Heartland vs. Rimland
No. 45, Jan.-Feb. 2024 The last decade saw more and more thoughts on, opinions, and claims that a new world order is just around the corner and the old system of bipolar and then unipolar world will belong in the history books. The “Pax Americana” period is living its final days, marking the beginning of a not so long interregnum characterized by a vaguely-defined so-called “multipolar world”. Since it is unstable in the longer term, multipolarity will most likely segregate and in the end will lead to a world dominated either by a single power, probably China, or, more likely, by another bipolar world divided on an East-West gradient politically and economically, but, more importantly, on ideology and in terms of the proposed social model. This could mean the end of globalization as we know it in its Anglo-Saxon form, but does not mean that globalization itself will be gone completely. It just may very well take another shape, under a presumable new “Pax Sinica”, or a half-half globalization in case of bipolarity, meaning one type of international system in the Western, democratic and capitalist world and another form in the authoritarian states in Eurasia. Pretty much like in the Cold War, with the main difference that these two global systems can cooperate economically much more than in the previous setting. More