🌎 The Coming Rise of the Multipolar World and the Decline of International White Supremacy and Colonialism

[DA_Champion]

With this thread I aim at loosely catalog a major historical phase transition currently taking place: the shift from Western hegemony, which arguably began around 1492, to a multipolar world, one where former colonies and backwaters like India, Brazil, most of Africa, the Arab world, Iran, Russia, and China can now begin to chart their own path and their own destiny, free of the shackles that have held them back.

With this, we will see adjacent ideas slowly die, such as that of the intrinsic genetic superiority of Caucasians and the related belief of the ideological superiority of Western values and systems.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

We don't need a New World Order controlled by dictatorships but that seems to be the plan.

 

[DA_Champion]

Argentina's Javier Millei came to power on a platform of bettering relations with the West, Ukraine, and Israel and worsening relations with China. That was obviously not going to last, as there is no economic basis for that, but I didn't expect him to start changing course so quickly.

 

[DA_Champion]

We don't need a New World Order controlled by dictatorships but that seems to be the plan.

Every civilization should have a good degree of internal control.

You think of the West as democracies, but did people in Muslim countries get to vote for or against leaders like Bush, Obama, and Netanyahu who exercised dominion over their lives and their lands?

No.

A path to emancipation for weaker countries is to leverage competition between balanced greater powers.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Every civilization should have a good degree of internal control.

You think of the West as democracies, but did people in Muslim countries get to vote for or against leaders like Bush, Obama, and Netanyahu who exercised dominion over their lives and their lands?

No.

A path to emancipation for weaker countries is to leverage competition between balanced greater powers.

Ever heard of the Vietnam War?

There was a balance between Eastern and Western powers and Vietnam got caught in a proxy war.

And would Middle East be better under Saddam, the Taliban and ISIS without American involvement.

I doubt it.

 

[DA_Champion]

Ever heard of the Vietnam War?

There was a balance between Eastern and Western powers and Vietnam got caught in a proxy war.

And would Middle East be better under Saddam, the Taliban and ISIS without American involvement.

I doubt it.

Have you seen this?

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Have you seen this?

What about the Arab Spring? Muslims themselves were fed up with dictatorships.

 

[DA_Champion]

What about the Arab Spring? Muslims themselves were fed up with dictatorships.

I'm sorry, I'm not doing an adequate job of answering your questions. I don't mean to be rude, I just have several things going on in parallel, it would probably be better to not respond than to half-respond.

Some people say that the Arab spring was engineered by Western agents but I myself have not been convinced.

What I have been convinced by is that the West interfered in the Arab spring. There was a heavy intervention in both Syria and Libya and both of those led to catastrophic outcomes.

In the case of Libya it was a formative event for me, I remember being flabbergasted at the time that the same people who called Bush a warmonger and protested by the millions were supportive of the same thing when Obama did it. Ghadaffi was better than Saddam and obviously better than what they have now -- 400,000 people have died, and the African slave trade has been restored (they now have open air slave auctions), just to steal Libyan gold and oil, and also ... To make an example of an African country that was trying to better the lives of its citizens. Ghadaffi subsidized housing, education, health care, food, was building infrastructure for other countries, etc instead of buying Western weapons and toys like a garage with 10,000 luxury cars and so they made an example out of him.

In the early 2000s, the highest cell phone rates in the world were in Africa, and French companies were making bank. African countries couldn't raise the money to launch a satellite to reduce costs, so Ghadaffi paid for the satellite. Cell phone costs in Africa fell, and the French government (then Sarkozy) was furious. That probably contributed to the war as well.

The Syrian civil war had Syria, Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia on one side, with the US, Turkey, Israel, and ISIS on the other. Some 500,000 people have died and 6 million have been made refugees and for what? Bashar Assad is now back in power and fully reinstated in the Arab league. Russia and Iran now have a stronger alliance. Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the purpose was to help Israel ... Well how did that work out? Did it actually help Israel? And even if it had is that worth the cost?

