Yang Guangbin: The age-old struggle of the Russians and the reconstruction of the world order
For a hundred years, the Russians have been fighting the world order, dominated by the United Kingdom and the United States, and conquered half the world. This time they launched a "special operation" to protect their national security and directly oppose the entire Western world, according to the rector of the Institute of International Relations of the People's University of China.
Yang Guangbin () — Rector of the Institute of International Relations of the People's University of China
After the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, the West imposed a number of sanctions against Russia. But, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, this marks the end of an era, and from now on the West will lose its global dominance both politically and economically. And Russia's initiative is also seen as a challenge to the world order established by the West. In my opinion, the Russian struggle did not begin with the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, but has been going on for a century. And this time, European countries and the United States will pay a new price.
Russia is a principality that over the centuries of battles has turned into an empire with the largest territory in the world. At the turn of the XX century, its constant expansion came to a standstill — the Anglo—Saxons created a world system, and the position of the Russians was changed - they turned from conquerors into "rebels".
For the past century, Russians have been fighting the capitalist world system created by white Anglo-Saxon Christians. This world political history was not planned in advance, and the result of changes in the world order is a centuries—old history of struggle between the Slavs — the Russians - and the Anglo-Saxons. The Russian-Ukrainian crisis, of course, is not the end of this story.
The establishment of world order and the struggle for hegemony
Around 1875, the capitalist economic world system, led by Great Britain as a whole, completed its formation. That is, it took the British 200 years to establish their own hegemonic order, and after the end of World War II, the banner of leadership was handed over to the Americans. For 300 years, the Anglo-Saxons dominated the world order.
The peculiarity of this system, first of all, is its cruelty. According to William McNeil, the founder of the world macrohistory, among the expanding nations, the Anglo-Saxons were the most warlike, the bloodiest and the most cruel. The second feature of this system is inequality. Capitalism is an economy based on an uneven distribution of capital. The third feature is the military foundation. The political and economic system that developed during World War II is what Americans call the military-industrial complex. The basis of the viability of such a system is war. The fourth feature is that the above characteristics prove that expansion is the nature of this system, and war is the main way of life.
Not everyone was happy with the dominance of the Anglo-Saxons in the world. Firstly, there were dissenters within Western civilization. At the beginning of the XIX century, the French emperor Napoleon fought for Western hegemony. The Germans, who survived the "hundred years of peace", competed with the British in two world wars. The Japanese in the East also joined the struggle for leadership. But after the defeat, they were all forced to submit to the world system under the leadership of the Anglo-Saxons. Of course, the French, Germans, and Japanese fought for leadership, not for the overthrow of the world capitalist economy.
In the past, it was often said that the struggle of the "second superpower", the Soviet Union, also failed, but this is obviously a matter of historical perspective. From the point of view of the world political system, the emergence of the Soviet Union with the Russian nation as the main driving force is undoubtedly a great success that has shaken the world political system dominated by the Anglo-Saxons.
The emergence of the Soviet Union and the restructuring of the world order
The Soviet regime established in the First World War was the first system created after the Paris Commune, which opposed the world capitalist system. Therefore, from the very beginning (1917-1920), the new regime was besieged and suppressed by the White Army, supported by Britain, France and Germany, but eventually ended with the victory of the Red Army.
However, the severity of the "economic sanctions" imposed on the new regime was not inferior to the sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and the West due to the current Russian-Ukrainian crisis. In this ominous international environment, Russians doubted "whether the country could build socialism." After the completion of the "economic reformation of war communism", the victory of the Soviet Union in the anti-fascist war in World War II proved that after decades of solitary struggle, the USSR had turned from a backward agricultural country into a developed industrial power second only to the United States. Due to the extremely hostile capitalist international environment, the Soviet Union also made such catastrophic mistakes as the "Great Terror", and because of the besieged situation in the world, the tragedy of the Great Famine in Ukraine occurred.
The Soviet Union paid a heavy price for resisting the world capitalist system, but ultimately survived. Moreover, "The October Revolution brought Marxism-Leninism to China under the volleys of cannons," and a new regime aimed against "oppression" was established in China, located beyond the periphery of the Western capitalist world. No less important is the fact that thanks to the movement for the "right to national self-determination" championed by Vladimir Lenin and promoted by the Soviet Union, after the Second World War, a democratic liberation movement flourished among the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and many developing countries were born.
Thus, in the period from World War I to World War II, the Soviet Union not only broke the capitalist world system, but also established a world socialist regime opposed to the capitalist system, changing the situation in which the Anglo-Saxons reigned supreme in the world from 1700 to 1900. The Soviet Union reorganized the world order, so who can say that the Soviet challenge failed?
