From Globalization To Global Bifurcation

Across the World, democracy is receding and losing ground rapidly to authoritarianism and despotism.

Never perfect or perfectly implemented, the rules-based on world order is being supplanted by a might-based, pseudo-nationalistic, international realignment.

Globalization is dying and is being replaced by global bifurcation.

Under global bifurcation, a part of the world led by the rump of NATO and the European Community will hold on to the ruins of the rules-based world order, while the other part of the world led by China and Russia, will continue their might-based march to global dominance.

A, MAGA Republicans-led United States, will be an indifferent, inward-looking world superpower, operating co-equally, alongside China and Russia.

The United States would be neither fully here, nor fully there. In other words, it would be no-where, but merely, a receding superpower ceding global turf and influence to the rising superpowers, particularly China by trade and Russia by terror. The United States is presently challenged internally by the MAGA Republicans' self-serving, geo-political naivety, and the Biden Administration's ultra-cautiousness towards antagonizing Russia.

It is also challenged externally by China's superpower ambitions, Russia's imperial expansionism, North Korea's assiduous militarization, and Iran's relentless nuclearization.

Without the unmistakable defeat of Russia in Ukraine, the United States will lose its sole global superpower status, just as it will, if President Joe Biden loses the next election.

That is I n I's strategic geopolitical prognosis.

With time, nations rise, and nations fall. Ancient Egypt rose, and ancient Egypt fell. Babylon rose, and Babylon fell. The Roman Empire rose, and the Roman Empire fell. The British Empire rose, and the British Empire fell. Nothing lasts forever.

It is unrealistic to expect differently about the United States status as sole global superpower because, for everything, there is a time, a season, and a reason.

Are we witnessing the demise of the United States as the sole global superpower? According to I n I's assessment, it would be so, if either of two things happened.

One, Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans win the next United States elections and then continue championing their current policy of despotic, ‘might is right,’ ‘winner takes all,’ ‘the end justifies the means,’ approach to geopolitics.

Two, the Biden Administration out of excessive caution, fails to support Ukraine decisively to defeat Russia and then become full member of the NATO Alliance.

Were either of these two things to happen, the world would recall rather wistfully, I n I would readily admit, that there was once a sole global superpower known as the United States of America.

We are 👀.
Anthony Chuka Konwea, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, MNSE, FNIStructE, MNICE.