Calgary,October 2021
More than 150 years ago French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote: “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” and this observation is as true today as it was in his time. My own experience confirms it. For the first 25 years of my life, I was living in Czechoslovakia, which in western terminology was called communist dictatorship. We had an official enemy, United States, and nobody was allowed to say anything good about them. If a journalist would dare to disobey the prohibition, in 1950s he would be risking jail and after 1960s he was likely to lose his job. The Soviet propaganda was warning about the American Imperialists attacking our homeland and Soviet military demanding more money to build more weapons. At the same time, American propaganda was warning about Soviet attack and the US military were demanding more money to build more weapons.
Now, 55 years later, I live in Canada, which is defined as western democracy. We have an official enemy, China, and nobody is allowed to say anything good about them. If a journalist would dare to disobey the prohibition, he wouldn’t risk jail, but would be swamped by an avalanche of insults and perhaps endanger his job. American propaganda is warning about Chinese attack and US military are demanding more money to build more weapons. Undoubtedly, Chinese are doing the same. As Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote 150 years ago: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Why is it? Why can’t we learn? Because the world always has been, and always will be govern by people with enormous egos, hungry for power, who are capable to influence others. They are driven by emotions, not logic, and those emotions makes them repeat the same mistakes over and over again. That is why politics never changes and why empires come and go. I have personally witnessed a disappearance of two empires: British and Soviet. Great Britain after WW2 realised that their colonial system is unsustainable, granted independence to its colonies and relinquished the status of a world power to United States. In 1991 Soviet Union disintegrated because its economy collapsed, and for a short time United States was basking in the glory of winning the Cold War. America saw itself as a benevolent ruler who will lead the world to prosperity and justice, American style. There was a talk about the end of the history, when every country will imitate the good old USA, but this illusion didn’t last. In faraway parts of the world other men with big egos had other ideas. They strongly disagreed with the notion that their countries should follow the United States like ducklings following their mother. Russia, after recovering from the shock of losing the empire, is attempting to reclaim the status as a world power. China, a country with ancient civilization, is directly challenging the supremacy of United States. India is looking east to expand its influence in Asia. Iran wants to be a regional power in the Middle East. In all those countries the men with big egos reject the American vision of the unipolar world lead by United States. Those men want a multipolar world where the interests of their countries are taken seriously.
How will those conflicting visions shape the future? Since history repeats itself, it might be useful to examine the past. During the Cold War United States and Soviet Union realized that they had enough weapons to destroy each other together with the rest of the world. That lead to the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), ensuring that nobody could win the nuclear war. Now the nuclear weapons proliferated to United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Correa. Will the MAD concept still work? Nobody knows, but there is nothing else to replace it with. There is no hope that the conflicting visions of the unipolar versus multipolar world will be resolved in mutually acceptable way. Nationalistic propaganda of both sites will make sure of that.
My prediction is that we are heading for another cold war. Governments of all the power-hungry countries must deal with three opposing interest groups: Military, business, and public media. To get more money, military needs enemy. Therefore, it is to their advantage to maintain tension and exaggerate the enemies’ capabilities. Admittedly, it is not all bad. Jet engine, computer, Internet, GPS, all that came from military needs. On the other hand, business community requires exact opposite. They want a stable environment with minimum obstacles in international dealings. Third interest group, public media, which forms the public opinion, depends on bad news. Nobody reads good news. Therefore, for them it is beneficial to spread alarms about imminent attack by a perceived enemy, write about political corruptions and about the scandals of celebrities. Facing all those conflicting demands, governments must maintain nationalistic propaganda to keep the military and media happy, but in the background, they try to smooth the waters for the commerce to flow. This is nothing new, those tactics have been used for centuries.
So, how will the Cold War-2 evolve? Unlike Cold War-1, where United States had a clear economic advantage, Cold War-2 protagonists have serious problems. In the long run, China’s main concern is demography. Because of the misguided policy of one child only, lasting from 1979 till 2015, the country’s population is aging. In 1980 there were ten workers for one retiree, now it is five and in 2050 it is estimated to drop to three workers for one retiree. On the top of that, there are about 3% more men than women. Demography might be China’s biggest predicament. Right now, China is experiencing housing bubble, similar to the one we had in 2008. Their main real estate company, Evergrande, has more than $300 billion in liabilities and the question is how the government will handle the situation.
United States has equally serious problems. The country is sharply divided into two antagonistic camps which, instead of cooperating, are doing their best to harm each other. The government is in hands of an old man with big ego but little imagination. The US foreign policy is one continuous string of lost wars. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the War on Terror are just some examples. Their budget deficits are staggering. The 2020 the budget deficit was $3.3 trillion, and the overall debt was more than $27 trillion. It is hard to imagine how that kind of money could ever be paid back. Some say that debt doesn’t matter, but I don’t believe it. The global problems like the climate change, refugee crises and Covid makes the situation even worse.
With all that in mind, I cannot see a clear winner in the Cold War-2. The best outcome would be if both protagonists will get sick and tired of trying to outsmart each other and will start to concentrate on their own problems. In that case another player might appear, confirming that empires come and go, and that "the more things change, the more they stay the same."