No one doubts
the existence of a number of new rising powers (or
"poles") in the East, or that the two primary
poles are identified as Russia and China, with
India rapidly rising as a third pole of
importance, or that the rising economies and
markets in the East
are
increasingly attracting the main attention and the
tangible interest and respect of the rest of the
world.
Few would argue that the United
States and the wider West have something to worry
about as a consequence of the unrelenting rise of
the new poles in the East. Notably, their dramatic
rise is a phenomenon that has been judged as
carrying real meaning only in the past three years
or so, demonstrating how quickly the geopolitical
landscape can change - is changing. These matters
are not debatable.
But significant
uncertainties still plague the minds of many
observers when it comes to a discussion of whether
the Russia-China axis will continue to hold
together and whether it will further tighten its
cohesiveness; whether India will align with
Russia-China to form a strategic triad; whether
the lesser poles in the East, along with the bulk
of the energy-exporting states (poles) around the
globe and even key European Union states, might be
ever more cohesively aligning with Russia-China;
and whether a tangible arrangement of some kind
that encompasses all of them might be coming
together. Finally, will any such arrangement pose
a real challenge to US global dominance any time
soon? These are the key questions that demand
sound answers.
The view has been put forth
by this author/analyst that the rising powers in
the East, along with the bulk of the world's
energy-exporting states and certain key European
powers, are in fact already coming together to
form a tangible and ever more cohesive phenomenon
of truly global proportions and leverage. Yet this
is one that is of necessity multifarious in
composition - in essence, a comparatively loose
global confederation of sovereign states that
nonetheless shares a common vision and
increasingly finds itself firmly "on the same
page" respecting a few grand issues of overriding
importance that increasingly trump all else.
Its structure has been presented as less
than (and different from) a full-fledged North
Atlantic Treaty Organization-style formal military
alliance, yet its reach, potency and cohesiveness
are potentially much greater than that currently
enjoyed by NATO and the wider West. It has been
called "the rising multifarious East" that is
mounting a potent challenge to US-led unipolarity.
Is such a phenomenon real or only imaginary?
Multifarious, not monolithic - yet ever
more cohesive The term "multifarious" was
chosen intentionally to describe the nature and
composition of the rising East. Webster defines
"multifarious" as "having great variety, diverse,
composed of many varied parts". The rising East is
not monolithic in its composition, but neither is
the West, which at any point in time has been
composed of the US and its diverse allies around
the globe, some of which are democracies and some
of which are culturally, politically and
economically very different from democracies,
those that have been cruel dictatorships with
miserable human-rights records, for example.
During the Cold War when the
far-less-than-monolithic West faced a common foe,
the Soviet Union, its diverse members acted
cohesively and in accord as against a common
threat. The greatly varied membership of the bloc
of the West had one overriding interest in common
- they did not want to be dominated by communism
and the Soviet Union. They owned a galvanizing
common vision - the defeat of communism and the
spread of "freedom" from external oppression
worldwide. The phenomenon of greatly varied
component parts becoming galvanized, uniting and
acting cohesively against a common foe isn't
grandiose - it's rather mundane.
In view
of the foregoing, the objection that the rising
East is far from "monolithic" in its composition
is merely a distraction from the real subject of
whether there exist unifying issues of adequate
potency, ones that transcend the differences among
its members, so as to produce cohesion among them
and the subsequent arising of sufficient structure
to facilitate collective action against what they
perceive as a common foe. Does the rising
multifarious East share a common, galvanizing
vision?
There definitely exists an issue
of such fundamental importance, value and potency
that it far transcends the inherent differences
among the members of the rising East. It is an
issue that is embraced by the potential membership
with passion and intellectual readiness, one of a
nature such that the membership requires little
elucidation and articulation of its core
importance and practical worth to them
individually, an issue that reaches immediately to
the very core interests of every potential member.
It is therefore an issue that inherently possesses
a commanding power to unify. It is an issue that
has already proved itself as a potent unifier of
greatly diverse poles and that is continuing to
prove itself along that important line. It is
incorporated as an integral part of a truly
galvanizing vision.
The cohesive glue
identified It is the issue of the
desirability or the undesirability of continued
excessive US global dominance in the economic,
diplomatic, geopolitical and military spheres.
That issue touches immediately on the vital
interests of all the world's powers for the
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