What is wrong with the new world order? It has lost clarity, predictability, balance. It has lost form, making substance virtually incomprehensible. All this because the old world order’s defining principle of bipolarity has been lost with the perceived loss of America’s main adversary, the USSR… Gloating over the imagined “victory” in the cold war, America has unwisely refused to recognize post-Soviet Russia as the successor to the USSR, the no less powerful reincarnation of her unvanquishable main adversary…
There is a thoroughly reassuring stability in the concept of bipolarity, mathematical, physical, philosophical, logical stability. Plus and minus, hot and cold, thesis and antithesis, A and not-A… Every “whole” is in need of a dichotomy, that is, in need of being split in two parts. Otherwise, there is only chaos and confusion… In the beginning of Creation, God created the heaven and the earth (two). Then God divided the light from the darkness (two)… And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas (another two again)… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them (two, as each other’s helpers, and as a necessity of biological reproduction in higher species)…
These days America is languishing in a state of confusion. She feels that she needs bipolarity as a stabilizing factor in international relations, yet this vital condition of stability has suddenly become elusive and outright dangerous. Having remained one of the two poles of bipolarity, America has lost the balancing weight on the other end of the seesaw, and seems hurtling down for a crash landing. The old reliable Russia won’t do anymore, or else the phrase “we won the cold war” becomes a joke. The new unreliable China won’t do, as China is America’s biggest creditor, and it may be too financially dangerous to declare her America’s “main adversary”… I guess this may be one of the reasons why the nation is under such great domestic pressure to declare the whole Islamic world America’s main adversary in the twenty-first century. After all, it is kind of unbecoming for a global superpower to have identified Iraq, or Afghanistan, or these days Iran and/or Syria, etc., as her… greatest enemy?! Well, enough of that! Let us spare this great nation such a humiliation, and return to the “old reliable” Tocquevillian dichotomy of America versus Russia.
My new miniseries on the geopolitical principle of bipolarity now proceeds with an excerpt from my article Russia: The Misplaced Key to a Stable World, written in December 2002.
In the game of geopolitical chess, played by America and Russia, the Russian side should not be allowed to impose its rules on others, but neither should their worldview be thoughtlessly and recklessly dismissed. In fact, their position does make sense. The Russian preoccupation with philosophical dichotomy and with the postulate of bipolarity as a basic condition for the world balance, and the resulting rationalization of the two-superpower concept, have resulted in the following formula:
In this context, surprisingly, but effortlessly, we get the key to Hesiod’s rather enigmatic pronouncement, in his classic Works and Days: “They are fools who know not that the half is better than the whole.” It starts making perfect sense as soon as we apply it to today’s New World Order. Only a fool would deny that there is not much glory in being the world’s one and only superpower, as America claims to be. I am sure that the erstwhile days of cold-war two-superpower confrontation, when America was the true leader of the Western world, are sorely missed by all thoughtful patriotic Americans, who look around these days, and do not like what they see.
It may gratify us to be gently reminded that the concept of balance is not Russia’s invention, but a general philosophical principle, which, in this or that form, has existed throughout the ages. Of less ancient origin, but eminently instructive, is the curious political concept invented by the British, and known as “balance of power.” It might go something like this: “If your friend emerges as (the only) superpower, you ought to ally yourself with your enemy, in order to restore the balance of power.” The fact that the British are still good allies of the United States shows only one thing: that they have not given much credence to the rumor of the other superpower’s demise.
But anyway, whether we like it or not, we have to admit that the single-superpower concept can produce no such balancing formula and can offer no effective solution to a world crisis, except a military solution. Nor does it conjure up a mental picture of balance, like the seesaw analogy. It seems rather like a vortex, which definitely lacks stability. What also makes sense in this two-superpower concept is that it does not require us to bend the rules of the geopolitical game, because its basic parameters are already naturally and fully in existence. As we have seen earlier, both America and Russia certainly meet the superpower definition by virtue of their self-awareness of their national destiny, and by virtue of their exceptional military strength, resulting in their unique capacity for mutual and assured destruction.
Their philosophical compatibility is further demonstrated by their mutually complementing international messages. America’s undisputed message is: “I’m the leader of the free world.” Russia’s less obvious claim is as follows: “Freedom is the luxury of the rich. I want to represent the poor, to be the alternative to Pax Americana.”
