Valdai Club

The world ceased to be unipolar by the mid-2010s, when Western scenarios of "humanitarian intervention" (Yugoslavia, Libya) no longer worked, but it is too early to talk about true multipolarity ...

In recent years, in a number of regions of the world (Syria, Venezuela, Belarus and other countries), attempts at "colour revolutions" have failed as their “cavalry assaults” have been successfully repulsed. However, the initial success of these “anti-Maidans” is later replaced by the practical difficulties of economic reconstruction, overcoming the sanctions pressure from the Western countries,  as well as long-term retention in the ideological field. 

The scattered forces of non-Western countries succumb to the structural power of the "Collective West" - a concept introduced to the international political economy about 30 years ago by the British researcher Susan Strange (1923-1998). It is “power that shapes frameworks within which states, institutions, and individuals are interrelated". According to Susan Strange, the primary structure of power in the world economy is determined by four main areas: the security structure institutions of the "Collective West" (NATO), the structure of production (OECD), its financial structure (Bretton Woods Institutions) and its framework for the dissemination of knowledge and ideas.

In the 1990-2010s. NATO military contingents took part in the "management" of a number of armed conflicts,  including Iraq, Libya, Sudan and other countries - far beyond the Euro-Atlantic area. In fact, NATO, as a structural force of the "Collective West", being at the peak of the "unipolar moment"  has taken over global security governance. After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the reduction of the contingent in Iraq and Libya, and the regrouping of coalition forces in the engineering and technical personnel, a “power vacuum” has formed in the interior of Eurasia - a lack of a structuring force capable of taking responsibility, for example, for post-conflict settlement in Afghanistan, the Middle East in the interests of stability in Eurasia.

The structural strength of the "Collective West" in the field of economics was established back in the "long 16th century" and took on a coordinated character during the Berlin Conference of 1884 amid the division of colonial gains in Africa. However, in its present form, it was formalised only in 1948 when the Organiation for European Economic Cooperation (from 1961 - OECD) was created to combine the American Marshall Plan for the economic reconstruction of Europe with the neo-colonial regionalism of the Europeans themselves (the ACP-EU agreement). It is difficult to overestimate the structuring significance of this organisation (during the Cold War - an analogue of Comecon), which carries out "flexible" regulation and planning, the coordination of industrial and innovation policy, and synchronizes policy in the field of international assistance and energy for the "Collective West" (the IEA is one of the bodies of the OECD).

Since 2013, the PRC has been implementing its own Marshall Plan, the Belt and Road Project, which has already been joined by most of the world's countries. The PRC is trying to match the implementation of this initiative, mainly in a bilateral format, with the national development strategies of the participating countries, including the development of integration within the EAEU, the "Steppe Way" strategy of Mongolia, the "Two corridors, one belt" of Vietnam, the Nurly Zhol programme (Path to the Future) in Kazakhstan, etc., 

The structural strength of the Collective West in investment is the World Bank Group, in international finance - the IMF. The political influence of the United States and its allies in this "matrix" is predominant.  It allows them to keep the currencies of the BRICS countries at no more than 10% of the total turnover of the world foreign exchange market.    In 2013, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was created - an Asian-centric alternative to the World Bank, in which  regional members account for about 75% of the capital. Five of the seven members of the G7, 15 of the 19 members of the G20, 26 of the 37 members of the OECD and 41 of the 60 members of the Bank for International Settlements have already become AIIB members. As for global financial management, the internationalisation of the digital yuan is becoming a determining factor, and the importance of traditional cryptocurrencies in this "equation" of US competition with China in the field of Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) should not be ruled out yet.

Finally, in the field of knowledge management, the key elements of the scientific structural strength of the West are the scientometric WoS and Scopus indexes, the QS and Times university rankings, and a hierarchical network of scientific publishing houses. In recent years, the Russian Federation has been actively developing the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI), and the PRC - CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure). The Shanghai ranking of universities (Academic Ranking of World Universities, ARWU), which has been compiled annually since 2003, has become widespread. Social platforms created with the participation of the Russian Federation (Telegram) and China (TikTok) have also become widespread throughout the world.

On the agenda is the completion of the institutions of the "Collective Non-West" with the participation of the PRC and the Russian Federation as leaders of the new bloc. The temporary “window of opportunity” is determined by the active phase of the “power transit” (10-15 years) - the period of the most fierce competition between the United States and China (and more broadly, the “Collective West” and “Collective Non-West”) for global leadership.  It is necessary to move to the model of "collective leadership", to locate the headquarters of several key institutions of the "Collective Non-West" in Russia, and also in India (the headquarters of the AIIB and the SCO are located in Beijing, BRICS is located in Shanghai). Within the framework of the new "matrix", the national interests and main concerns of the Russian Federation, which are ignored in the traditional "West-centric" system of structural power, will be more successfully promoted.

This article presents the results of a study carried out within the framework of the RFBR scientific project No. 20-514-93003 KAOON_a, "Russia and China in the global political space: reconciliation of national interests in global governance".

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