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Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in 2019Kenzaburo Fukuhara - Pool/Getty Images

(LifeSiteNews) – In the fourth and final installation of this series (read parts one, two, and three here), we look at the relative military capabilities of the U.S. and its rival bloc, led by China and Russia and ask what does this New World Order mean? 

The importance of military might in the global world order 

The guarantor of the globalized economy has always been the United States Navy. Until now, no other power has approached the capability of the U.S. Navy in patrolling and securing key global maritime trade routes. Free trade is vouchsafed by its military might in safeguarding global sea lanes.  

The Chinese float more naval vessels in one year than those possessed by the entire navies of some Western nations. Moreover, the Chinese have a thoroughly modern navy, whilst the U.S. Navy has shrunk to just 293 vessels. 

According to former U.S. navy captain Henry Hendrix, the age of American naval dominance is over. Writing in The Atlantic in March 2023, his thoughtful piece explores the considerable changes to global trade networks which he believes will accompany the retreat of the U.S. Navy from its global maritime policing role. These are not the kind of “disruptions” of which pony-tailed Silicon Valley types speak with breathless enthusiasm:

The great container ships and tankers of today would disappear, replaced by smaller, faster cargo vessels capable of moving rare and valuable goods past pirates and corrupt officials. The cruise-ship business, which drives many tourist economies, would falter in the face of potential hijackings.

A single such incident might create a cascade of failure throughout the entire industry. Once-busy sea lanes would lose their traffic. For lack of activity and maintenance, passages such as the Panama and Suez Canals might silt up.

Natural choke points such as the straits of Gibraltar, Hormuz, Malacca, and Sunda could return to their historic roles as havens for predators. The free seas that now surround us, as essential as the air we breathe, would be no more.

The Chinese navy boasts 340 ships, having surpassed the U.S. navy in 2020. Within two years the Chinese expect to have over 400. What is more, the U.S. now lacks the industrial base to replace these ships in the event of war. As CNN reported in January this year, “Shipbuilding was a US strength when it was the world’s industrial giant in the 1940s. That title now falls to China.”

As has been shown with the war in Ukraine, the West combined cannot keep pace with Russian artillery shell production. The navy is no exception to this shortfall in ordnance, with the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations in the Pacific Mike Gilday stating in the piece above that the navy will  “never be able to match [the Chinese] missile-for-missile.”  

What does this mean in the event of war? Former U.S. Navy Captain Sam Tangredi notes that “bigger fleets win” in the January 2023 issue of the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine: 

I do not say that a smaller, technologically superior fleet could never defeat a much larger fleet, I only say that — with the possible the exception of three cases in the past 1,200 years — none has.

The United States no longer has the largest navy, and it cannot expect to win a war at sea with China. 

The U.S. is no longer supreme in military capability 

The mention of missiles raises another key issue in power projection abroad. The United States must cross an ocean to wage war, be that the Atlantic or Pacific. If it cannot secure the transport of land assets such as tanks and troops, its land army becomes irrelevant.  

There are three nations with proven hypersonic missile capability. These are Iran, Russia, and China. 

Whilst the AUKUS coalition of Australia, U.S. and U.K. have announced they will cooperate to develop this capability the potential enemy already has several categories of hypersonic missile. Kalibr, Kinjal and Zircon have been made infamous by the war in Ukraine. Thankfully, Poseidon or Status-6 has not featured. This is a nuclear-powered torpedo with a global range. 

Russia undoubtedly enjoys an edge in missile technology, with its demonstrated use of Zirkon, Avangard, Kinjal and Kalibr hypersonic missiles. No NATO country can counter, or even currently deploy, this technology. Its latest submarines are certainly equal to and arguably superior to those in NATO service, with their cruise missile capacity set to overmatch that of the U.S. 

With an arsenal of missiles which cannot be countered, and formidable subsea technology, the rival global bloc to the U.S. presents a military threat which would dramatically reduce its capability to project power overseas. 

Diplomatic and political assets 

The Chinese and Russians have been hard at work in the diplomatic arena. The Russians have managed their diplomacy to maintain trade and relations with the majority of world nations, restricting the U.S.-led sanctions regime to the Anglosphere plus the European Union. 

Russian relations with Turkey have opened one fault line in Europe and potentially in NATO, with their Syrian peace process leaving the United States marginalized. In addition, investment in the Turkstream gas pipeline complex provides Russia with a second strategic lever over Europe, with an energy grid upon which most Balkan and Central European nations will continue to depend for decades to come. 

The Chinese have showcased a diplomatic victory with the normalization of relations between bitter adversaries Saudi Arabia and Iran. Divided by competing traditions of Islam, and still engaged in a proxy war against one another in Yemen, this is a development with the potential to redraw the map of Middle Eastern and OPEC power relations. 

