The World Is DONE With The West. Here’s What’s Next | Amb. Chas Freeman

The most powerful and insightful analysis of the new world order yet! By Ambassador Chas Freeman (傅立民). This is the only master class of 2024 world politics you will need. It is based on a speech Ambassador Freeman gave to Chinese Attendees at the Cambridge Executive Leadership Program, on July 10, 2024. You can read the essay and his other writing on his homepage. Highly recommended! #_ftn1 Chas Freeman is to my knowledge the first person who figured out how to conceptually correctly grasp the “Rules Based International Order“, namely as an attempt of conducting “Rule by Law“ as opposed to the universalist approach of International Law (under the United Nations), which is the “Rule of Law.“ Brilliant analysis. Ambassador Freeman also discusses in detail China’s rise, the connection of international order with Chinese political concepts, and he gives a fascinating account of where we are at in this brave new world of the Post Post-Cold-War. And let me tell you, multipolarity is not what you think it is. And for those who don’t want to wait till the grand finale, here is his conclusion: “In short, we are witnessing the end of a unified, Western-dominated global order and its replacement by a hodgepodge of collaborations and rivalries at the sub-global level. Something similar happened to cause the devastating chaos of the “Thirty Years’ War” in Europe. That was a disorder composed of warring states, much like the history of China before the Qin unification or India before Aśoka. But the “Thirty Years’ War” ended in the establishment in the Peace of Westphalia of a system of peaceful coexistence between multiple sovereign states that respected their cultural diversity. Its result is memorialized in the “five principles of peaceful coexistence.” The question for your generation and the next in China, the West, and the rest of the world is whether we can replicate that outcome and end our descent into anarchy. We need to craft a peace based on mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, tolerance, and equality and cooperation for mutual benefit. If we cannot not do this, we risk more than our prosperity. We risk our very existence.“