“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do” This is what a US official told journalists back in 2004, according to an article by Ron Suskind published in The New York Times on 17 October 2004. Although citizen of the superpower, the journalist was taken aback by these words. What the official in question was saying was that the world’s leading power, at the height of its global position, does not adapt to others, but can, and does, take the initiative.
Less than two decades later, in 2021, the US renounced the world order that it had built after the end of the Cold War and called for the creation of a new one, again under its own leadership. Unlike at the end of the Cold War, seizing the leadership position and building a new order was promising to be a heavily contested process, with emerging rivals also calling for a new order, but one based on different principles, and under a governance format that would include them as equals. The shape of the new order may take is unclear at the time of the closure of our manuscript. What is definitive is that there is no going back to the order that prevailed in the three decades after the Cold War, and that the process by which the new one takes shape will be tense, riddled with multiple, closely, or loosely interrelated conflicts.
If we want to understand the great power struggle for world order, then we need to know the way of thinking of the great powers. It is necessary to be able to identify the power and economic processes and narratives that are pivotal in shaping the world order. For us, as members of the conflict zone, it is particularly important to understand the viewpoint and way of thinking of the great powers.
The great power struggle for world order reinterprets opportunities, priorities and the use of global space for everyone. The post-Cold War world order was based on world trade and resulted in a web of strategic dependencies.
The fragmentation of the interdependent world that is taking place today requires an extraordinary degree and speed of adaptability on the part of states, communities and individuals, without being able to see when and in what form a new system of relations will stabilize. What is certain is that in all circumstances a new world order will follow, with changing power relations and a new world economic pattern. Our study volume analyzes the American and Russian view of power and world order, the global economic processes of the changing world order and the possible role and specific activity of individuals in the information society of our time. The Geopolitical Research Group examines the intentions and strategies of the great powers based on these four aspects, and based on them outlines the changes and trends resulting from the new realities they create.