2025: What is happening to the World?
28 Dec 2024
2025 is right around the corner, a year which feels foreboding.
Lately I’ve wondered how to best serve my audience— what would fun and interesting to read? What would be juicy, spicy, and something you couldn’t get elsewhere?
Well, what is happening to the world?
Why are people fighting and dying? Why are wars erupting? Why does our own country feel increasingly dystopian? Why is there increasing poverty? And why is there so much bellicosity? Instability? Chaos?
If we don’t understand what’s happening, we’ll be afraid of the future. But we shouldn’t be… the present is dark, and what’s to come may be even darker, but the future will yield peace and prosperity. That’s not a prediction; it’s prescriptive. Periods of great violence give way to peaceful restructuring… eventually.
And there’s no doubt that we are entering a period of great and unprecedented violence.
There’s a simple explanation for the terrible chaos of the increasingly dangerous present. The world is already in the throes of the Third World War.
This is not idle speculation, nor sky-is-falling panic. This is a rational, informed and sober fact that provides a lot of clarity if we understand fully its implications.
why do I think this?
I’m fascinated by World-Systems Theory, a multi-disciplinary approach that looks at history scientifically. It is not distracted by the main-character pretensions of Nation-States, nor does it ascribe total primacy to capitalism; it looks at the world as a whole, and as a functioning (sometimes dysfunctioning) system. Hence, world-systems.
The current US-led world-system is based on the United Nations and Bretton Woods Conference (since 1945), which gives the United States of America a hegemonic position— leadership status, and near-sovereign rights over the whole world (by way of trade and currency flows). For example, the UN Security Council gives the US the right to veto any UN initiative. Bretton Woods institutions mean the vast, vast majority of any world-wide transaction is done in US dollars as a clearing-currency. This confers a tremendous advantage to the old US of A.
BUT
That arrangement which “stabilized” the world after WWII has been collapsing, and collapsing fast. On one hand, the chief antagonist is the US itself, destroying the foundations for this order in a ham-fisted attempt to maintain its dominance.
On the other hand, the US is facing new challenges that has definitionally ended its “uni-polar moment” (roughly 1991-2007). The other nations of the world are catching up to, and surpassing, the old United States in terms of industrial production, buying power of citizens, military potential and capability, and Intellectual and Moral Leadership. These New and Powerful Nations no longer want to be constrained by the systems of American power projection, nor subjugated by crumbling US hegemony.
The New Nations of the World want to find their own way forward based on Consensus, Sovereignty, Peaceful Coexistence, and Mutual, Complementary Development.
These nations are (to name the heavy-hitters): the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, Brazil, Bharat (India), South Africa, and Iran. This is a non-exhaustive list, and many are members of the ad hoc international organization BRICS+.
Do they want war? NO. Nobody really wants war (some exceptions apply). The New Nations of New World want to free themselves of American domination and feistiness.
One clear example: the Rebellious Nations want an end to the unilateral sanctions regime America uses to accomplish geopolitical goals (See: Cuba. The US uses its advantageous position to cut Cuba off from the world-market as punishment for not doing what America wants. These sanctions only hurt the population, who are unable to get medicines, commodities, food, and energy. This is economic warfare by the hegemonic power against the weakest in the world (and it doesn’t even work… Cuba is suffering but unbowed)).
The United States wants to avoid costly direct-confrontation, by using “hybrid-warfare,” election shenanigans and informational tomfoolery (in Georgia, Romania or the Philippines), or by using its proxies to do its dirty work (Israel).
Now, the biggest upset to American supremacy is China, China, China. There’s no escaping the economic might of the East. Increasingly, the majority of trade world-wide is Asia-on-Asia trade, between the archipelago of newly wealthy, rapidly developing nations. Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia… this is the gravity of world economy, and it’s only growing. The industrial, economic, and infrastructural expansion of China has no precedent in human history. It has not merely caught up to the United States, but totally eclipsed it, effectively demonstrating the real effectiveness of the socialist system in a way the USSR totally failed to do.
If American Empire was based on high mass consumption around the world, China has perfected this approach while providing the poorest regions of the world (sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and the Middle East/North Africa/Mediterranean) with infrastructure of their own, demonstrating largesse, and setting the stage for these formerly exploited Nations to have their own economic Great Leaps Forward that will define the coming centuries. The center of world Politics, Economics, Ideology and Diplomacy is swinging to Beijing.
The Russian Federation, who spelled out their diplomatic red-lines in 2007, demanded that the US-led system accommodate their demand for security and sovereignty. (Russia’s concerns were continuously ignored, even after threats of action, because the US believed, rather arrogantly, that Russia was weak, could be handily defeated, and brought back into the fold… just as they had been under Yeltsin.)
The result? Russia violated the basic provisions of the Westphalian interstate system when they invaded Ukraine in 2022, and the US and its Ukrainian proxy are facing decisive defeat. These military consequences reflect an existential challenge to American supremacy: it cannot defeat an opponent in the field. The hegemony has been lost, and the system has become anarchy (ie, without central authority).
Similar challenges are occurring in West Asia, as the US/Israel wage war for total supremacy over the Arab Resistance. American belligerence and ineptitude is driving its individual enemies into an impromptu alliance, creating the conditions for an insurmountable threat.
In short, the United States is facing a rebellion on all (or, most) fronts, by upstarts with more dynamism and potential. This is the classic recipe for reconfiguration of world order.
empire strikes back first?
The US can “win” by crushing the systemic independence movements of the Rebellious Nations and bringing them back into the fold. The prosperity of the Americans, the strength of their currency, and even their own mythology is based on maintaining the status quo… and the US military leaders know the best chance to win a war with a rival who might one day be stronger than you is to strike first. Kill first, justify later.
But how much of the world will it destroy to keep control? And won’t it distract from the urgent matter of climate crisis?? Yes, it would.
Nobody wants war, but war is coming. How much war depends on the Americans themselves. Do we want to find a diplomatic detente, find our new place within a changed world, and become equal partners, brothers and sisters with humanity, facing the challenges of a new century together? Or do we want to try to control everything, try to keep a lid on the boiling pot, kill anyone who opposes us, and blow the whole world up like a pouting child who breaks the toy he alone can’t have?
The world has outgrown its cage and wants a New Way Forward. As Americans (or wherever you hail from, reader), we have a responsibility to understand that the United States War & Power Clique must be forced to make peace. You want to challenge the “Deep State”? Peace is the answer; unelected bureaucrats grow fat and powerful on war. You want equality and safety? Peace is the answer; war makes free-thought a dangerous indulgence. Peace! peace! peace! is the boldest and wisest solution to a world facing total systemic chaos.
Already the world is changing faster than we can keep up— we’re entering a wild year for sure, and one that will yield a lot of misery. But the best thing for us is to at least understand what is happening, because understanding displaces fear and precedes earnest engagement.
coming next?
In the future, I’ll reflect on the history of the World-System, from its curious origins in the Italian city-states of the 15th Century, to the Dutch trade hegemony, to British imperialism, to “Pax” Americana, and beyond: into the new frontier of world history.
Also: run-downs on important current events as they occur.
And: pleasant philosophical adventures to explore the ideas of Common Humanity, informed by Ecology, Buddhism, and Direct Democracy. We’re all brothers and sisters together, all parts of a great whole.
It’s a brave new reality we’re marching into, and it’s best to come to terms with it.
That’s all for today.
Liam CZA Noble
Somerville 2024