A new world order with changes in power balance: Dividing the world into opponents and friends

By Morteza Khansari

TEHRAN - By withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), the United States and Russia finally pulled away the iron curtain of the cold war. Seemingly, the two countries want to change the common defensive methods and are now unveiling their high-tech nuclear weapons and missiles and have started threatening each other with nuclear weapons.

With suspension of INF by U.S. and Russia, the world will be officially divided into two opposing military poles. With increasing tensions and development of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on one hand and renovation of Russian missile defense system on the other hand, the world will face bigger security threats than before and will have to yield in to a new order that is based on arms race.

 In this new bipolar world, however, Russia has not the power to drag the world into a new cold war because it has no choice but to surrender to the economic and cultural power of western countries.

From now on, the world will no longer be a global community that complies with the international laws and regulations that were set after the cold war, on the contrary, it will become the battle field of the countries that are only thinking about their own national benefits and are not afraid of doing anything to gain their goals, even starting a nuclear war.

After the suspension of INF, the power balance between different countries is starting to change; to make the matters worse, NATO has now adopted a new policy for launching pre-emptive attacks on other countries; in this situation, the world will be divided into two poles of friends and opponents.

Is such a world, only the countries that have nuclear weapons might be able to provide their citizens with partial security; other countries, on the other hand, are pushed to become dependent on big powers in order to protect their national security.

U.S. is now focused more than ever on gaining advanced military technologies and investing on new offensive systems; the country has now entered a new round of arms race and is threatening its competitors with war and annihilation in the new “star wars” atmosphere that has been created by U.S. in the first place.

Trump’s new invasive strategy in 2019 is now combined with NATO’s new military strategy passed in 2018 that makes U.S. NATO’s world leader and Germany the Europe’s leader so that they can quickly respond to Russia and China. This new combination will surely increase the military conflicts and future threats and will make the “political militarism” a priority for everyone.

According to NATO plans, U.S. nuclear weapons, including 20 atomic bombs, will stay in Bushel in Germany and NATO’s military bases in North Atlantic Ocean and Germany will restart their activities. The nuclear weapons kept in Bushel, are of type B61-4 and each of them has a power four times greater than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima. Anyway, by 2020, U.S. will replace these weapons with more modern nuclear weapons.  

The new decisions made in NATO will surely change the general, long-term policy and strategies of this treaty; this will change NATO’s defensive mode into an offensive mode and will expand its activities beyond the boundaries of it member countries; an example of this interregional approach is a new scheme for setting up an Arab NATO.

Over the last few years, Baltic States were also among the regions that had to endure the most hostile and violent military actions of both U.S. and Russia. In fact, after NATO prolonged the deployment of its forces in the Baltic area and enhanced its weapons and facilities in this region, Russia felt compelled to unveil its future nuclear weapons and missiles.

In late 2016, Pentagon official announced that Baltic region is strategically important because from a geostrategic point of view, if Russia occupies the southern border of Lithuania, Europe will lose its on ground connection with the Baltic States including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

According to NATO, in 2016, there was an unprecedented increase in the number of Russia’s “hostile” and “provoking” activities in Baltic area and the number of alarms given by NATO. Over this period, NATO’s navies sent 870 alarms to Russian fighters in Baltic area; such a large number was never witnessed even during the peak of the Cold War.

Instead of being concerned about Russia’s activities and security issues that might occur, NATO is now prepared for a possible military clash with Russia. The political concerns has now turned into real military threats and operations, in an environment that is even more hostile than that of the Cold War.

Clearly, these security changes are not in favor of Russia, therefore, the country can only face NATO’s constant threats if it cooperates with the major powers of Asia and Middle East.  
Up to now, Russia has been able to give a firm response to such threats by testing its super-advanced weapons and running arms races, but in future, if it wants to maintain the power balance and subtract the huge costs of defense systems, it has to find strategic, powerful allies both among its neighboring countries and in other parts of the world.  

Amid all these tensions and conflicts, Europe will be in the front line of war and peace between U.S. and Russia. Like a “security hostage without a free will”, Europe will be a bystander and might even a victim if any of two sides decide to use banned weapons.

Despite all its political and economic capacities, Europe will be buried in the arms race between U.S. and Russia and will only be a target, even more at danger than it was during the Cold War.

This is why Europe is worried about Iran’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as this would disrupt Europe’s power in the Middle East, increases the tension and makes Europe even a bigger target of threats.

Therefore, it seems that in near future, we will see a new order in the world. This new order definitely depends on the destiny of the JCPOA, the Deal of the Century and the military clashes in the Baltic area. The results will come about soon, but at a great expense.

U.S. and Russia are already squandering a lot of money on nuclear weapons and missiles; seemingly they think that their possible clash will come about with a great cost and will cause a severe damage and threaten the lives of many people.

Recently, NATO’s Secretary General threatened Russia with a nuclear defensive and received its response from Russia by deployment of short-range and long-range missiles in European countries that member states of NATO.