Time-space compression is the apex of globalisation. Yet it sits over a paradox – the vast resources required to maintain and expand this compression require a greater expanse of space to conquer. The aim of a boundless globe requires the existence of a vast frontier from which water to cool server farms and nuclear reactors and rare earth minerals to feed electronic arrays is extracted. This paradox is tearing globalisation apart. The post-globalised world slowly growing through Chinese and Russian revanchism and US consolidation is becoming acutely aware of the need for space and the resources it provides.

Climate change and the growing calls for a future beyond fossil fuels have created an explosive dynamic of national consolidation. Combined with the fragility of international supply chains exposed by coronavirus shutdowns and the growing desertification of tropical and equatorial regions, the necessity to futureproof energy supplies and agricultural production, as well as maintain national infrastructure, are paramount to nations serious about maintaining their quality of life.

“When changes in the surface of the earth, soil, distribution of water, as well as the climate are significant enough to have an impact on the realm of life, and when they are widespread and recurrent, then they must exert a strong influence on the changeability of the living world, activating it but at the same time also steering it”[1]. To maintain a population, to hold onto and expand infrastructure and domestic provisions, means to have control of space. There is a re-emergence of lebensraum as a geopolitical consideration. Jurisdiction over cobalt and nickel for batteries, gold and silicon for chips, fresh water for cooling systems and the manufacturing and skills bases to produce second order and finished goods will define the winners and losers of the 21^st century.

This is an overturning of the prevailing understanding of global politics. The definition of sovereignty that emerged from World War II and codified in the Charter of the United Nations provided the right to self-determination and the development of autonomous legal and political structures. Such words were hollow in the consideration of military power. Sovereignty in the 20^th and 21^st centuries has been the gift of superpowers who control global shipping routes and dictate the terms of trade and exchange. There is no independence without the recognition of a prevailing power to enforce it.

For the last 80 years these powers have consisted of the USA, Russia (primarily as the Soviet Union), China and France. Growing regional powers such as India, Pakistan, Brazil and Argentina have also developed autonomous spheres of influence, as well as the European Union which has absorbed, to a degree, French geopolitical strength as part of collective obligations. These are actual sovereign entities of independent decision-making. Beyond them, sovereignty is a mere myth. When a country lacks the capacity to rely on its own military and economic strength, it has no meaningful sovereignty. Instead, it is granted autonomy within the framework of trade agreements and security pacts.

Sovereignty then is a control of the necessary inputs required to hold onto power. In the postwar era, the development of opposing frameworks beneath the United States and Soviet Union, as well as minor frameworks through the non-aligned movement, defined the condition of this control. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unipolar world of American hegemony produced the conditions of globalisation. The necessity of space was structured into international production networks guaranteed by US military and economic might. The US had practical control of oil reserves through the petrodollar, and minimised competing powers like China and Russia through military expansion. The dollar is the reserve currency and the globe became an interconnected manufacturing and distribution hub. Great power conflict effectively ended for 20-30 years. War became a matter of humanitarian intervention and the development of international liberalism.

But as resources have become constrained and new production networks have developed that displace their global cousins, globalisation has tilted off its axis. Globalisation was and is an American phenomenon. Without American hegemony, there would no globalisation beyond patchworks of agreements between states. Thus post-globalisation is not the end of it but its evolution as new countries and frameworks compete for space. Concerns around energy security and peak oil, as well as the development of alternative exchange through the BRICS[2] and ASEAN[3], have unsettled the American-led globalised order that emerged from the Cold War.

What does this mean? A new scramble for Africa as Russia[4] and China[5] develop agreements exchanging security or infrastructure for resource extraction. Growing autonomy in regions[6] as they become both the key and the problem for developing production in electric vehicles, battery arrays and universal computerisation. The regrowth of hard power[7] and with it an increase in military expenditure and extension, both in technology and in manpower as the iron mountain[8] of military logistics is vastly swelled. Civilisational blocs forming that become resource extractors, with “lone countries”[9] such as Japan, Vietnam or Britain either redeveloping or collapsing in the interstices of civilisational conflicts.

The extrapolation of American globalisation into the fanciful dreams of post-nationalism and subsidiarity as described by Kearney[10] are dead. Strength will be defined by the degree of centralised power that a state can hold over resources and populations. Competing infrastructural blocs in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Western Build Back Better campaign[11] are the beginning of this multipolarity. The Chinese are effectively monopolising production inputs[12] and finished goods in emerging production networks, particularly renewable energy as it controls the majority of manufacturing of solar panels and wind turbines. Their Made in China 2025 attempts to increase their self-sufficiency[13], establishing exchange networks for oil and natural gas[14] as well as holding monopoly control of renewable resources outside the orbit of America.

Thus the re-emergence of lebensraum. Space is the primary geopolitical concern. The logistics of its compression are requiring the expansion of its extent. International production networks and global manufacturing hubs are fracturing into blocs. However, the extent to which Western countries appear to be taking this seriously is questionable. While American policymakers are recognising the threats posed by China and, to a lesser extent, Russia and the rest of the BRICS, they are doing little to shift the means of production and trade either into a manageable bloc or through the extension of military power.

