by The Armenian Center for National and International Studies
If we define the current geopolitical turmoil in a few words, it will be hard to think of a more accurate description than a struggle for existence.
The West is playing against Russia and China in parallel on several “boards”, and the main “boards” are in Ukraine, the South Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and the Pacific region. The United States is struggling to preserve its hegemony in the world, or at least in a large part of the world. China wants to “conquer” the world economically, and Russia’s key task is to return to big politics as one of the major geopolitical actors.
There are actually no universal values and other similar emotional concepts in this great game. We face the moment of sincerity now, and the unmasked. The game is sometimes like chess, sometimes checkers, the stakes are too high: countries and peoples are sacrificed. In nature, the instinctive struggle of predators is directed not only toward dominance but also toward existence. Now, by and large, such a struggle for existence is being waged, which makes possible developments unpredictable.
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In 2021, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden signed the new Atlantic Charter, imitating the Atlantic Charter, a joint declaration issued in 1941 by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as a result of which the guiding principles on the future world order were developed, after defeating the coalition formed around Germany. More than two dozen countries joined the Charter at once, including the Soviet Union. The United Nations was later built on the theses of the Charter.
The Western countries of the G7 joined the new Atlantic Charter signed in 2021. No wonder, Russia and China were not invited to join the charter. The participants, alluding to the situation of 1941, actually did not give China and Russia a place in the “new world”. They seem to have been assigned the role of Germany at the time.
Against this backdrop, in 2022 the presidents of Russia and China signed a “response charter”, Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development, which stated that cooperation between them has no borders and they do not accept the unipolar world order. It was followed by the events in Ukraine.
Ultimately, the fight is about the new world order, its rules, and its principles. In 1941, so now, two coalitions have been formed, around which a “hot” struggle unfolded in Ukraine, also a “hot” economic struggle, and small countries are forced to express an attitude and join one of the coalitions or remain neutral if they succeed.
Let’s remember that after the Second World War there were changes in the political map, during which the new borders of the countries were drawn. It must be assumed that after this new, according to some opinions, latent Third World War, a change in the political map will also take place.
We can state that the hot competition started with the Artsakh war. It is in this logic that the political map may also be reshaped. We should look at how the fate of Artsakh or, in general, Armenia will be arranged in the future.
