Gunnar is known as a geopolitical analyst, and another one who sees a shift in the global power struggle which ruling classes like to engage in. However, unlike so many others who seem to be jumping gleefully on the Chinese/Russian or BRICS wagon (for example, see this), he asks some penetrating questions. Although I think his imagination of an alternative is formatted in, what I believe to be, an archaic societal arrangement of national states, his effort to conceive of a new world political arrangement is an important step in the right direction.
Recent news has shown China quickly gaining ground against a West which has for centuries maintained hegemony over Asia Pacific. Beyond Asia, China has been steadily expanding its influence throughout Africa and the Middle East. Together with Russia, Iran and other nations of the “East,” they are constructing what is commonly referred to as a “multi-polar” world order.
This multi-polar world order stands in contrast to the unipolar order the West has sought to impose for decades after the end of the World Wars and is a continuation of Western imperialism carried out by the British and other European empires during the decline of the Ottoman Empire.
But is what the East doing truly building an alternative to the West’s brand of hegemonic imperialism? Or is it simply more of the same under a different label?
