ROBERT SCOTT:A Bloody, Dangerous, and Dirty Game

The battle lines have been drawn, as demonstrated by Vladimir Putin’s speech at the Valdai Club last week, which came shortly after the National Security Strategy released by the Biden administration.It appears that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s keynote address at the Valdai Club on Thursday put Russia in conflict with the “Rules Based International Order” (RBIO) led by the United States.

Two weeks prior, the Biden administration released its 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS), a fervent defense of the RBIO that virtually declares war on “autocrats” who are “working overtime to undermine democracy.”

A global competition that has evolved into an existential conflict is outlined by these two visions of the future of the global order.In other words, there can only be one winner.

How the world manages the defeat of the losing side will, in large part, determine whether humanity will survive into the next generation, given that the five declared nuclear powers are the main players in this competition.

In the introduction to the 2022 National Security Strategy, U.S. President Joe Biden wrote, “We are now in the early years of a decisive decade for America and the world.”The terms of the major powers’ geopolitical competition will be established; the post-Cold War era is officially over, and the major powers are competing to determine what comes next.

American leadership, according to Biden, is the key to winning this competition:There has never been a greater need for the United States to play a strong and purposeful international role.

The stark nature of this competition was laid out in the 2022 NSS.”Democracies and autocracies are engaged in a contest to show which system of governance can best deliver for their people and the world,” Biden asserted.

The American objectives in this competition are obvious:

“[W]e need a free, open, prosperous, and secure worldwide request.We want a free society in which everyone has access to their fundamental freedoms and rights.It is open in the sense that it gives all nations that agree to these principles the chance to participate in and shape the rules.