Tiempos de inflexión histórica. La invasión de Ucrania yel declive del poder occidental

Resumo

We are witnessing an unparalleled social transformation since theIndustrial Revolution that leads us to a historical turning point(post-Europe, yes, but also post-Western?) caused by two keyvariables: an unbalanced demography between the West and therest of the world, affecting Europe in particular. But that has beencoupled with a technological convergence because the West haslost the monopoly of technoscience that it enjoyed for at leastthree centuries and that was the cause of its power.Economics is a positive-sum game; we can all win (or lose).But power is a zero-sum game, agonizing, and the emergenceof new powers in the world reduces the relative power of theWest in equal measure. We are not facing absolute decline andthe West has many assets, and although it also has seriousinternal problems, it will remain an unrivalled actor for manydecades.But the invasion of Ukraine preludes a period of turbulence onthe international stage marked by the “trap of Thucydides”: thetension between an emerging power (China) and a declining one (USA), a tension that articulates, not only the foreign policy ofthese two giants, but the entire international order.At the present juncture, however, the possibility of a new peacecan also be glimpsed, peace by balance of powers and interdependence, liberal peace, «hot peace» full of tensions, rather thana «cold war». For, unlike the old USSR, China does not intend toexport its socio-political model and is not aware of the politicalform of the other countries.