Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, recently claimed that the West is seeking, through the war in Ukraine and dominance in Latin America and the South China Seas, to impose its hegemony upon the world. In this article, we will analyse Putin’s opinion, and assess the extent to which Russia also is seeking hegemony in the world. According to the Monroe Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary, the United States of America claims hegemony over the southern hemisphere of the planet, specifically over the Caribbean and Latin America. According to the doctrines laid down by the USA, no foreign power has the right to interfere or intervene in its immediate environment. To do so would be to infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States of America. Effectively, all European powers especially have been banned from developing deep economic and/or political ties with Latin America and the Caribbean.

However, there has, since the Cold War, been the wild card of what the Soviet Union was, and what is today the Russian Federation. The Cuban Missile Crisis saw the USA and Soviet Union come to the brink of nuclear war. As we all know, the Soviet Union fell apart, and the USA survived. Capitalism has come to reign supreme since then, and we may even speak of a world which is governed by global capitalism. However, the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin has sought to reassert the geographical and economic boundaries of the ex-Soviet Union. It was echoed in his address to the nation in 2005. He stated that the collapse of the Soviet empire “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. Russia has responded to US hegemony on Ukraine issue by claiming that it is defending its frontiers, a claim that some important scholars support. The USA is supplying the Ukrainian Army with sophisticated weaponry, and does indeed seem ready to test the resolve and integrity of the Russian Federation.

So much for Russia, China, for its part, has adopted an increasingly aggressive attitude towards Taiwan. So, in fact, what seems to be happening is opposing hegemonic tendencies are clashing: the USA and Western powers (EU and Britain especially), vs. the Russian Federation and China. Now, let us deepen our analysis, and ask: why is this happening? With the advent of globalisation there seems to be emerging what some commentators have described as ‘a clash of cultures’, and what I have described as a sort of ‘global schizophrenia’. Let me quote from my published article: ‘There was a time in the early 1990’s, when globalisation was hailed as a new path to freedom and peace. The argument went something like this: as the world came closer together, it would turn into a global village, a village in which divergent identities would overcome their differences and come together in a harmonious whole.Nothing has been further from the truth as we know it today. Our world is, in fact, schizophrenic. Rather than coming together in a global village, divergent identities are attacking each other in a series of outright confrontations between global powers, and scarcely hidden proxy wars. This is schizophrenia in a strict, clinical sense.’

To summarise: we are now facing a confrontation of global powers, East pitted against West. The outcome, as Henry Kissinger has observed, could threaten the existential survival of the human species, especially in the case of a nuclear War. So then, one might say that we live in a schizophrenic world, to use psychiatric terminology following the tremendously important work and influence of psychiatrist and Existenz philosopher Karl Jaspers. One might adjust the terms to a more geo-politicalidiom, and say, as does Kenneth Walt, that we live in an ‘anarchical world’. A world in which global war threatens peace, and ‘self-help’ is required to counter this threat. It is a question of existential survival for modern civilisation. This, of course, is both new and not new. There have been in the past, catastrophes that have wiped out entire civilisations, through germs, invasion, genocide, and economic and social decay. We might think of the decline of the Roman Empire, for example, economic and social decay. We might think of the decline of the Roman Empire, for example, and the devastating impact that the Peloponnesian War had upon democratic Athens and fascist Sparta. We might also think of the disappearance of the Mayan and Aztec civilisations, through Spanish conquest and germs. And there are other examples.

The question we must finally pose is: does the concept of ‘self-help, hold out any real promise for a partial but abiding peace on the planet? Given the history of warfare, and its predominance in human affairs, one tends to be at the least realistic, if not pessimistic. But we have no choice. If we are to survive, we must try to co-operate peacefully, to implement ‘self-help’, and move into the future in a positive and creative fashion. The possibility exists: the planet does have the potential for positive growth and survival.