After this instructive foray into the Pantheon of my unpublished writings, let us take a specific look at the subject of bipolarity first raised here.
(To be continued in my next entry…)
There is a thoroughly reassuring stability in the concept of bipolarity, mathematical, physical, philosophical, logical stability. Plus and minus, hot and cold, thesis and antithesis, A and not-A… Every “whole” is in need of a dichotomy, that is, in need of being split in two parts. Otherwise, there is only chaos and confusion… In the beginning of Creation, God created the heaven and the earth (two). Then God divided the light from the darkness (two)… And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas (another two again)… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them (two, as each other’s helpers, and as a necessity of biological reproduction in higher species)…
These days America is languishing in a state of confusion. She feels that she needs bipolarity as a stabilizing factor in international relations, yet this vital condition of stability has suddenly become elusive and outright dangerous. Having remained one of the two poles of bipolarity, America has lost the balancing weight on the other end of the seesaw, and seems hurtling down for a crash landing. The old reliable Russia won’t do anymore, or else the phrase “we won the cold war” becomes a joke. The new unreliable China won’t do, as China is America’s biggest creditor, and it may be too financially dangerous to declare her America’s “main adversary”… I guess this may be one of the reasons why the nation is under such great domestic pressure to declare the whole Islamic world America’s main adversary in the twenty-first century. After all, it is kind of unbecoming for a global superpower to have identified Iraq, or Afghanistan, or these days Iran and/or Syria, etc., as her… greatest enemy?! Well, enough of that! Let us spare this great nation such a humiliation, and return to the “old reliable” Tocquevillian dichotomy of America versus Russia.
My new miniseries on the geopolitical principle of bipolarity now proceeds with an excerpt from my article Russia: The Misplaced Key to a Stable World, written in December 2002.
In the game of geopolitical chess, played by America and Russia, the Russian side should not be allowed to impose its rules on others, but neither should their worldview be thoughtlessly and recklessly dismissed. In fact, their position does make sense. The Russian preoccupation with philosophical dichotomy and with the postulate of bipolarity as a basic condition for the world balance, and the resulting rationalization of the two-superpower concept, have resulted in the following formula:
America + Russia = World Balance.
In this context, surprisingly, but effortlessly, we get the key to Hesiod’s rather enigmatic pronouncement, in his classic Works and Days: “They are fools who know not that the half is better than the whole.” It starts making perfect sense as soon as we apply it to today’s New World Order. Only a fool would deny that there is not much glory in being the world’s one and only superpower, as America claims to be. I am sure that the erstwhile days of cold-war two-superpower confrontation, when America was the true leader of the Western world, are sorely missed by all thoughtful patriotic Americans, who look around these days, and do not like what they see.
It may gratify us to be gently reminded that the concept of balance is not Russia’s invention, but a general philosophical principle, which, in this or that form, has existed throughout the ages. Of less ancient origin, but eminently instructive, is the curious political concept invented by the British, and known as “balance of power.” It might go something like this: “If your friend emerges as (the only) superpower, you ought to ally yourself with your enemy, in order to restore the balance of power.” The fact that the British are still good allies of the United States shows only one thing: that they have not given much credence to the rumor of the other superpower’s demise.
But anyway, whether we like it or not, we have to admit that the single-superpower concept can produce no such balancing formula and can offer no effective solution to a world crisis, except a military solution. Nor does it conjure up a mental picture of balance, like the seesaw analogy. It seems rather like a vortex, which definitely lacks stability. What also makes sense in this two-superpower concept is that it does not require us to bend the rules of the geopolitical game, because its basic parameters are already naturally and fully in existence. As we have seen earlier, both America and Russia certainly meet the superpower definition by virtue of their self-awareness of their national destiny, and by virtue of their exceptional military strength, resulting in their unique capacity for mutual and assured destruction.
Their philosophical compatibility is further demonstrated by their mutually complementing international messages. America’s undisputed message is: “I’m the leader of the free world.” Russia’s less obvious claim is as follows: “Freedom is the luxury of the rich. I want to represent the poor, to be the alternative to Pax Americana.”
After this instructive foray into the Pantheon of my unpublished writings, let us take a specific look at the subject of bipolarity first raised here.
(To be continued in my next entry…)
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