Bleaching: Co-existential Realism

The experience of the 2 planet wars prompted the political leaders of the large powers to consider the imperatives of the second half of the 20th century a reasonable building of the normative and organization foundations of peaceful coexistence.

This was supported by the strategical balance in atomic weapons of both opposing blocks of the East and the West. The "army room" was based on the effective deterrence of a possible attacker. In addition, the increasing awareness of global interdependence allowed not so much to reduce contradictions – these are a constant feature of global relations – but to mitigate them and to resolve disputes by peaceful methods.

Of course, cold war stableness should not be idealised due to the fact that it was a transitional phenomenon. In addition, the vast costs of this stableness were borne by countries distant from the main axis of confrontation (the alleged 3rd World). It was then that the phenomenon of substitute wars (by proxy) was born. Conflicts in Asia (Vietnam, Korea, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan), Africa (Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Congo), Central America (Nikaragua) and the mediate East (Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Palestine) had their tragic dimension, frequently of genocide. On a global scale, however, fear of atomic demolition was guaranteed by common restraint and forced communication between protagonists.

The concentration of forces on the side of the West, especially the US, after the end of the “cold war” led to tremendous polarization in the distribution of potentials. 1 organization felt strong adequate to usage all resources and instruments of influence, control and coercion to impose on ‘old’ and ‘new’ opponents its values and patterns of behaviour.

There has besides been a revision of the existing strategical doctrines, in which countries having access to atomic weapons have begun to number on its anticipation of being utilized in the field of combat. This has undermined all the principles of peaceful coexistence developed internationally since the entry into force of the Charter of the United Nations in 1945. The dramatic indications at the “Doomsday Clock” at the University of Chicago became a symbolic reflection of the prevailing moods in the relations between the large powers. Only a minute and a half is now missing from the complete demolition of the world.

The war in Ukraine unleashed the energy of many alleged states. South to get out of the Western rules of the game erstwhile it comes to organizing its own markets, safety guarantees and maintaining ownership. China, India, South Africa, Brazil, and even the countries that formally belong to the Western world, specified as Turkey or Hungary, have set themselves on independency in defining their interests and strengthening their position in global relations. They have gained large mediation possible through “multi-point” policies, which gives them greater credibility as sovereign players. Russia has become an crucial point of mention for many of them. They do not treat it as an enemy, but as an crucial associate in the global gameplay around a fresh knowing of the imperative of “realist coexistence”.

A prerequisite for the implementation of fresh coexistence rules is the revision of ideas about the universality and necessity of Western values and the primacy of the hegemonic interests of the US. This problem will be addressed by the modern strategy of global relations as long as the collective West does not recognise the rightfulness of systemic pluralism on the planet. Although Western liberal democracies are slow turning into their opposite, and democratic systems are becoming oppressive, they proceed to impose a dogma on others about their superiority.

Humanity, as is evident from long observations, does not go massively towards liberal values discovered during the 18th century bourgeois revolutions.. Despite the Cantov imperative, there is no Republican (democratic) determinism, and for existential reasons, the guarantees of social and individual safety are more crucial than freedom. Examples of systemic transformations in the russian countries, especially in Ukraine and Yeltsinian Russia, have shown how liberal internationalists were able to strip them of all goods and to drive people into misery.

The tragedy of Western strategies is to underestimate the cultural specificities of many countries and their complex conditions. It turns out that more and more governments alternatively of alleged liberal democracy like to defend a paternalist state that, thanks to authoritarian power, ensures stableness and interior integrity, social safety and property protection against being taken over by global corporations.

The designation of globalisation as a "Americanization of the world" is resisting even among Western countries. An example is France, which the president calls for the reconstruction of the European power. In Poland, in turn, there is simply a surviving opposition to the Atlantism of pro-EU or pro-German politics, due to Berlin's importance in integration processes.

Given the advanced level of tension and confrontation between the West and Russia and China, it is worth noting the essential conditions, but adequate to reconstruct coexistence realism in political thought and practice.

