Regular Americans and Europeans do not inquire about the world beyond their neighborhoods. They do not read international sections of their newspapers. Heck, they don’t buy newspapers anymore. Thanks to internet media, they peruse the front pages of some favorite papers and then delve into the finance page to see if their retirement funds are doing any better today. At best, they look into some stories on Ukraine to learn whether there are still young men and boys Washington can use to continue paying for Biden’s war on Russia. Biden claims he will continue to fight against Putin until the last person in Ukraine falls!
Yet, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of geopolitical analysis websites surviving with donations. They have veterans from various government intelligence apparatuses; they are supposed to know what they are prophesying about and we, the mortal readers, read and learn from them, thinking that they are not playing the tunes of their governments. If you ask for donations from your readers to keep your site going, you should have articles and explainers from experts who won’t act as mere mouthpieces of their own governments.
But geopolitical analysis is part of the political science, which is itself not science to begin with! Science or not, if you call your piece an analysis, even if it is a zodiacal one, your readers should have that peace of mind that you are not trying to elicit certain attitudes or behaviors from certain person or persons.
Having remembered those words of caution on the dangers of geopolitical analysis, I would like to be allowed a generalization that you will judge if it is due. Almost all Western geopolitical analysts, among whom I have my favorites too, seem to tell us that the United States is the most powerful, the largest, the biggest, the invincible, the most dominant and the omnipotent hegemon of all times. There can be no naval vessel anywhere in the oceans, large seas that move without the U.S. Navy’s knowledge. If the U.S. Navy does not like that move, it will be stopped, whether friend or foe!
After this common point, the individual analysts would build their own development and come to their own conclusions. Some would keep a foot on both sides of an issue; some would talk out of both sides of their mouth. Some appear as straight as a Jesuit’s walking stick; their ethical chariness would be exemplary. Recently, all those exemplar analyses, my favorites included, come to the same conclusion: For this or that reason (from the common starting point and handling various data in accordance with their own methods, believing compliant achieved findings), they think that the Peoples Republic of China, the Russian Federation and Islamic Republic of Iran are going disintegrate and the U.S. should be prepared not to have any other power claim their positions: When they break up, let them stay apart; and the U.S. should help each individual part survive without creating another menace on their behalf.
It is usually called the “Grand Strategy” that is dictated by “The Geography.” Christopher McCallion, in his piece called “Explainer” and properly titled “Grand Strategy: Geography” on the Defense Priorities site writes, “The U.S. is separated from other great powers by thousands of miles of ocean to both its east and west, and is the most powerful, prosperous, and secure state in the world,” so it should “embrace its abundance of security, using its position as a continent-sized maritime power to act as an offshore balancer .... and maintain military primacy on land in Eurasia.”
Even two of my recent favorite analysts, George Friedman and Peter Zeihan, often deliver identical predictions, too: Russia and China, after thousands of years of internal fighting and external invasions, are open to similar destiny after their recent regime’s imminent decline.
Not the analysts themselves (after all, they have a reputation for taking care of), but those authors and columnists who generate policy recommendations for the politicians and government officials, construct guidance with varying degrees of lethal consequences for Russian and Chinese rulers and Iranian mullahs about the way to realize those predictions. Some are anxiously waiting to hear the announcement of China’s, Russia’s, or Iran’s collapse, whichever comes first. Some suggest that the U.S. should act first, without waiting for the natural developments of events, and deal a death blow. Of course, in this modern age, especially when U.S. parents hate to see the boots of their sons and daughters on foreign lands and hiring proxies as cheap as Ukraine in Eurasia steps, the U.S. ought to put the quietus on them using non-military ways, like making selling and buying oil difficult if not totally impossible; like stopping protection in the open seas and oceans to their shipping; like ending international financial and commercial amenities. China, the world’s second-largest economy, may have reached its zenith; if China is no longer the world's factory, the U.S. should think about what will replace it. Like the breakup of the USSR, what is known today as the People's Republic of China would break up into pieces as they were before the unification Mao Zedong realized. It will be replaced by a “Coastal China” and several central “statelets” that would be ruled by warlords.
We have been listening to these forecasts (perhaps “wishcasts” is a better word here) for the last decade. Instead, China, Russia and Iran helped create BRICS, an intergovernmental organization comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Created to provide investment opportunities in the member countries, it is now a cohesive geopolitical bloc, coordinating multilateral policies, economic or political.
Of course, China has domestic issues; it fought for almost a decade with Japan, a superpower then. The war caused thousands of casualties and left a war-torn country.
However, no part of China is seeking foreign help to gain independence. No sane Chinese person would fall for it after long decades of exploitation by (almost) all European nations that could afford to launch a galleon on the North or South China Sea. The Communist Party’s policies about the Uyghurs and Huis, China’s two largest Muslim groups, leave much to be desired, but the U.S. and European provocations had been successful in starting a civil war.
The forecasts that as soon as the U.S.-provided “global order” (or the Pax Americana put in effect after World War II) ends, the Japan-China War would have reduced China to ashes must have been penned by those who are not reading the latest reports on the commerce between the two countries. China knows how to return from the dead and is ready to show its expertise in making the dead come back to life with its “Belt and Road Initiative.”
Türkiye is a strong supporter of the Belt and Road Initiative; President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told the Chinese daily the Global Times in an opinion piece published two years ago. The Belt and Road Initiative, also known as the One Belt One Road and the New Silk Road, is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in more than 150 countries and international organizations. Thanks to those analyses and recommendations based on them, its progress is not as fast as that of those countries participating in it. There will be six urban development land corridors linked by road, rail, energy and digital infrastructure and the Maritime Silk Road will be linked by the development of ports.
“The centuries-old cooperation between our nations continues to grow stronger today under the leadership of Xi Jinping, China's president and my dear friend,” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said.
Here is one more analysis (it is mine!): China has an astonishing ability to overcome domestic and international problems, so it depends on it.