the war itself would be a "proxy" for the all-important transition to a new, Chinese global hegemony. 

Is it possible that the Russian geopolitical elites are making a desperate bet that a world under non-Western (read: Chinese) hegemony will be more preferable, or at least less intolerable, for Russia's elites than another, several-generations-long iteration of "western" dominance? If that's so, and if this bet fails, what comes next?

Is it possible that the other powers of the world, including even India (which has hitherto largely positioned itself as a possible challenger to, or at least a very annoyed and reluctant follower of, China's rise to global hegemony) have a similar "tertium datur" calculation in mind?

Finally, is it possible that the emergence of a quasi-bloc of Roman Catholic neofascist governments a result of a similar calculations in south- and east-central Europe? 

Is it possible that the US is indeed in the process of losing the most important pieces of its imperial chess game?