Having looked at recent political and economic affairs, it could be argued that there are enough reasons to expect a radical reversal from the current process of globalization, perhaps in the foreseeable future. In the event of a return to the hegemonic wars of the Cold War era, a new kind of protectionism would give an end to the free trade regime.
As a matter of fact, in my understanding, the Cold War never ended in the early 1990s, but continued with a new face. To clarify my point, at the time central planning collapsed as an alternative economic system and major countries such as China and Russia started struggling with the structural problems of transition to a market-based economic system. Having taken advantage of the emerging economic and political vacuum created by such a systemic collapse, the US has taken many steps to this point in order to contain Russia and China politically as well as economically.
The First Gulf War is the earlier example of the new cold war era, when the US decided to control the whole Middle East because of the huge amount of energy resources there. At the time China and Russia were quite passive due to the aforementioned systemic reasons and political and economic weaknesses.
By looking at this kind of earlier progress in the so-called post-Cold War era, some experts declared the idea of “the end of history” or moving “toward the era of a bipolar world,” emphasizing that there is no rival to American capitalism and that the capitalist world order is the final order that humanity is seeking.
However, by the second half of the 1990s there had been a significant counter attack from China, in collaboration with Russia, in which it organized the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 1996. This process created significant motivation in wider Asia, including India, Iran, Pakistan and almost all Central Asian republics, with these nations declaring their interest in SCO. It was obvious that this organization would have political as well as military implications in the longer term.
In my understanding, the US used the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to destabilize SCO. As a matter of fact, SCO has been relatively silent since then due to the unexpected terrorist attacks and the resultant waves of political, military and security shocks.
In fact, the terrorist attacks brought the US a leadership role in fighting with so-called global terrorism. By taking advantage of being a victim of terror and becoming a leader to counter it, the US first invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq. By these two invasions, the US has taken serious steps toward controlling the two end points of trans-Asian energy resources. Now the US is trying to end Iran’s resistance by using the excuse of Iran’s “probable” nuclear weapons. What I am observing is that parallel to its success in stabilizing the counter attacks to its invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems that now a new process has been started in Georgia (Caucasus) and Pakistan with the resignation of the president.
On the European side, the Eastern European and Baltic countries (most of them being ex-members of central planning) were isolated from the Russian impact. And now the US is trying to take an active military position there, mostly via NATO.
In our understanding, despite the fact that a significant part of world energy resources are controlled by Russia, the US and its allies are trying to control major energy routes. Therefore, for the Americans, if not the resources, definitely the routes must be controlled by the US so that major supplier Russia and major demander China will be cut off. It could be argued that this would be used as a powerful bargaining chip at the table to “domesticate” Russia and China in parallel to the American vision of the world.
As you may have realized, the geopolitical location of Turkey, unfortunately, makes up the axis of this great power rivalry. In my next column, I would like to cover the major problems that need to be resolved for Turkey’s economic development, as well as security.
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