Russia is attempting to integrate Ukraine as its breadbasket. China’s irredentist claims over Taiwan also present an economic warning as Taiwan are a major producer of chips for Western nations. The Biden administration has begun to look into reshoring supply chains and establishing economic security. But as is the wont of Western democracies, it has become bogged in bureaucratism and parasitical politicking. “Some are relevant, necessary, and gesture at the need for systemic reform. Many are mere continuations of existing policy, toothless suggestions or platitudes (‘we will convene stakeholders’), or else technocratic measures that may improve outcomes at the margin but will not change fundamentals”[15]. This is subsidiarity in action, slowly chipping away at meaningful action as each stakeholder requires adaptations to their particular needs and wants.

Where there is a sounding out about supply chain security and manufacturing and infrastructural capacity, they are primarily regulatory concerns i.e. how to best regulate these challenges within the existing framework. But as the floor cracks beneath the feet of this framework, regulation will do nothing. Where hard power re-emerges, it comes with higher military expenditure and more fragile supply chains. Defense equipment and weaponry are “harder to replace. If in the past a national economy could be mobilized to produce hundreds of thousands of planes, tanks, and ships, today mobilization is far harder, and weapons are far costlier and take longer to produce”[16].

Developing methods of warfare are incredibly resource intensive. The necessary components and systems require a vast array of control of sourcing and integration. The speed of engagement demands a corresponding speed of logistics that entails the management of inputs. Warfare’s decentralised capabilities[17] must be based on an imperial control of its necessary inputs. Yet the extent of seriousness is demonstrated by the bloodbath in Ukraine. No strategy, no concept of victory. Just another protracted conflict with no end in sight. America and Europe are throwing their defensive capacity away in a war they have no desire to fight. If this is any indication, multipolarity is growing beyond the West.

American imperialism is resembling the end of the British Empire. Barnett describes[18] how the hard-headed victories that developed the British Empire were won by shrewd statesman thinking of British advantage. However, during the Victorian lull between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, a new breed of elite developed that was romantic in character and conciliatory in action. For them, the empire was not a means to the end of British strength, but a deeper connection of peoples bound together by bonds of liberty and freedom. These very bonds were what allowed it to collapse. A similar thing is happening in American governance. Statesmen talk of American obligations not through the prism of strategic necessity but through democracy and human rights. Such romantic fancy means the imbroglios of Iraq and Afghanistan, that provide no advantage but do provide serious costs, both to reputation and expenditure.

Just look at the so-called pivot to Asia. What has it achieved? A number of new security commitments to countries that are unwilling to decouple from China. A highly volatile situation regarding claims over Taiwan and the Senkaku Islands. A large oceanic region requiring regular naval patrols. And from this America’s supply chain vulnerabilities around hardware and rare earth metals have not decreased. America is protecting countries from Chinese aggression with no benefit to themselves beyond the ethereal benefits of greater trade (which translates to larger American trade deficits).

“Rhetoric and diplomacy, after all, can shape perceptions and expectations and thus are important determinants of foreign-policy outcomes. But over time credibility is crucial, and credibility requires demonstrably having the resources and capabilities to implement the overall strategy over the long run”[19]. As lebensraum becomes the post-globalised geopolitical fixation, these resources and capabilities will shift to whoever monopolises their inputs. Without the requisite power, rhetoric is meaningless. Sovereignty is only won by those states willing to fight for it. Beyond that you are little more than a vassal, at the beck and call of your lord. Human rights charters and international law will never change that. Only power, and the resources to sustain it, will.

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[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305748817302475

[2] https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/01/21/brics-us-dollar-saudi-oil-currency-multipolar/

[3] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-american-pivot-to-asia/

[4] https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/10/16/late-to-party-russia-s-return-to-africa-pub-80056

[5] https://carnegiemoscow.org/commentary/80181

[6] https://unherd.com/2023/08/the-dawn-of-the-brics-world-order/

[7] https://warontherocks.com/2016/12/the-return-of-hard-power/

[8] https://breakingdefense.com/2017/05/no-more-iron-mountains-streamlined-logistics-key-to-multi-domain-battle/

[9] Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

[10] Richard Kearney, Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, Philosophy

[11] https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative

[12] https://www.nbr.org/publication/chinas-control-of-rare-earth-metals/

[13] https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/made-china-2025-threat-global-trade

[14] https://thediplomat.com/2017/01/deconstructing-chinas-energy-security-strategy/

[15] https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/08/state-capacity-in-short-supply-assessing-the-biden-administrations-industrial-strategy/

[16] https://mwi.usma.edu/american-way-war-twenty-first-century-three-inherent-challenges/

[17] https://warontherocks.com/2019/12/mosaic-warfare-small-and-scalable-are-beautiful/

[18] Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power

[19] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-american-pivot-to-asia/