All this talk about "China/America/Russia"'s backyard makes me feel like we are returning to the days of feuding empires where the little countries don't matter. I guess big countries deserve big backyards and there's no such thing as Vietnam's backyard, or Mexico's backyard, or Sweden's backyard etc.
We are; it's very clear that the world is tilting back towards power politics rather than multilateralism and cooperation.
Actually, Vietnam has been asserting its territorial rights in an increasingly sour dispute with China - but it's not reported on as much, because Vietnam is a smaller country. All sovereign countries are equal in some sense as being distinct entities whose existence is recognized by each other, which is a fine principle. but in terms of economic and military affairs size matters and thus the disposition of the largest countries captures most of the attention.
Think of the world like a zoo, all the different enclosures let you see a wide variety of animals. In nature, some of these animals share the ecosystem with each, others would never meet, such as kangaroos and camels. Now, if you opened all the enclosures and just let the animals go free inside the zoo, it's safe to predict that the elephants, rhinoceros, lions, and tigers will will shape things more (at the outset; over generations in a sufficiently large zoo results may vary) than coyotes, llamas, zebra, and camels. All the animals I've mentioned are optimized for different roles in different environments but some are better equipped to handle confrontation than others. I use the analogy of the zoo because it's small, like the planet as communications and transport technology have reduced epic journeys to a logistical operation. We're effectively walled in with much less psychic and transitional distance between us than there used to be.
> it's very clear that the world is tilting back towards power politics rather than multilateralism and cooperation.
We never had multilateralism and cooperation. It seemed that way to the US, in the narrow window between the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of China and Putin. The world seems very cooperative when you're the only superpower standing. We're not seeing a fundamental change in the nature of global politics, just the diminishing power of the US.
Very true. You can't have multilateralism and cooperation when no one else is even on your level. Its like cooperating on a software project where only one person knows anything about programming; its very one sided. We are simply seeing the effect of 12 Trillion in debt to the Chinese leading to huge growth for their economy. Russia is still 1/15th the GDP of the US and desperately needs reduced sanctions and for the price of oil to increase. That is why they were happy about Rex Tillerson being SOS.
But do they matter on the world sphere where the playground is dominated by a few players with nukes, navies, and large-enough domestic economies to be able to enact sanctions?
I come from a small country. There's a few in Europe, known for good wines or thermal baths or scenic sights or ethnic foods, but their continued existence is only guaranteed by their membership in a mutual defense pact. Those who aren't part of such an arrangement are out of luck -- "international outrage" does not protect sovereignty, as we have seen time and time again.
Right now, there's little need to conquer territory when you can just make everyone reliant on your for technology (USA), rare earth minerals (China), or natural gas (Russia). But as resources get more scarce, what is Latvia to do? Hungary? The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia? With their cash flowing to foreign powers for technology, raw materials, and energy, rely on tourism, find some unique skill niche, or try to become a tax haven?
I totally agree with you that geopolitics matter, no matter how much one wishes we could just live in a world that isn't "might makes right".
But I'd still argue that using terms like "Russia's backyard" or "China's backyard" dangerously colors entire regions their color without regard for whether the countries in the region want to be associated with their nearby superpower.
Germany once had nearly all of Europe and Japan once had nearly all of Asia. Couldn't one say at the time the U.K. was in Germany's backyard and China in Japan's?
You're not wrong, but the increasingly imperialist tone of public discourse is a reflection of reality as well as a driver of it. My basic read of the world situation is that financialization and globalization have brought a tremendous increase in economic capability but also created massive internal political stresses within many countries - not least the USA - through the abruptness of the disruption.
Historically, countries often deal with internal strife by going to war with someone else, and it's probably been this way since the first cell dealt with an uncomfortable pH balance by squirting caustic goo at a neighboring cell. Almost nobody wants a full-on nuclear exchange but I think some sort of world war is inevitable because peaceful competition has created a lot of losers as well as winners, in both psychic and economic terms. Once about 10% of a population is sufficiently pissed off, strife is inevitable and the only question that remains is how it will manifest..
It's hard to propagandize people who are content since they have little incentive to alter their disposition. Of course the populace is propagandized, but you're talking as if they're incapable of having a preference over their own economic situation, which is absurd. People feel sad and angry when their life gets worse, and propagandists can channel such emotions. Angry people are naturally easier to motivate than happy ones, because they want something to change whereas happy people don't. (Obviously I'm phrasing things a bit loosely for the sake of brevity here.)