First of all, a deep, critical thought is needed for Western political elites to realize that they are not the only centres for creating visions and rational concepts of global governance. Following the tragic experience of bleeding out the parties fighting in Ukraine and the massacres of civilians in the Gaza Strip, as well as the increasing moods of anger and social outrage, it is clear that the leaders of the western "garden" are not right, but not the Western "jungrel" leaders (Josep Borrell). They are the ones who offer compromise solutions.

For this reason, it is desirable to return to information openness and respect for world-view pluralism, which will undermine the sense of powerful propaganda manipulation and ideological crusades. Co-existenceal realism demands flexibility and tolerance in assessing all differences from “Westernism”, both in the fields of axiology and reality. It must be rejected the absurd presumption that America and the wider West know better what the vital interests of another countries are.

It is hard to overestimate the harm that this presumption has done to the image of the United States, associated in many parts of the planet with arrogance and pride. American liberal internationalism is based on the superficial and naive view that the US has easy and only prescriptions to solve the problems of anarchy and chaos at global level.

Meanwhile, mediocre knowing of the identity of different players, above all the deficiency of deep cognition of history, national character, spiritual and cultural plexus leads to fatal errors in Western politics. Since Tukidides, for example, attention has been paid to the function of historical relationships between different peoples, not necessarily just through the prism of common conflict and hatred. fewer people remember that Russia's affirmative relations with China go back to Alexander Newski, which shows the depth of common interdependence. Both states are indeed heirs to the large Mongolian Empire, and this can legitimize their close-up today.

Keeping countries in a state of constant weakness is full in line with the US geopolitical objectives. The abroad politics of this empire are governed by the motives of expansion and (re)use, and wars under various forms of expedition, mission and intervention are legitimized by American leadership and claims of power. inactive up to date is Cicero's saying about American militarism that pecunia nervus belli (money is the nerve of war).

International law (tacts and negotiations) is waiting for them to return to their appropriate function and rank. Building a governance based on the principles imposed unilaterally by the hegemonic powers and the strongest military bloc yielded counterproductive effects. Many cardinal principles have been ignored, without which force cannot be kept in check. These include the rule of non-interference in the interior affairs of another countries. It is it who decides to respect another standards, especially the sovereignty and independency of the State, territorial integrity and interior and external self-determination.

Today, fewer people want to remember that doctrine George W. Bush (juniora) turned the global normative order upside down, and “missionary” interventions in Afghanistan or Iraq exposed the cynical face of American imperialism. Western apologists do not admit that Russian politics in “near abroad” or the mediate East was mostly reactive to American interventionism.

Another condition for a realistic re-evaluation of the existing strategy of confrontation and war is the renationalisation of the reasoning on the interests of each associate in global relations. Despite the opposition of the Western imperial global elite and their customers, the alleged remainder of the planet has the chance to strengthen by expanding China's power and Russian offensives global multilateral cooperation, without rigid division into military-political groups and economical blocks. First of all, with respect for peculiar interests and on the basis of negotiated compromises, not dictatorship and stronger advantages.

China has many assets to build networks of fresh interdependencies in a non-confronting way, offering many countries its "competitive advantages". These include systemic tolerance, i.e. non-dependence of cooperation on the nature of the political regime, little emphasis on sustainable improvement of the environment, attaching greater importance to state safety than to human rights, and defending state sovereignty against the attempts of its dismantling in favour of global institutions.

China's peaceful strategy allows them to stabilise regional balance in Asia (Korean states, India-Pakistan) or the mediate and mediate East. Chinese diplomacy is highly fine and patient and effective. In fresh years, he has boasted not only about bringing Saudi Arabia and Iran into a spectacular rapprochement, but besides about building a network of economical links on an unprecedented scale in Africa. China's commitment to the peace process for the creation of a Palestinian state is now advanced expectations.

Russia, in turn, shows that despite the harm resulting from the harshest economical sanctions in Western history, it retains its fundamental values: primarily political sovereignty and a multi-vector course of independent abroad policy. Flexibility in responding to threats and determination to defend its safety show that 1 cannot be pushed into defensive positions.