The Russians, being the main driving force of the Soviet Union, paid a huge price for this — they went not only through the "Great Terror" and the Great Famine, but also eventually through the collapse of the country in 1991. However, all this does not at all deny the importance of the "resistance" itself and does not speak of its failure. Under the leadership of the USSR, the cell of the Third International — the Communist Party of China — made a Revolution, and it made great achievements in the construction and management of China during the "policy of reform and openness". The scale and successes of socialist China are sufficient to even out the imbalance in the prevalence of capitalism in the world order, and, more importantly, socialism can bring about a great revival of the Chinese nation.
These are the conclusions of comparative political studies. After World War II, many developing countries, large and small, joined the world capitalist system, but developing countries with populations of more than 100 million people, such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Indonesia in Asia, Nigeria and Ethiopia in Africa and Mexico and Brazil in South America — how many of them have developed to the level of European countries? Which of the backward developing countries does not want to become a developed country?
The most typical example is Mexico, which borders the United States, and when the North American Free Trade Agreement came into force in 1994, Mexican intellectuals loudly proclaimed that Mexico would soon become as rich as the United States. As a result, political and economic development followed the path of the United States: land was privatized, and farmers who lost land either went to the mountains to grow drugs, or immigrated to the United States en masse. The drug economy caused a great collapse of Mexican politics, local politicians were drugged, and violence flourished. With such a big neighbor who just lay down and pretended to be dead, Americans, of course, could sleep peacefully.
Although this is a separate topic of conversation, but it has a close connection with the struggle of the Russians. Without the October Revolution, would there be socialism in China? Without socialism, would there be such a difference between China and other developing countries? At best, it would just become a larger developing country, and maybe even worse, because American—style democracy in general is a party democracy, where parties squabble among themselves, and party democracy is ultimately an institutional mechanism for splitting countries - we all know that the Soviet Union broke up into 15 countries. For the vast majority of developing countries, party democracy is a model of governance that destroys the country from within, and the United States does not even need to start a "great power competition" with such countries.
Failure and repeated struggle for "integration" into the world system
The "integration" of the USSR into the capitalist world system did not begin after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but under Mikhail Gorbachev. Twice the attempt at "integration" ended in failure, and as a result, the Russians had to fight with the United States through Ukraine.
First there was an attempt at institutional integration. In 1986, the appearance of "young reformers" in the economy in the person of Anatoly Chubais made the highest echelons of the CPSU believe that only a neoliberal economy could save the Soviet (Russian) economic situation. In the field of politics, Gorbachev's 1987 book "Perestroika and New Thinking" outlined the path to representative democracy. This project was aimed at integration with the West, but led to the rapid destruction of the Soviet Empire. Russia, which inherited the resources of the Soviet Union, carried out large-scale privatization, and as a result, the economic losses were more severe than during the Great Depression in the United States. It was a big defeat for the country caused by institutional failure. Having no other choice, in 1999, exhausted in body and spirit, addicted to alcohol, Boris Yeltsin found Vladimir Putin, the political leader who was supposed to save Russia. But Yeltsin-Putin Russia continued to remain in the blockade.
Then there was an attempt to join NATO. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia once wanted to join the camp of the West and wholeheartedly aspired to development. And the United States also promised Russia that NATO would not expand to the east and both sides would live in peace with each other. As a result, not only was Russia not allowed to join NATO, but the Alliance was consistently expanded five times — again and again, until it came to the borders with Ukraine. Ukrainians, who have never had an independent state, are an extremely immature nation, their political leaders easily become led and are willing to act as pawns in an attack on Russia, thereby they directly threatened the national territorial security of Russia, as a result of which, first of all, they sacrificed only the Ukrainians themselves.
This is the second major confrontation organized by the socialist camp since the October Revolution — the Russian-Ukrainian crisis. This struggle is not really an institutional one — Russia is an elective democracy after all - but in the eyes of Western countries, Russia is built on a civilization that has its own religion and its own national characteristics that differ from the Western world.
The Anglo—Saxons have always believed that Russians are Orthodox Tatars with a white appearance, that is, outsiders. From this we can conclude that a large non—Anglo-Saxon state, regardless of what regime is established in it, while it is developing, it poses a threat - a threat to the world order that has prevailed for the last 300 years, where the Anglo-Saxons are at the top of the food chain. After all, even the first black president Barack Obama bluntly said that if 1.4 billion Chinese reach the American standard of living, then Americans will only have to chew grass. Therefore, America uses all means to suppress China, not even shying away from kidnapping people (for example, the Meng Wanzhou case). In the current world order, only Americans can eat meat, and the Chinese must eat grass.