All of this leaves aside the fact that just because we live in White-majority countries doesn't make us smarter, wiser, or more moral (we're not), and even if it did other civilizations should be allowed to chart their own path.

The American civil war is a good example. European powers considered intervening on behalf of the Confederacy. Would that have made the world a better place? I'm sure some would have argued that it would have, but ultimately I think that the USA needed to fight that incredibly bloody war to mature as a country. I think that we would be worse off of the UK and France had stepped in to support the Confederacy.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

I don't agree with what happened in Libya and Ghadaffi. Obama called it the low point of his presidency. Aside from Libya I believe the Arab Spring were local movements.

Western powers have played king maker in the mid east with varying results. That doesn't mean dictatorships should take over the planet. Not only are dictatorships as greedy and corrupt as democracies, the population is highly oppressed and completely powerless. They are hell on Earth.

Life is pointless without autonomy, self-determination and actual choices.

 

[Ironfan72]

There will be a shift in power or influence whether the west wants to believe it or not, with the current alliance with the largest populations in the world (India, Brazil, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia) they control not only the largest areas of population but over 90% of the worlds oil, and eventually the worlds currency will no longer be the dollar but Chinese currancy.
Its my opinion so take it with a grain of salt as to why white evangelicals in this country have enbraced an authoritarian in Trump as there has been a massive push back here in the United States by whites who see their majority slipping away, its estimated by the mid 2030s hispanics will be the majority race in the United States and ive seen since President Obama white nationalism rising more and more, there only real way to stay the majority is to go full dictatorship and change the culture of the country, this is unlikely to really work but i am concerned by the rhetoric from the right regarding a muslim ban, mass deportations of non white population that the policies of the United States is shifting to more extreme policies and a large portion of the population seems perfectly ok with no longer being considered a democracy.
Again, this is an opinion, i am by no means an expert nor can i keep up with everything that goes on in the world, this is observation, i am sure i am not seeing the full picture, no one actually does.

 

[DA_Champion]

There are alternatives to a peaceful, multipolar world.

One is a third world war, which some of our leaders seem to want. That could end in comprehensive mutual annihilation. We'd all die. Maybe we'd die quick, painless deaths.

The other is a bipolar world, with the USA putting up an iron curtain around Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and Taiwan. That might work in the short term, but it would not be stable in the long term as future generations in that 15% of the world population would envy the higher living standards and lower corruption outside of the iron curtain.

I prefer a peaceful transition, but like everybody else here, I don't make the rules.

 

[Hobgoblin]

The US seems to have peaked and that’s not necessarily good or bad. When you are king of the mountain, you play rough to stay the king. When the new king takes over, the cycle continues. Bipolar words don’t last that long, because “there can only be one.”

Britain more or less ruled the world for a century before the First World War. Imperial Germany rose through the ranks for decades before they clashed and it took 31 years before the fight between them was definitively settled.

The world wars and their aftermath severely weakened Europe’s influence over the world but we saw the rise of the USA and USSR. We had a new world created but also a new fight for dominance.

People can debate when China really became a serious rival to the US. (I consider Russia a regional power, not a global one. China still beats them economically and in terms of global influence.) Regardless, 2024 is not 1914. If nuclear weapons had existed in 1914, maybe there wouldn’t have been a world war. Conflicts will remain, just between stronger powers and less developed countries. Neither China or the US want to fight each other. (I’m not saying that China and India will go to war but two growing rivals so close to each other makes things interesting.) It isn’t worth it. Status quo is more valuable to both of them.

It’s the same game as it’s always been, just with different players.

 

[DA_Champion]

The US seems to have peaked and that’s not necessarily good or bad. When you are king of the mountain, you play rough to stay the king. When the new king takes over, the cycle continues. Bipolar words don’t last that long, because “there can only be one.”

Britain more or less ruled the world for a century before the First World War. Imperial Germany rose through the ranks for decades before they clashed and it took 31 years before the fight between them was definitively settled.