Russia has competence to conduct inter-civilization dialogue, shaped on the basis of Orthodox worldview, enriched with confessional syncretism (Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Protestantism), experiences of inter-ethnic peace and respect for historical and spatial identity. This puts her in the position of 1 of the most delicate entities on cultural diversity and heterogeneity of civilization in the modern global system.

The Russians, defending their transcontinental (Eurasian) geopolitical specificities (large neighbours, deficiency of natural boundaries, space span) learned to respond effectively to external and centrifugal challenges and threats. The clash with the West in Ukraine is so not the first dramatic experience erstwhile safety and improvement problems are solved on the rule of force dialectics and readiness to agree.

China and Russia, regardless of their existing asymmetry, are complementary to each other. They complement each another in terms of military-strategic and economical terms, and their coalition, clearly visible, becomes a decisive origin in the redevelopment of global order. First of all, they agree on the dynamic improvement of cooperation within the fresh groupings – BRICS+, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, ASEAN and MERCOSUR. beginning up to Iran, India, Turkey or arabian countries, let alone African investments, gives hope that a strong peacekeeping infrastructure is being created.

The request for coexistence realism stems from a rational diagnosis of a situation in which contradictions and conflicts of interest, masked by a thick layer of cunning, hypocrisy and cynicism exploded in the form of a war in Ukraine and an angry retaliation of Israel on the Palestinians. Despite the fierceness of the militants, however, the minute is close erstwhile it is inevitable to remember the values and principles of peaceful coexistence.

Rehabilitation of this concept from the Cold War era is the best option, guaranteeing a return to minimum predictability in global relations. This could be ensured by any reinvented safety Council of the Nations, not necessarily within the framework of stetric organisations (from the UN to the OSCE) to make collectively and on equal terms the universal rules of the game, beginning with the negation of hegemonic strings from any of the large powers.

The basis for restoring normality is restoring trust. Globalized competition has made all measures allowed in it. Information on an unprecedented scale has become acceptable, and fraud, surveillance and provocation are everyday tools for policy in the East and the West. Even friendly states are spying on 1 another, resulting from predatory economical competition.

Neither Russia nor China monopolized hybrid warfare instruments. The operations of the US, Israel and European powers are carried out on a large scale everywhere and regularly. They can be called intelligence wars. The provocation and financing of subversive activities, interference in the functioning of the institution and corruption of officials are on the agenda. It is not very clear how to halt this activity, which has become chronic.

There is so an urgent request to separate between permanent instability and chaos that threatens the modern planet with disaster. The thought of co-existenceal realism stimulates the self-preservation instinct of societies to force governments to act constructively. The aim is to reliably and bravely estimation the hazard of becoming an increasingly fierce rivalry into a spectacular “bloody massacre”. It is worth considering how, under conditions of permanent confrontation, minimize harm and maximize opportunities.

To this end, the fresh communication institutions should be approached carefully. First of all, consider modern deliberal measures, in order to better realize the sources of misperception, anxiety and fear. fresh approaches to crisis management and the usage of direct and indirect moderation methods are needed.

Co-existenceal realism, at stake in the endurance of humanity, requires the courage of political leaders and their ingenuity. Instead of screaming, moralizing and idealizing 1 of the sides of the confrontation, you gotta build bridges between all rivals. Psychological disgust or moral discomfort do not justify negative passions and omissions.

In the current situation of advanced global tensions, no 1 dares to foretell how long the possible of escalation of confrontation is. intellectual inertia, ideological contaminantness and ossification of bureaucratic structures, specified as the UN, stand in the way of fast change of attitudes. It seems that the acceleration of the re-evaluations of today's war strengthening will be due to the fast awakening of Western societies to retreat from costly global obligations. In the United States alone, this may mean an increase in neo-isolationist tendencies. The hope is that erstwhile the current liberal-globalist elites leave or are removed from power, the US will return to a realistic and constructive balancing function in global relations.

Prof. Stanisław Bielen

Think Poland, No. 19-20 (5-12.05.2024)