In many discussions on global politics of today are two focal points many refering to, one is the beginning of a new cold war to describe the politics of the upcoming decades, the second is the analogie with the beginning of the First World War to point out the danger of an upcoming „hot“ war.
In fact, before World War I, just like today, the global order was dominated by a liberal power, the British Empire than, the USA now. The economy was highly globalised, and the percentage of foreign-trade in global GDP of 1913 was higher than ever before and many decades after.
It were therefore predominantly reasons of power rather than economy that lead to the break-out of the war. In this regard the situation is comparable to today, where the danger is growing from this side as well. But what does this mean for a potencial non-aligned movement?
Because it makes no sense from an economic point of view to only trust one side, there won´t be any non-aligned movement like in the Cold War. The economic dependencies will stay, despide all sanctions and trade-regulations, and states will put themselfes in different time-limited blocks, determinded by precice issues.
The war is the father of all things, and this is certainly true in global politics. Paradoxicaly, the abstinence of a cold war increases the chance of a bigger confrontation, just because there´re no super-powers with the ability to just stop a conflict by working together.
So the existence of almost global non-alignation turns into a thread which might stay until the point of escalation.
Simon Dierich 