I think we’re far from it for now. China still depends on ASML (West) and is nowhere near learning to do EUV for chipmaking.
I think we’re already there. Multipolarity doesn’t necessarily mean total cutoff from all dependencies (after all, the US is dependent on China in a lot more ways than vice versa), or that the US empire is completely defeated yet. It just means that they are no longer the only game in town, it means that countries have alternatives and the West is no longer able to completely dominate the rest and tell them what to do. It means that the West have lost their monopoly on technological advancement, on financial systems, on use of military force, their undisputed control over the global narrative, etc. In short, they are no longer global hegemons now that alternative centers of power have emerged.
What i am not yet sure about is when exactly this transition occured. One could argue it started as far back as 2008 with the global crisis of capitalism which China had to bail the West out of…or was it perhaps in 2013 when China launched its Belt and Road Initiative megaproject for economic integration outside of Western dominated institutions?
Was it maybe in 2014/2015 when Russia dared to defy the US by foiling their plans for Crimea and Syria, or in 2016 when it became suddenly clear that much of America and parts of Europe were no longer buying the liberal establishment’s bullshit…or was it in 2020 with Covid which exposed western governments as morally bankrupt and woefully incompetent compared to China’s?
Personally i don’t know that i could pinpoint exactly when the transition started but i do know that Russia’s intervention in Ukraine in 2022 was a watershed moment, and their subsequent weathering of the storm of the entire collective West’s economic and diplomatic onslaught showed that we were now clearly living in a new world. One in which it is now possible to stand up to the collective West’s bullying, to defy their tyrannical “rules based order” and not only survive but win and thrive. And the global south noticed this, hence all of the other sudden big events we have seen take place around the world since then:
France getting kicked out of West Africa, the Palestinian resistance entering into a qualitatively new phase of struggle, rapid expansion of BRICS, reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Yemeni blockade of the Red Sea, Iran striking a direct blow to the Zionist entity, Russia breaking the western sanctions regime on the DPRK, China becoming bolder in defending its own interests and no longer mincing words when it comes to the US’s belligerent actions directed at them, the list goes on. None of this could have happened under US unipolarity.
The process of multipolarity starts at the peak of american hegemony, it starts at the dismantlement of the Soviet union, which was the quantitative leap to american hegemony, its only downhill from there. Its like Hegel said, life itself bears the germ of death. American hegemony itself bears the germ of multipolarity.
The small quantitative gains since then have lead to the qualitative changes we are all witnessing now, the question is which will be the big qualitative leap that marks the end of american hegemony and the start of multipolarity, and even more interesting, what comes after multipolarity?
I think you’re exactly right, this is the proper dialectical way of viewing things, as a process.
the question is which will be the big qualitative leap
I would argue that February 2022 was that qualitative leap. But maybe i’m too optimistic, idk.
The larger point is true, the world is basically becoming multipolar. But you still live in a different world from reality:
or in 2016 when it became suddenly clear that much of America and parts of Europe were no longer buying the liberal establishment’s bullshit
they only cared about non-whites/immigration, idk why you bring this up
or was it in 2020 with Covid which exposed western governments as morally bankrupt and woefully incompetent compared to China’s?
exact opposite, the cattle perceive this as western governments being morally bankrupt by BECOMING LIKE (their idea of) China. The fact that there was a mandate to wear a paper-thin mask is CCP oppression to them. They also think that 20 gorrillion Chinese people died and that it’s a Chinese bioweapon (in reality it’s the opposite)
Everything you say is correct. I’m just looking at this from a more global perspective.
I don’t think it’s all that relevant how the people in the imperial core viewed those events, but all across the global south 2016 and 2020 were undoubtedly perceived as major indicators of the decline/dysfunction of western “liberal democracies”.
I do think much of their illusion, or their myth or whatever you want to call it, was shattered then. They were mask-off moments. But as i said, i don’t necessarily view those as true inflection points, rather just as further data points indicating a world in transition.
BRICS and Saudi buying oil in yuan instead of petrodollars is kinda big tbh
Yes, its a process, and the trend is certainly going in that direction.
I think it’s undeniable, we are getting closer to a multipolar world- and for all that we may speculate (and have, and do) about how “far from it we are still,” the world is moving leaps and bounds- decades are taking place in weeks- and the west is also forcing things to such a point, through their attempts to prevent it.
It may be (will be) uncomfortable, and not just for the imperial cores of the west- it will be a great upheaval for China, it has been for Russia, and it will be across the BRICS and the global south. It will be dangerous- frankly, more dangerous than perhaps at any other point in recorded human history- I certainly think it is. But it will be worth it, no matter the outcome (of which I am, barring nuclear war, very optimistic), and it is so, so necessary- and what will come after will be the foundations from where a new world will be born.
You talk about ASML and their EUV, but that’s narrow-sighted IMO. China has already found a process around it (though it is less efficient- but considering how all the rest of the industry of the world essentially can be largely found in China, and how much they have invested in their infrastructure, their workforce, etc. to streamline their production- even then I think they more than break even). And if you look further into the topic, you’ll also find that China has the foundations- the talent, the resources, etc- to overcome it, and make ASML a thing of the past, even- it is a country of 1.5 billion, a greater total than that of the entire west and imperial bloc combined- and of those 1.5 billion, within their population no doubt, increasingly especially with the younger generations- an even more educated, more motivated population, also with more opportunities and far more of a stake in their nation’s efforts than that of the west (where it is increasingly rather the opposite).
ASML’s EUV machines and their process, for instance, is developed for export, and that is a limitation in and of itself; these machines are roughly the size of a bus, and that’s with them as minaturized as they can make it as-is. Look into the proposed and planned developments in China, and it becomes clear what’s next to come will in due time, wipe them off the map- for these manufacturing processes, for instance, it has been proposed and certainly can be made, that China could instead build an accelerator the size of a football field, and use that as a light source for a massive EUV complex which can and will produce chips at a volume incomprehensible to the west…
But I digress. EUV, at least western EUV, has already been made unnecessary; Huawei is already blatantly producing tangible proof of exactly that, albeit with less efficient DUV technology, yet they are basically right on the cusp of reaching parity all the same (and if not- so be it, it’s not like China or the universe will fall apart without it, and if worst comes to worst- especially in the case of a all-out economic split- China can very easily simply replicate existing EUV technology- the west cannot replicate China’s successes, not without first facing their own contradictions which have exacerbated to cartoonish proportions since the Reagan era with neoliberalism).
The west can try to monopolize, to stall, to hope that the “garden” can hold the keys to development and modernity out of reach of China and the global south- and FWIW it is China AND the entire global south, and particularly at the moment China and Russia (as two securely independent, deeply complimentary, and truly peer nations to the US) but also the rest of BRICS- but this is a losing game, it cannot be maintained, they can only ever stall, or try to overturn the table (and humanity altogether) if worst comes to worst. Its behavior is the height of imperial fallacy, and increasingly I will say- it is clear it will not succeed.
The multipolarity era doesn’t begin when there is no longer trade from the west to China. Why the focus on a small part of a niche product of one industry?
Even besides, China’s chip making process is coming along by leaps and bounds and the US are ordering the Netherlands to make things even harder for China, which has so far just backfired and motivated China more to develop its own chips.
They have better universities, better scientists, a stable well supported government… the only thing that will stop China is nuclear war. But that just stops everyone anyway.