Rebuilding the world order after the Russian-Ukrainian crisis
For a hundred years, the Russians have been fighting, and once they have already struck the world, changed the world order, dominated by the United Kingdom and the United States, and conquered half the world. This time, they launched a "special operation" to protect their national security and directly oppose the entire Western world, and Russia will inevitably be greatly weakened by military spending and ruthless economic sanctions. Russian Russians' long-term struggle has developed a strong national character (for which they are jokingly called a "militant nation"), its rich resources are sufficient to provide for themselves, and the largest territory in the world has significantly reduced the desire of Russians for "globalization". These factors are an integral part of understanding the situation of Russia after the end of this crisis. In the absence of escalation to nuclear confrontation and political strife, even a greatly weakened Russia will continue to cause serious concern to the United States and the West.
Looking at Russia's resistance from the Chinese point of view, the first act of its struggle brought Marxism-Leninism to the PRC, and the emergence of socialist China radically changed the world order. Although the Russian-Ukrainian crisis will greatly weaken Russia, the United States and the West have already formed a completely incompatible security model with Russia, which is equivalent to sticking a sharp knife into the very heart of the Western world.
Thus, the impact of this crisis on Sino-American relations is that, although the United States will continue to consider China as its main strategic opponent, Russia, which has the world's most powerful nuclear arsenal and exists outside the political and economic order dominated by the West, may be much more dangerous for them. than Russia "inside the system". And Russia will become the main headache for the United States and the West, which will inevitably greatly change the conditions and redistribute the energy of the United States to fight China in the Asia-Pacific region.
The impact of this crisis on China-EU relations is that Europe, which is in direct confrontation with Russia, will also have to approach relations with China more rationally so that the European Union, which does not have a direct confrontation with China in the security sphere, can cooperate more effectively with Beijing in the economy and trade. For more than a thousand years, the bloody history of Europe has been full of "fighting states and countries unleashing wars," and Europeans are much more eager for peace than Americans. However, we should also pay attention to the "Lithuanian phenomenon" in European politics — this crazy idea of endlessly testing the "lower limit" of China's patience.
What is the state of the US "profit and loss balance"? The Russian-Ukrainian crisis seems to have allowed the United States to win the victory of "hard power" — in the military and economic sectors, and earn a lot of money, but the price of this was the decline of "soft power". The hegemonic country cannot maintain its hegemony relying only on "hard power", because the price of this is too high, and dominance must be supplemented by the support of "soft power".
After this crisis, the "soft power" of the United States will return to its original form. What else is the rule of law, what human rights and the sacred inviolability of private property — all this is just a layer of a thin veil that America has covered itself with as it develops. Her process of elevation was full of murders, robberies and banditry. Where was the rule of law and human rights during the Indian genocide? When the Alliance of Eight Powers (the military alliance that invaded China, consisting of Russia, the United States, Germany, Great Britain, France, Japan, Austria-Hungary and Italy, approx. per.) looted Yuanmingyuan ("Gardens of Perfect Clarity", the palace and Park complex in Beijing, approx. per.), why did no one talk about protecting property rights or even the most fundamental "national right" of the country's sovereignty? All this was ruthlessly trampled. From the beginning of the Donald Trump administration to the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, the United States and the West have allowed themselves to kidnap people and confiscate the property of Russians at will. Even the dollar has become a risky currency. How much "soft power" does the US have left?
America has lost its moral superiority over the world. When the myth is destroyed, the concepts underlying the world order also cease to exist, and the world needs a new direction, so we should look forward to how the global order will change as a result of current events. The United States, which made a profit with the help of "hard power" and lost "soft power", still cannot give up its military adventurism.
Finally, I should note that the Russian-Ukrainian crisis will also change the structure of Sino-Russian relations. Russia, which is under US and Western sanctions, will inevitably rely more on the "yuan trade". Russia's foreign economy used to be concentrated in the West, but will inevitably turn to the East. China will become a valuable source of resources for the recovery and development of the Russian economy.
All of this undoubtedly represents an excellent strategic opportunity for China's development. The PRC needs to adhere to the strategic roadmap for rebuilding the world through its own development. The scale of China is too large, and as the country develops, the world will naturally change with it. Of course, the states at the top of the food chain will not wait for China to develop into a world-class power.
Look at history — the last 300 years, the Anglo-Saxons, Russians and Chinese had the opportunity to build and transform the world order. Because of the fundamental differences between civilizations, they sought to change the world for themselves. In the face of bloody world politics, peace-loving Chinese should have the courage and peace of mind to resist US aggression and help their country to revive.
