Speech by Stefano Vernole at the European Conference on Multipolarity

The transition from Donald Trump's administration to that led by Joe Biden has led to a significant change of US foreign policy.

The New York billionaire was formally hoisted into the White House to meet the demands of the impoverished American middle class and disappointed by the excessive US military exposure in the world, exploiting a feeling of frustration which, not surprisingly, had already been highlighted by one of the top analysts of the stars and stripes circles of power, Samuel Huntington.

In reality, it was yet another "bait and switch" of US geopolitics; Trump - the ideal candidate to gather the protests of this resentful component of US society - was used to try to block the peaceful rise of the People's Republic of China and above all his project for a land and sea New Silk Road which was transforming the process of globalization from unipolar to multipolar (causing the United States to lose its universal dominance). Hence the rhetoric of the White House on America First, on protectionism and on trade tariffs, methods which have however proved to be ineffective given the close interconnection between the first two economies in the world.

The leading role of Beijing based on the BRICS principles of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign States, respect for the cultural-religious differences of individual countries (including the development model) and support for the real but not speculative economy has obviously also been joined by Moscow, especially after the 2014 Euro-Atlantic sanctions over the Crimea issue; the Kremlin reacted to them with a more intense economic rapprochement with China and with a military intervention in Syria which disrupted the US plans for the "Greater Middle East", according to a logic that could be defined as the "international division of Eurasian labour". (Russia uses the military tool, China the economic one). The Trumpian attempt to detach Russia from China failed, under the pretext of the pandemic the new-old scheme of the "Cold War", of the division of the world into blocs, of the even ideological clash between "autocracies" and "democracies" has gradually re-proposed. At that point, the natural candidate for the US establishment became Joe Biden, the president most likely to recover Europe within the Washington-led bloc via NATO after the tribulations of the Trump era.

Before settling China – considered by the United States to be the real strategic rival for world governance – Washington tries to get rid of Xi Jinping's main ally, namely Vladimir Putin, to replace him with a "puppet" willing to accept the marginal role of Moscow within the US unipolar order and the fragmentation of the Russian Federation.

A further clarification is now needed. Many already speak of multipolarity as a process that has fully begun, in reality we are still in a transition phase that the Russian diplomat Marija Chodynskaja Goleniščeva brilliantly defined a few years ago as "polycentric dualism": "Unipolarity and pluralist unipolarity (what the Americans call multilateralism), typical models of the 1990s and early 2000s, are beginning to give way to the polycentric world order. This difficult and irregular process meets the resistance of States that are used to dominating the world scene and have lost the negotiating skills to reach compromises that take into account the interests of other parties and presuppose the willingness to make concessions. On the other hand, the growth of the specific political weight of «unconventional actors» (first of all, of the countries of the region) on the international scene, their desire to participate more actively in decision-making on fundamental world issues leads to a profound involvement of these states in conflicts affecting their national interests. All this makes the situation unpredictable, leads to the «fragmentation» of conflicts into areas of in areas of intersection of interests of global and regional political actors and makes the resolution of crises changeable in the absence of a methodology adequate to today's reality.

The Eurasian geopolitical philosopher Aleksandr Dugin rightly separated and distinguished the concept of multilateralism – a convenient facade situation which only serves to distinguish the inequality between the hegemon (USA) and its vassals (the nations of the Atlantic Alliance) – from that of multipolarity, a concept dear to those who do not accept US unipolar hegemony on the planet. There can be no compromises between the supporters of the two camps, especially since Putin's enunciation of guiding principles and the systematization of alternative military and economic instruments (CSTO, Bank of BRICS, OCS…) has further widened the gap between the respective sides. Returning to Dugin, he argues that "a multipolar world is not a bipolar world because in today's world there is no power that can resist the strategic power of the United States and NATO countries by its own strength, and furthermore there is no ideology general and coherent capable of uniting a large part of humanity in clear ideological opposition to the ideology of liberal democracy, capitalism and human rights, on which the United States now founds a new, single ideology. Nor can modern Russia, China, India or any other state claim to be a second pole under such conditions. The re-establishment of bipolarity is impossible due to ideological and military-technological reasons…”. In reality, own respect by the BRICS and their allies for the shared principles of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign States, combined with the affirmation of cultural specificities, specific economic models (productive versus financial) and the different visions of the world (just think of the concept of "family"), has already divided the geopolitical chessboard between two poles in constant competition with each other in all areas of the planet. The acceleration of competition between the two camps in recent years has in fact forced in one way or another all nation states to take sides on one side or the other. In conclusion, if it is true that we currently do not yet live in a multipolar geopolitical system, it is equally true that the sine qua non of its completion is the transition to a new bipolar phase which, even if it is no longer based on the historical ideological opposition between capitalism and Marxism however, it retains epochal differences in worldviews. Therefore, it is not just a question of proposing a reorganization of international relations or of interpreting the current historical phase as the transition from geopolitical to geoeconomic competition, but of further deepening the already existing synergy between the forces that tend to favor multipolarity in order to make it clear that the he current precarious bipolar balance can only be broken with the strategic downsizing of the United States of America. Only when Washington accepts or is forced to renounce its attempt at world hegemony, in the face of evidence of its incapacity to lead the planet, will the longed-for multipolar system be achieved; in the meantime, the intermediate phase can only be increasingly bipolar, as recent events are highlighting: the entrenchment of the Atlantic world, including Europe, in defense of the supremacy of the US dollar.

At the same time, the end of Eurocentrism requires a new idea-force from the supporters of the multipolar world which imposes the end of the assumption of westernization-modernization-liberalism-democracy-human/individual rights as the only possible progress of humanity. A process of cultural change that should be coordinated with the BRICS countries, which could soon be joined by at least 20 other nations from various parts of the globe.

They should then recognize the role of Russia as the Piedmont of Europe and try to coagulate all those genuinely anti-American forces present within the Old Continent (bearing in mind the subordination and complicity of the European Union with US imperialism).

A peaceful transition from unipolarity to multipolarity could be more convenient for everyone. The world would be divided into zones of influence where the regional and neighboring powers take action to possibly resolve the various issues peacefully: it is the model that I have defined as multipolar globalization, because it is based on different actors-civilizations and on the possibly win-win composition of interests. But the Russian military victory in Ukraine and the completion of the dedollarization process already under way constitute the indispensable premises.

* Stefano Vernole is Vice President of the Centre for Mediterranean Eurasia Studies