Return to the bipolar world

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, this Friday in Washington (USA) Al Drago / AFP

The bitter defeat suffered by the United States with its hasty exit from Afghanistan is not enough to maintain that the first superpower is in inexorable decline, as Beijing has been arguing with more propaganda effort than solid arguments.

This is demonstrated by the forceful letter that Joe Biden has just played with the announcement of a tripartite alliance with Australia and the United Kingdom, accompanied by the provision to Canberra of twelve nuclear-powered submarines, destined to patrol the most conflictive maritime region on the planet, the South China Sea, where one of the sea routes of greatest strategic value runs and numerous territorial disputes accumulate from almost all the countries bordering Beijing.

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• The great alliance forged by Biden in the Pacific aggravates the clash with China

Chinese war diplomacy has reacted with severe accusations of contributing to the arms race and nuclear proliferation, aware that the closure of the endless wars in the Middle East would lead to the concentration of US efforts in this highly explosive area, in which Beijing has been practicing a stealthy but constant occupation of reefs and crags, even within the territorial waters of its neighbors. It also has a desired dam such as Taiwan, whose annexation, even directly by the use of force, would mean the culmination of the Chinese rejuvenation project wielded by Xi Jinping.

It therefore makes perfect sense for the United States to deploy a broad policy of alliances in Asia through the Quad, or quartet already established with India, Australia and Japan, and now with the Aukus, with Australia and the United Kingdom, tacitly organized by technology shared nuclear. Washington is leaving a hole in the Middle East and Central Asia, but the expectation of a new isolationism that allows it to disengage from world stability is more than hasty. Another different thing is that these efforts are made at the expense of France and the Europeans, as is the case, and that this option is the most convenient even to solidify the front of democracies in the face of Russian threats in Eastern Europe and China in the India-Pacific region.

It is not certain that Biden has isolationist freaks, nor is it certain that the decline of the United States and its replacement by the Chinese empire are certified in advance. If there is any certainty that can be deduced from the latest movements, it is that we are entering a world that is no longer unipolar and is heading towards a new bipolarity similar to that which starred in the Cold War, although its center of gravity is no longer in Europe but in Asia. All of these are sufficient reasons for the European Union to aspire to strategic autonomy and rethink its defense based on a dependency less linked to interests unrelated to its own.