Strategy&Future

The Times of the Troubles has one additional feature: the erection of an enormous and sophisticated system of fortifications and military bases along the entire geopolitical zone of contact, that stretched hundreds of kilometres. The concentration of defence lines and fortifications was maybe the greatest in Europe.

December 2024. Chancellery of the Prime Minister, Warsaw, Aleje Ujazdowskie. A few days before Christmas. One o’clock in the morning. The outgoing President of the United States is trying to call the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland to let him know that war has broken out in the Western Pacific.

Jacek Bartosiak and Albert Świdziński on the structural forces that takes world on a path to scalable world war.

The invasion of Ukraine became a serious trigger for the development of military writings inside Russia. Since the beginning of the war, many books have been published that describe the Russian military and geopolitical mindset and conduct. These books were often published for propagandist purposes, but the old Western school of Sovietology teaches us that to win over the enemy, we must grasp his way of thinking and find his weaknesses. Without objective analysis of political and military thought, it is easy to fall into imaginary theorisation which does not correspond with reality.

Where Goest Ukraine & NATO Strategy? (RAPORT)

Structural issues, i.e. a set of conflicting interests between the United States and China, prevent them from getting out of the spiral of growing rivalry in the summer of 2023. The political imbalance in and around Eurasia is growing, and with it more and more tensions and disputes, and the mutual perception of both these powers, both in terms of mutual intentions and, perhaps above all, the possibility of harming the other side in the globalised flows of the world economy and not only there. Now or in the near future. This begs the question of the leadership of both countries, and how the leaders are coping in a dynamic situation of growing distrust with a large number of contentious current issues. But also in the context of events and decisions that may be taken or will occur in the future: from the embargo on semiconductors and bans on cooperation in the development of artificial intelligence, through the ban on the export of machines for the production of new technologies.

It may sound like a paradox but the primary beneficiaries of the multipolar world are the countries of the Global South. The Central Asian republics and many other former colonial states (including those states who suffered due to neocolonialism) have finally found the panacea, which is multipolarity.

Jacek Bartosiak talks to Adm. (ret.) William McRaven (retired United States Navy four-star admiral who served as the ninth commander of the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) (2011-2014), commander of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) (2008-2011), commander of Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR) (2006-2008), chancellor of The University of Texas System (2015-2018)) on the evolution of modern battlefield.

“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.” Halford Mackinder, “Democratic Ideals and Reality”[1] [1] Colin S. Gray, “The Geopolitics of Super Power”, University Press of Kentucky, 1988 p.9

Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia before World War II was the first serious opportunity to test the effectiveness of economic sanctions, the economic weapon of the then “international community” — the League of Nations. Specifically, how these sanctions worked in practice against a large state with an industrial base and a real army. Previously, sanctions had been applied only to weak states: Yugoslavia and Greece. The parallels between that situation and the current state of world affairs are amazing. Then, it concerned the balance in Europe and its surroundings: today, it concerns the balance of the entire global system. Then, it ended in a kinetic world war: today, we’ll see how it ends. For now, we have a fierce rivalry that some time ago I called a scalable world war, which stems from an imbalance of the international system. The parallels between the situation 85 years ago and now, which I will draw on in this and subsequent articles in our new series on sanctions, are very instructive.

Jacek Bartosiak talks to Nicholas Myers on the world war.

The decision of Beijing to publicly propose a peace resolution plan for the war in Ukraine was determined by many factors, however, the key component was that China decided to act as a global-scale arbiter. As a hegemon, Beijing stays above the belligerent sides.