The world is yet to see how dangerous the decade before us will be, what the new global geopolitical architecture will look like and who is to build it.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov mentioned in his address to his colleagues on 10 February 2023 in Moscow:

“All of us are professionals and we are well aware this is certainly not an exaggeration.”

Lavrov elaborated on the remark made by Vladimir Putin that this is a historic crossroads for the world and that the most important, the most uncertain decade as well as the most dangerous decade since the Second World War is ahead of us. His opponents tend to express rather similar sentiments.

Strangely enough, when one shakes off the mirage of propaganda slogans galore, the deep-seated and growing pessimism is almost palpable as for which side of the crossroads ahead will hugely benefit from it all. Namely, Martin Wolf, the chief columnist in Financial Times in the economy section and one of the most influential world economists according to Bloomberg, says that this is a moment of overwhelming fear but also that of a vague hope. Once an avid advocate of globalization and deregulation based on the U.S. neoliberal model, he seems to have revised and conveniently adapted his views in the meantime.

He has published a book “The Crisis of the Democratic Capitalism” i.e. the Western capitalism and their model of management and governance. It goes without saying that the impact of Martin Wolf is surely not commensurate to that of Sergey Lavrov, let alone that of Vladimir Putin but it does not go to say that Wolf as well as Lavrov cannot recognize the moment the world is in. Hence, Wolf exudes pessimism, which is proportionate to that of Lavrov’s self-confident optimism.

Lavrov points out the reasons for his optimism, on the occasion of the Diplomatic Workers’ Day, that the Western countries, led by the U.S., have played the decisive role in shaping international relations, global economies and finances to date, though they have grossly abused that position of power to a great extent, so that the whole world has come to realise now that this is not the geopolitical way forward any more.

The new world has to be built based on mutual consent and balance of interests of all the countries rather than the dictates issued by the Collective West of all those wanting to forever rule the world by way of their colonialism and neo-colonialism methods. Isolation is an illusion, says Sergey Lavrov in his most sophisticated diplomatic defiance.

Those who for years have overtly breached the UN Charter, those who have performed most hideous armed aggressions on Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya, to name but a few, those who have soiled their reputation by the bloodthirsty colonization, those still are desperately trying to continue their colonial practices in the countries worldwide have placed themselves in an international isolation.

In his distinct anti-West, anti-colonialism manifest, Sergey Lavrov says the overt agenda by the Collective West to isolate Russia and partition it away from the rest of the world has ended up in a miserable failure.

Despite the anti-Russian (geopolitical, financial and diplomatic) debauchery by London, Washington and Brussels, we are consolidating our good neighbourly relations in its broadest sense with the countries of Eurasia, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America etc, which are surely the countries governed by their vital national interests.

The main course in the global development in many countries and our own global position in this new polycentric geopolitical architecture will be decided upon in the years ahead, says Lavrov. But this new model is not the Western model of governance and management in the form of the exploitation of everybody else for the sake of one’s own interests

The West has lost face and its power of attraction in the rest of the world when they showed their true colours. The West also experienced failure in the West itself in that the system began devouring itself. Martin Wolf refers to some most devastating data, which when one takes a closer look goes to prove the cannibalistic nature of that societal order, which, says Lavrov, is based on some rules they keep talking about yet they have never presented these rules to anybody.

This is what Wolf has put forth: From 1993 to 2015, the richest 1% got rich and richer by seizing 52% of the total growth of real family income. Besides, some similar figures about the shameless and unjust enrichment of the fabulously rich small minority at the cost of the rest are published each year at their World Economic Forum annual gathering at Davos so this brutal process is altogether perpetuated to the extent that it is enabled by endless but oft unsubstantiated money-printing and the consent of everybody else to that state of the matters.

Wolf confirms that while the societal consent in the West was given by the rich hijacking the politics via financing campaigns and omnipresent lobbying i.e. corruption, the aforesaid consent to that way of handling matters in politics and international cooperation is slowly but surely dwindling away.

All the evidence to prove Lavrov’s words is growing. Even the Financial Times could not help noticing that the world economic order is undergoing a profound change, in which up to now the USA has been an unprecedented leader at the forefront and the U.S. dollar has been a leading hard currency. The speed of the process of de-dollarization is increasing rapidly. He goes on to say that with the expansion of BRICS the de-dollarization of the trade flows could even expand further.

Pertinent to that, Saudi Arabia definitely wants to join BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Sergey Kozlov, Russian Ambassador in Saudi Arabia has confirmed. New geopolitical realignment is under way globally. One must bear in mind that no country out of the Collective West has joined the anti-Russian sanctions in the past year since the Russian special military operation in Ukraine began.

Still this does not go to say that the mighty masters from the Collective West are not powerful enough not to pose a grave danger. They do possess sufficient funds but sadly insufficient levels of morality. American-Norwegian sabotage of the Nord Stream is yet another evidence to prove that. Vladimir Putin was right to say that this is the most uncertain, the most dangerous and the most important decade ever since the Second World War. The fate of the world we live in hinges on the aftermath of this ongoing multifrontal battle. The world is yet to see how dangerous the decade before us will be, what the new global geopolitical architecture will look like and who is to build it.

Natasha Wright