The world wars and their aftermath severely weakened Europe’s influence over the world but we saw the rise of the USA and USSR. We had a new world created but also a new fight for dominance.

People can debate when China really became a serious rival to the US. (I consider Russia a regional power, not a global one. China still beats them economically and in terms of global influence.) Regardless, 2024 is not 1914. If nuclear weapons had existed in 1914, maybe there wouldn’t have been a world war. Conflicts will remain, just between stronger powers and less developed countries. Neither China or the US want to fight each other. (I’m not saying that China and India will go to war but two growing rivals so close to each other makes things interesting.) It isn’t worth it. Status quo is more valuable to both of them.

It’s the same game as it’s always been, just with different players.

China may become the top dog, but it won't be like the USA was for a number of reasons.

The most obvious is that after world war 2, when today's major international institutions and norms were established, the US controlled a colossal 50% of global GDP. It's not just that the USA is no longer that powerful, it's likely that no country will ever be that powerful. Actually, I suspect that no country has ever been that powerful, period. Perhaps the Persian empire under Darius.

As a comparison, today, the combined share of global GDP of the United States and China together is 33%.

World Bank Open Data

Free and open access to global development data

data.worldbank.org

So barring some incredible geopolitical failings (possible), the world's power should become a lot more decentralized.

 

[Hobgoblin]

China may become top dog in some ways but I don’t know if it can be the sole hegemony. The US is too powerful and secure (a massive military, population, landmass, natural resources and being surrounded by two massive oceans) to ever be taken down completely. That makes for a very different situation from Britain, Germany and Russia. The EU is certainly an economic powerhouse and has a larger population than the US but is more fractured politically than we realized. The military is a more divisive topic in Europe than I realized.

We have in the US and China two giants that don’t care for each other but hopefully have enough sense to leave each other alone as much as possible.

 

[Hobgoblin]

I do think it’s important to not be too optimistic about this new world. Chinese influence on weaker nations will benefit China, not the other country. It doesn’t matter if it’s America or China holding the leash, it’s the same thing for the developing country.

 

[DA_Champion]

Though Europe needs Africa, Africa does not need Europe.

 

[DA_Champion]

I do think it’s important to not be too optimistic about this new world. Chinese influence on weaker nations will benefit China, not the other country. It doesn’t matter if it’s America or China holding the leash, it’s the same thing for the developing country.

They have a different role model of development, which isn't surprising as historically even European countries have different models of development. For example, England did a much better job of developing its North American colonies than France did, and we see that legacy today.

Today, China makes a lot of inroads into poorer countries by offering to build things like roads, highways, trains, airports, and seaports. That provides genuine value to those countries, of the type of value that the USA was once able to provide but chose to deindustrialize.

The deal that the US does offer to many third world leaders is that in exchange for supporting the US, and having their resources developed by US companies, they can have some US weapons, and they can invest their country's profits in US capital markets. That was a better deal thirty or forty years ago when the US built the best weapons and was responsible for most of the world's capital markets.

Today, they can buy better weapons from the Russia or China, and many countries would rather invest their profits at home than abroad.

The solution is for the US to adapt and to offer a better deal.

 

[DA_Champion]

Bolivia is a Latin American country with large Lithium deposits, that has turned off diplomatic relations with Israel, and that has good relations with Russia.

So it's no surprise the West tried to coup their government, in the style of Chile 1973 and Ukraine 2014.

What is surprising is how badly the coup failed.

Bolivian general arrested after apparent failed coup attempt as government faces new crisis

Armored vehicles rammed into the doors of Bolivia's government palace Wednesday as President Luis Arce said the country faced an attempted coup.

apnews.com

 

[DA_Champion]

Excellent news, France continues to be kicked out of Africa.

 

[DA_Champion]

I don't know how true this is, but one of the best things that could happen to the rest of the world is fewer countries.

 

[DA_Champion]

What will happen to Europe when it can no longer plunder the rest of the world?

 

[DA_Champion]

 

[:eek:]

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