The expansion of Chinese trade and investment throughout Africa has resulted most recently in the humiliation of the French and German leaders, who were respectively given short shrift in the Central African Republic and Namibia. Both former colonial possessions of these two major European nations exercised the option of a choice between patrons, and now prefer the Chinese.  

Western influence, whether in diplomacy or derived from investment and strategic mineral supplies, is in decline. The fact of an alternative is undeniable.  

What does this new order mean? 

Since we can see Krauthammer’s conditions for global power amply satisfied by this bloc, and arguably by China alone, it remains to ask what the multipolar world might mean.  

Aside from the commitment to the UN led global order, the Chinese are careful to stress that under the new management, the show will go on. 

Speaking to the World Economic Forum in January, the Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He stressed the “promotion of economic re-globalization” was a key task for China, which wishes to “maintain the effective international economic order…strengthen international macro policy coordination…” and “push for global cooperation on climate change.”  

A new world order? 

It is business as usual from the Chinese, which should put the minds of the masters of the future at ease. The Chinese already have many digital identity and social credit systems, developing a level of population management and control unmatched in the West. Their ambition to use the same globalist frameworks – such as the U.N. – to exercise their power suggests that in this regard there will be nothing new in this New World Order. 

What then for the Russians? Do their policies and practices present some divergence from technocratic managerialism? Russia had an exceptionally stringent COVID vaccination program, also using digital facial recognition to enforce compliance. Despite assurances to the contrary by Putin himself, vaccination mandates were introduced, leading to protests such as the walkout by Moscow ambulance drivers in December 2021. 

According to opposition leaders, the measures threatened to turn Russia into a “digital concentration camp. 

How has Russian policy developed since? Vladimir Putin personally approved measures to introduce smartphone-based digital ID in Russia in February 2023. His enthusiasm for these instruments of control is reported verbatim by the Russian news agency InterFax 

“Please go ahead, the sooner the better […] Of course, such services are in great demand in our country, and their introduction just needs to be accelerated. Please draft these documents…”

Putin’s excitement at the introduction of digital ID linked to biometric passports should come as no surprise, as Russia is a signatory to the Fourth Industrial Revolution agenda of the World Economic Forum.  

“Today, Russia is building digital economy actively in industrial and social spheres as well as in public administration,”said Deputy Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko in 2021 (emphasis added):  

“We are now witnessing an unprecedented breakthrough development. The main purpose of the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Moscow is to grow awareness of Russia’s role as part of the global expert community. This is an opportunity to share experience and expertise gained by the World Economic Forum and its partners around the world.”

Russia is enthusiastically embracing the so-called “Fourth Industrial Revolution” – a keystone policy of the World Economic Forum to transform global governance. It is ruled by a man whose ability to manipulate his own image is reflected in his personal identification with a Russia he is keen to mythologize.  

He is not a nationalist, and has been consistently opposed by people who are, such as Alexei Navalny. Under Putin the press has come under severe pressure, with deaths and death threats far from unknown. The adoption of a digital economy brings another dimension to the deepening partnership with the Chinese, as their model of population management approaches that of their neighbor, and new best friend.  

We can expect from a bipolar world a variation on the themes of growth, dominance and the dystopian dreams of technocrats – with one important distinction. The would-be masters of the future in the West are mediocrities – fantasists whose power has come about due to the existence of a type of bureaucratic machine which selects positively for components, and against character and competence. 

The technocratic managers of the new counter-faction are not only globalists, but they are realists. These people have navigated and mastered the most ruthless state machinery on earth, and are as pragmatic as they are dispassionate in the pursuit and satisfaction of their aims.  

Conclusion  

The United States has suffered a tremendous loss of industrial and economic power, prestige, and stability under the direction of an ideology completely opposed to the values of the American people. It does not concern itself with their welfare, and it favors economic policies of neoliberalism which have devastated the U.S. domestic economy – to the tremendous advantage of its competitors. 

Since the unipolar moment was announced by Charles Krauthammer, a faction enabled by the national security state has captured the United States government and steered it from one defeat to another.  

 This is a betrayal of the American people, of their Republic, and is one which sees Christian patriots as an obstacle to its never-ending project of provoking foreign wars, none of which it has won. 

No enemy could have ever hoped to have done so much damage to the United States as the neoconservatives. This is a death cult which has ruined American prestige abroad and deeply wounded the nation. It is time for a realistic policy to replace the fantasies of these dangerous ideologues. There is an America worth fighting for. It is one inspired by God and secured by liberty.   

This America remains a mighty and inspirational power without peer in its appeal to the noblest aspects of the human spirit. This is the America that must now speak to the world. 

RELATED:

From one global power to many: How neocons managed the US into decline

How neocons remade America in their own image through ‘forever wars’ overseas

Managed decline: How neocons politicized the US dollar and strengthened Communist China in the process

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