The End of the Post-Colonial Order and the New Nuclear Race

China’s PLAN on the move. For decades, no Navy other than the USN could have put on such a show.

A worldwide post-colonial order has existed since the end of World War II, resulting from how the allies carved up the British Empire. Amendments were layered on at the end of the Cold War. What we are witnessing today is the end of both these orders.

The balance of power is returning to normal. We can see it in military terms. Many countries are arming themselves to the teeth: Poland, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, South Korea, Russia, and China, to name a few. Some might argue that the rulers of such countries are still influenced by western powers, and that military power in the hands of such client regimes is immaterial. But this view misses a crucial point: geostrategic intervention is born from the marriage of capability with intent. While capabilities take a long time to build, intent can change in a second.

A lesson every major player in the Middle East has likely learned this year is to make a dash for nuclear weapons. An international order premised on UN vetoes that override the wishes of the entire world to further the interest of one country does not, by definition, serve the world. Countries like Pakistan learned the importance of nuclear weapons years ago and left no stone unturned to get them. Given what has happened to Afghanistan, Tunisia, Gaza, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt, many may conclude that nuclear weapons are the only form of protection.

North Korea’s Kim Jong-un presents another case study in how nuclear weapons serve as an insurance policy. It’s not a matter of whether one likes Kim or not. Rather, it is the practical utility these weapons afford in a world otherwise in disarray, that is unfair and lawless.

I expect Iran to be first in this race, with Turkey and Saudi Arabia following right after, and the UAE and Egypt coming behind them. Once these countries add to their conventional capabilities a nuclear insurance policy, they will be able to express geostrategic intent with less fear. This sounds dangerous, and it may be. But it may also lead to stability because these countries may be able to build themselves up without externally imposed wars tearing them apart, or their territory being stolen by foreign forces.

How could this nuclear race have been avoided? By referees of the global order respecting the wishes of the global majority as expressed in the UN General Assembly. By being invested in maintaining fairness in post-WWII institutions. By not exploiting the weak. But that ship has sailed. Some warmongering ultra-nationalist types in the West take the position that they should be able to treat the world however they wish; that they are inherently superior and deserve to rule; that they deserve to be the arbiters. It’s Manifest Destiny 2.0.

It is purposeless arguing with them. Instead, my observation is that it was technological disparity, timing, and guile which enabled smaller nations to colonize and impose an order of choice upon the rest of the world. But that has changed. Knowledge cannot be gate kept as the printing press was by the British in India. Information, technology, and software want to be free. And they will become tools for equality.

The subcontinent, with approximately 2 billion people, China, Indonesia, Malaysia with 1.7 billion, and Central Asia and the Middle East with another 600 million represent the majority of the world. All these regions are developing fast. Add South America and Africa soon to follow. You get the picture.

Seven billion of the world’s eight billion people live outside the West. At technological parity, they will eventually build an economy seven times larger than what exists in the West. That’s just economic equality at the most basic level, i.e., the world approaching the same per capita income. But even if you argue they won’t achieve parity — say the average outside the West ends up being half of what it is in the West — even then, the rest of the World — countries that were mostly colonies — will still have an economy four times larger.

So, one would think rational actors in the West would see this rather clear writing on the wall and work to distance themselves from their colonial, interventionist habits and build real relationships around productive cooperation. This would be good for the world and for the West.

But it seems we are witnessing the opposite. There are a few good people in government, yes, but I see too much of a trigger-happy, supremacist, low-global awareness mentality behind a lot of U.S. policy making. For those of us who care about the future of this country and how it adapts to a changing world — how it crafts a dignified, useful presence in the world of the future — this tendency is troubling.

I am not very optimistic that the trigger-happy warmongers will make way for humble patriotism and real long-termism. But, we shall see. The history of the future is yet unwritten.